Adventures in cooking via the metric system

I had my first adventure in cooking with the metric system tonight. First up - trying to figure out how high to pre-heat the oven. Then I need 1/3 cup of butter, but the butter here doesn't have those nice convenient quarter cup increment markings. Then trying to figure out how many kilos a pound of chicken is. I figured everything out close enough that it tasted good. Mission Accomplished.

Speaking of food, a strange thing the Aussies do is cover everything in "sauce." Sauce is tomato sauce, aka ketchup. They poor it all over pies, just cover the top of it. I can't even imagine how they think it tates good - ketchup on top of meat pies. But they swear by it. Another thing that's different here is pumpkin. The pumpkins here are short fat green speckled things. I haven't tasted one yet, but they don't exactly make a good pumpkin pie from what I've heard. They also have tasty cheese here, which is a vague cheddar/white cheese. The cheese on pizza tastes slightly different also - a little smokier than what I'm used too.

Then there's the desserts. Wow, they are good. Vanilla slices (puff pastry layered with vanilla custard) is super good. They have lots of really good pastries, and I hear the scones are really good too though I haven't tried them yet. Definitely not a low-carb diet in this country!

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