Old enough to remember

[fgrsk8r1970]

I think the "Toffee Crisp" is called "100 Grand" here in the US those are my favorites - never had them in Germany!
Also - talking about candy bars.... they used to call TWIX "Raider" in Germany but then switched it to TWIX in the late 80's or so???

[Deleted]

fgrsk8r1970, when I was researching, I thought that might be the case, but it's not. A Toffee Crisp looks like this inside:



Whereas this is a 100 Grand:



The Toffee Crisp has the caramel and crisps formed in the middle and is coated in chocolate, whereas the 100 Grand has the crisps in the chocolate, and a solid caramel centre. Same idea, but they taste very different! Sorry to be so pedantic, but once I delve into a subject...

[fgrsk8r1970]

AHHHH..... thanks for the correction and the photos They both look good !!

[Deleted]

Now I'm beginning to wonder if one could make Rice Crispies squares, but with caramel instead of marshmallow. Probably too sticky... Don't worry, these are theoretical musings, I'm not actually going to make them.

Uh oh.

Salted Caramel Rice Krispies Treats with Dark Chocolate

[Deleted]

So sorry to have highjacked the thread. I just got so excited.

Kerouac, I believe that those razor blade receptacles were to stop curious little kids from slicing open their fingers, or worse. I've never seen them outside of a motel bathroom.

[fgrsk8r1970]

I don't know why this just popped into my mind, but when I was young we had a rotary phone and to keep me from making prank calls my parents locked it - since in Germany the emergency number was 112 (fire dept) they put it in the 2 slot to enable still being able to call that number.
Anybody else had one of those?

portraitindonesia.com/wp-content/uploads/phone_kuno.png

[Deleted]

I remember those phone locks. They were used a lot in public places where phones remained on a desk after hours but the place was still open to the public.

At my university, we used to accept collect calls on those phones (after giving the number to far away friends or family). ;D

[htmb]

I certainly remember rotary phones, but not the locking device.

[bixaorellana]

I vaguely remember such a thing in some kind of commercial context.

Oct 24, 2013 16:01:03 GMT @lizzyfaire said:

Uh oh.

Indeed.

WHY would you do that to us?!

The recipe calls for ½ cup salted caramel sauce, but no indication as to how to make it. Is it something that can be bought? (not here, for sure)

[Deleted]

Here's her recipe for Salted Caramel Sauce.

www.browneyedbaker.com/2012/05/22/homemade-salted-caramel-sauce-recipe/

[Deleted]

I remember when a waiter who hadn't shaved for 2 or 3 days would have been sent home immediately, if not fired on the spot.

[Deleted]

I remember when just about every hotel -- even motel chains -- provided stationery and envelopes. Now I am wondering how long ago they stopped doing so.

[bixaorellana]

Probably before we realized it, since for a long time opening the desk drawer in a motel revealed some very tired paper.

[Deleted]

Someone on television mentioned this or it would not have come to mind. The person was talking about how amazing it is to arrive in Beijing in the winter and the immediate smell that one can perceive is that of burning coal.

And it's true that in French cities when I was little, there was always that smell in the air in winter.

My grandmother had an electric stove, but she also had an old coal & wood burning stove that she would use in the winter, basically to keep the kitchen warm but also to keep the big pot of coffee warm and also to heat up a few other things, usually in the oven part -- not to cook, though. She was very proud to have an electric stove and to be one of the most modern women in the village, which is also why my grandparents had a television as early as 1960.

Naturally, it was a game -- not a chore -- for me or my brother to go fill the coal bucket from the pile in the garage and to add some coal to the stove by lifting off one of the cooking rings with a special tool. Now it would have been a chore if our grandparents had asked us to remove the ashes in the morning, but my grandmother was wonderful and would never have dreamed of having either of us do it. Maybe sometimes we took the ash bucket outside, but that was the extent of our participation in the "not fun" part of having a coal fire.

[bixaorellana]

That brought back the memory of the coal-burning furnace we had when we lived in Spain. It was in a space under the stairs. The house had a tiny detached garage which is where the coal was kept. I remember my dad often burnt off his eyebrows trying to get the thing going good.

We also had those standing kerosene heaters. My brother and I used stand over them inhaling deeply so we could marvel over how black our nostrils got.

[patricklondon]

Oh Lordy Lordy yes (and the smell of "brown coal" in east Germany too).

The point about coal fires was that they were room-specific. God knows what we did to our insides on cold nights debating with ourselves how long we could hold out before having to rush out into cold corridors to get to the bathroom. Nor was it that much fun to have to go two floors down to the coal cellar to fill up the scuttle.

We had paraffin heaters to take the chill off the bathroom and warm up the towels, and very occasionally in a bedroom (to be turned off before going to sleep - but I remember the comforting shadow the patterned top cast on the ceiling: and the trouble I had persuading my mother that I didn't need extra heat when I was in bed with a cold, it only made me cough the more). She also took one into the living room to warm up the draught off the windows, and to keep the kettle on so that she could top up the teapot.

And then there were the hot water bottles to warm the bed - and the alternatives; for some reason, my mother hung on to the old Victorian smoothing irons, not for the ironing (yes, we did use electric irons), but to heat up in the oven and wrap up in a cloth to use as a bedwarmer. Many a winter night was enlivened by the occasional thud as one of these damn things slid, or was kicked, out of the bed.

[Deleted]

My grandmother had wrapped-up ceramic bricks to warm the beds -- those lived in the coal-fired oven during the day as well.

[mossie]

No way do I want to go back
One coal fire to heat a draughty rambling old house, that fire banked down at night with damp coal dust, and vigorous stoking required next morning to bring it back to life. The old saying when having to describe a lady "you don't admire the mantelpiece when you are stoking the fire"
Frost patterns on the inside of all the windows in the morning. Coal was precious so my mother burnt everything that would burn. If we had kippers for breakfast, quite a common treat, all the skin and bones went on the fire , The smell was indescribable ;D ;D

[bixaorellana]

Dec 3, 2013 8:38:21 GMT patricklondon said:

We had paraffin heaters ... I remember the comforting shadow the patterned top cast on the ceiling

Dec 3, 2013 7:20:06 GMT bixaorellana said:

We also had those standing kerosene heaters.

I now remember that what people in the UK call paraffin is called kerosene in the US. My grandfather sold it in his store from a big greasy pump apparatus in the warehouse. Back then we called it coal oil.

[Deleted]

Dec 3, 2013 15:15:17 GMT bixaorellana said:

Dec 3, 2013 8:38:21 GMT patricklondon said:

We had paraffin heaters ... I remember the comforting shadow the patterned top cast on the ceiling

Dec 3, 2013 7:20:06 GMT bixaorellana said:

We also had those standing kerosene heaters.

I now remember that what people in the UK call paraffin is called kerosene in the US. My grandfather sold it in his store from a big greasy pump apparatus in the warehouse. Back then we called it coal oil.

I just remembered that when we went to Germany in the late 60s, before we moved into PMQs, we had an apartment that was heated with some sort of oil furnace standing in the living room. I can't remember if it was kerosene or not, but I can remember the smell, and going with my mother to buy jerry cans full of the stuff. Water in both the kitchen and bathroom was heated by compressed coal briquets in a boiler - if you wanted to have a bath or do the dishes you had to waaaaaiiiit. But the place was filled with antiques and the windows had marble sills and there was a park with a canal across the street, so I thought it was magical. Probably not for my parents (who had to buy a refrigerator for the place - my mother didn't deem the windowsill suitable), for we moved after 6 months or so.

[Deleted]

When my brother and I spent a year with our grandparents in the mid 1960's, my grandmother didn't want us sleeping upstairs in my mother's old icy bedroom. My grandparents' room was just as icy, but they had an electric blanket, so I guess it wasn't entirely useless to have one's daughter discovering modern things in the United States.

So during the cold months, my brother and I slept down in the living room which had an oïl furnace in it. I remember kind of liking the odour. When my parents came to live in France for a few years in the 1970's, they found themselves in my mother's childhood icy bedroom when they would spend time there during the winter -- and the ceramic bricks came out of hiding. My newly widowed grandmother spent the winter in the living room where my brother and I had slept, but my father had an electric pump installed in the garage as well as a pipe under the garden (the garage being a different building) to bring the oïl directly into the furnace. Nevertheless, if the temperature went below -10°, as it always did a few times, the fuel would congeal and the pump wouldn't work. Then it would be necessary to bring a jerrican of oïl into the house for it to become liquid again before filling the tank in the furnace.

[mich64]

As a child most of the homes we lived in were heated with gas. When we would visit my grandmother in rural Nova Scotia she heated her home with a wood stove in the kitchen. She had these long metal tongs we used to make toast for breakfast, I loved that smell.

We had a second propane fireplace installed in our home this fall, this morning we had the repair man here because we knew something was not right. He found a leak. Now I know why I have not been feeling well for months.

[htmb]

Oh, Mich!!!!!! Wow. How dangerous. So good you figured it out.

[mich64]

yes, I have had to keep myself away from the internet today, I am not sure I want to know the dangers of inhaling propane gas. Have decided not to check, for me, I think ignorance is the choice to make. I will focus on being happy that he repaired it today and that I am already feeling better.

[htmb]

Sounds like a very wise choice.

[Deleted]

You'll be fine, mich, but it's excellent that you've had the problem fixed. I lived for 10 years in a place heated by a propane furnace, with a propane stove, and all of my plants died, one by one.

[Deleted]

Yikes, Mich, that really makes one wonder how many small leaks there are in thousands of houses without people knowing it.

Lizzy, you probably just have a black thumb, like me.

[Deleted]

Patrick, I remember those paraffin heaters. We used them too while I was growing up in England. By that time most people were no longer using their fireplaces and those kind of heaters seemed the best option. This was before central heating was installed in most homes. Sadly, I do remember a disabled man who lived a few streets away accidentally falling onto one these heaters, he caught ablaze and burned to death. So they really weren't that safe.

Does anyone remember coal being delivered down the shoot into the cellars years back? This must have been before I came on the scene, but I know as a kid my next door neighbors still used a real open fireplace with coal for their heating.

[mich64]

Deyana when we visited family in France in 2001 and 2007 some were still having coal delivered to their front yards where there was indeed a little door that had a shoot down to the basement.

My grandmother always burned wood because she also used the stove for cooking but many in Nova Scotia used coal. Maybe not as many in New Brunswick?

They used to send ship loads of coal up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes to Georgian Bay for homes in Ontario but I do not know if they still do this.

Kerouac I too wonder how many others. Our leak was on the factory side of the fireplace, it was not on the install section. A brand new device. My husband was frequently checking the gas line to the appliance with a spray bottle with soap in it to detect a leak and could not find anything. He never thought it would be inside the new unit. We were very surprised but very happy he found where it was leaking from.

Lizzy, a little scary that it killed your plants though... I have no indoor plants but I think I may get some now.

[bixaorellana]

Very glad to see you here, live & posting, Mich! That's scary.

We had a similar experience with a wood burning stove some years ago. It was in a rent house where we'd moved temporarily & the only heat was from that stove. After a while we realized we both felt awful all the time, but couldn't figure out why. One day my husband burst out with, "Carbon monoxide!" He cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner & immediately began taking the chimney pipe apart. There was a dead crow inside it -- not enough to make the room smoky, but obviously enough to block proper ventilation.