Cabbage Pie & Vege Pancakes

Cabbage pie

This is veges rather than cabbage, same principle

There is also this, called a cabbage omelette, I'll try this as I have a cabbage that needs using up (1/4/2020-in lockdown):

 I did this one, it seemed to have a few more ingredients to make it more flavoursome.
Ingredients

• chopped cabbage
• grated carrot
• chopped up pieces of home cured bacon. There could have been more of this to add flavour
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 4 eggs
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• Salt
• Pepper

Oil for pan and fry up with lid on so cabbage steams and cooks.

Result:
Ok, it could have a bit more flavour but a good taste overall, a bit like a cabbage tortilla. Good use of veges.
It was not quite holding together, so could use a bit more flour or eggs.
The 2nd one I craked another egg over it to try and make it thicker, but the flip side is not as dense as the first side to cook as the egg drains to the bottom.
 Maybe flip over before middle cooked and pour a bit more egg in.
The bacon added a punch to it, so adding a meat or something stronger adds flavour to rather bland veges.
I wonder if you could add cheese to the sauce? What about some chilli flakes? It needs a bit of a kick, or as an accompniment to some meat.
I'll keep the 2nd one back for the fried rice tonight.



Cabbage pancakes: Blitz the cabbage.

covid diary Wednesday 1st April 2020- Lockdown Day 7

Fog in the morning , looks really beautiful. A good sleep last night, normallyI wake with back pains but this time I drifted in/out of sleep until quite late. I woke refreshed, a are event.

Day 6 of lockdown, I'll go for afew walks today, I may even try the beach later.

covid diary Tuesday 31th March 2020- Lockdown Day 6

Weather mild. Good for a walk.

There was an article today saying over reaction to disease by academic. One thing that was interesting was background deaths that are being attributed to Covid that may be just normal annual deaths. So increasing numbers above what they should be. No data, so interesting commentary but nothing to substantiate it. On the other hand I thought this modelling exercise was very interesting, transparent data and modelling:

So I may need to go back to global data and look at average deathrates per country and put that in, also maybe respitory disease deaths and take this off the total to see if it is still high. No use at the moment in NZ as only one fatality to date.

covid diary Monday 30th March 2020- Lockdown Day 5

Weather looking better than yesterday. I drove to Lyall Bay around 9.30am and had a walk, there was sand all across road from yesterdays storm. Only a few (5ish) people on the beach and only a couple of dogs. I parked in carpark , only car there, and then after went to the supermarket.
I didn't need to have an urgent shop, and if there were queues I would have left it but at about 10.30 there were no queues going in, to Pak'n'Save or Countdown and both were well stocked. Some of the meat was a bit light and the mince was expensive (17.99/kg) so I bought some rump and minced it at home in the blitzer. I had to cut most of the fat off because that was maqking the machine struggle.
I want some mince as I plan to make some salami as I now have the skins.

Hard to keep 2m apart in Supermarket, and as you were going in, if you didn't have gloves on, they asked you to use hand sanitiser. I had my bike gloves, next time I may take some latex ones in. It was difficult to handle the shopping list on the phone with gloves, so I had to keep on taking one off to see what I needed to get.
Apparently 12-1pm and 4-5pm are the busy times by the man controlling the queues in Countdown. So avoid at those times. I suppose as the weather was good most people were out and about rather than doing grocery shopping.
Prices seemed Ok but not too many specials. Countdown definitely had less meat than Pak'n'Save and all the deli counters were closed inPak'n'Save but I think the meat & salad one was oppen in Countdown.
I always try and use the self checkouts but I did note that the manned tills (womanned?) had big screens in front of the tellars and they were advising not to use cash.

Its not looking pretty out there. NZ has 514 cases from yesterday. The MoH seems to have reposted the individual person recording of infections, so I may have another look at that. So back to some web scraping.

Tapas page 1

I've got a few tapas recipes that I do.

1. Gambas pil pil (Prawns, garlic, chilli in olive oil)
2. Tortilla la patatas (Spanish omelet)
3.  Potata Bravas. Potato with hot sauce spanish style
4. Bruchetta/ Tomato bread (Tomato on Toast Spanish Style (even though  Bruchetta is Italian, there is a Spanish take on it too))
5. Tapanade
6. Quesadillas, chichen and or beef.

 I just love savory picky bits, so small morsels are great.
There are these suggestions:
Tapas in allresipes
as well as these:
Tapas

 I want ot do
tapanades (minced olives, great for on toast)
There are a few others that I like and want to try
Oven-Roasted Latin Foods Queso Fresco Cheese and Apples. This might be interesting with gala apples

Tapanades

I usually just have olives minced with olive oil to make a paste, but I saw this vid and think that I'm going to make this instead, it looks delicious:

So I'm going to de-pip the olives and store them and then make some for tomorrow.
This is much courser but I think the flavours will come out more. Also I hadn't thought of putting in capers so I will add those.

Quesadillas

 There were a few recipes for these. I used one that was only cheese and chicken and had a side of tomatoes/onions to go with it.
The folding in half is quicker, and keep pan heat lower otherwise it burns on outside. Next time I may try the crepe maker, heat more gentle.

covid diary Sunday 29th March 2020- Lockdown Day 4

Day 4 lockdown. Weather awful.

Dense Urban centres

There was an article about difference in infection rates in New York and Los Angeles. NY massive as very dense, high rise so people using lifts and small paces with surfaces to touch etc and public transport. LA more open, less dense and people use own trasport. So infection not being transmitted as quickly, that is not to say infection cases wont be as large in LA, but not as rapidly.
So dense urban areas, like london, Delhi, Kolcutta etc will be faster for transmission, so Singapore & Hong Kong should be  a great places for spread but they seem to have it under control.
When Covid-19 came around, Singapore was, it seems, ready. Along with Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea,
They dealt with SARS and H1N1 Swine flu so were prepared. Interesting.

Taiwan's response impressive

 For the past 5 weeks (January 20-February 24), the CECC has rapidly produced and implemented a list of at least 124 action items (eTable in the Supplement) including border control from the air and sea, case identification (using new data and technology), quarantine of suspicious cases, proactive case finding, resource allocation (assessing and managing capacity), reassurance and education of the public while fighting misinformation, negotiation with other countries and regions, formulation of policies toward schools and childcare, and relief to businesses.
 Face masks at .20c and available to public, fines for profiteering. Being so connected to Mainand China they were prepared from SARS and other infections.

Herd infection & Covid Transmission

There was an article about Sweden that is having a relaxed approach to the infection, schools a businesses still running. A more spread out country with only one major population centre. Their attitude is for herd infection, once the infection/recovery rate gets over 80%  to 90% then its hard for a 2nd or 3rd wave of infections to spread as there are more people who are immune, so infection transmission harder to move in pop that has a lot of people resistant to it.

According to DeFelice, the virus that causes the disease appears to have a reproductive number of around 2.5, meaning every person who contracts the virus will pass it on to roughly 2.5 people. For the outbreak to peak, we need to bring that down to fewer than 1. Once 60 to 70 percent of the population has developed immunity to COVID-19, we will "begin to see" herd immunity, as people become less susceptible to infection and the outbreak dies down.

US taking off with infections

Cases still rising but US is getting a lot more , US rate of change is massive compared to ther countries

Stormy southerly here. A real downpour in the morning and my gutter was overflowing. Unfortunately my ladder was with Zoe so I had to improvise. A big lump of dirt blocking the outlet. This side of roof (West) is usually fine but with dry summer lots of dirt must have blown onto roof.
Also washed the west facing windows as I was wet and outside.
Afternoon weather cleared and lots and lots of people all getting out for a walk. I suppose they were waiting for the weather to turn. A mass exodus.

covid diary Saturday 28th March 2020- Lockdown Day 3

A bt delicate this morning, overindulged on Beer & the vine. Watched Harry Potter comfort film and had late night snacks and drinks. Not a smart move really. Weather bleak this morning so a good excuse for a lie in.

 There is discussion of government doing contra-cycle investment in infrastructure to inject funds into building to react against economic downturn. Might be an opportunity there for me which would be good.

Car WOF

My WOF on the car is coming up on the 5th April, I checked online and PitStop closed. I was wondering what to do about that. There was an article in Stuff suggesting you use if necessary but otherwise dont. Police could procecute on individual basis.

Neighbour shopping

I got a text from the lad below asking if I needed anything from shops. Unfortunately I didn't read the text until after his time of leaving had passed, so I think he headed out about 11.30am. I've just seen him arrive back at 1.45pm. I hope it didn't take him that long to do the shop.  That would be a couple of hours!!!

Walking

Weather a bit wet and squally today. Only a very few out and about at 11.30 when I went

Different strategies by US/UK & Ireland/NZ

An article in Irish Times looked at countries different strategies. US, UK & Netherlands not trying to track virus movement in population, whereas Ireland/ NZ both are.
This means that US/UK will get hit more heavily sooner , and their Health System will struggle under the load.
Ireland/NZ will control better and test more and will manage outbreaks better and do more containment, so will look to try and work within limited health resources.
This means that US/UK will have more people recovering from Covid quicker and so heard population that can go back to work quicker, but more deaths.
Ireland/NZ will take longer for people to get Covid, so there will be a longer period before people can go back to work. Less deaths but slower economic recovery.

Germany low death rate

I read an article about why Germany's death rate was so low. They are doing a LOT of testing, so identifying cases with mild symptoms and so classifying them as active cases. Because they are doing so much more screening they have a better handle on the number of  people infected. This is not the case in other countries, so their infected figures are way below where they should be.

Petrol

There was an item in the news about the issue of falling petrol prices, no demand and oversupply. I suppose the countries that are supplying have a production process that is difficult to reduce, so since they can't stockpile it and people are now not using too much transport, that is an industry that is going to suffer in the near future.

Russia calling Covid cases flu or SARS 

I was wondering why Russia's numbers were so low. Apparently Covid is in the SARS(Severe acute respitory syndrome) family. But the Russian Government is pretending it isn't. So numbers will burst forth from there soon.

covid diary 27th March 2020- Lockdown Day 2

 from Stuff:

Friday, Lockdown day 2.

Quite going for a walk this morning and very few vehicles on the road. A few flights early morning and now very quite (10am).
I spent quite a lot of yesterday afternoon trying to import information into MS SQL database, not that successfully as I had issues with putting a primary key on the tables and date headers were going wrong.
I 'm having a better run with Excel with basic data at the moment.
I came across this, share of population over 70, 2015. Italy has 16.24 & Spain has 13.8, Norway is up there too as well as Germany.

 Some interesting rates of change:
Spain has overtaken Italy in the number of peopledying daily.

 In the US the Relative change  for daily deaths is faster than in Spain, which is still rising by a phenominal amount 10000% for US 12000% versus Italy at 300% and World at 750%.

 Use this chart to add countries for deaths and rates of change.

covid diary 26th March 2020 Lockdown Day 1

Now in Lockdown in NZ. So, not a lot of news coming through.
I went for walk this morning and it was very quite, the hutt motorway was also very quite and looking down towards the Beehive there was almost no traffic on the road.
Wellington airport had an early flight I noticed but not much happening at all there at the moment.
Back at doing the covid data, now with Datawrapper have cases by region Map and table





NowI need to start refining data a bit more and also analysing it as well.
So, first off, the main areas are Auckland & Wellington, the Capital and The Main port of Entry to the country (Auckland), and quiter in the hinterland.
Since the infection came from abroad this seems reasonable.
Otago is higher than Canterbury because of the Cattle fair where a few people caught it.

Bugger

The MoH has restructured and simplified data source and  made a map, so I can' use that source anymore for analysis.

 Global information

Global daily Death rates so far

 This is a great website for data and you can modify by adding extra countries to conmpare rates here.

In the chart below, if you hover over a country it greys out others so you can see clearly where it lies. 



What I see, in Europe from the 2 charts above is that there is a Southern social aspect, of hot weather and going out and meeting people more, to the Northern, colder clime where people are also a little more reserved, eg Norway, Sweden, Germany.
Reading the article where the graph above there was a comment:
What we do know if that the mortality risk is higher for older populations and those with underlying health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and respiratory disease 
 So, I wonder if these are areas of Europeans retiring to the sunny climes of Italy & Spain? I know on the South & East Coast of Spain there are quite a number of British retirees. So maybe a skewed population pyramid in those areas.
There is also another chart that shows deaths by age in China:

Why are southern european countries having more deaths than northern countries, eg Italy/Spain versus Germany, Norway Sweden?
More older people? I think that might be one factor as retirees would head to warmer climes.

covid diary 25th March 2020

Today is the last day of Level 3. As of tonight at 11.59pm it moves to Level 4, stay at home.
I recieved Watsapp texts form both my brothers about where they were at, and I realised NZ was going into lockdown. Then realised that I'd better get my bit of shopping in, also I should think about non- essential things such as batteries and other things I can't get from the supermarket.
I started reading a couple of articles on people in lockdown in Spain who have been that way for 10 days, they are not allowed out AT ALL, unless they have a pet, thats when the chap with a goat got done. The fines seem pretty high for going out. So young kids in an appartment for 4 weeks. That is tough. At least people will be able to go for a walk in Wellington.

 WHO said new cases accelerating. It only seems to have taken 2 days to get from 300K to 400k, yesterday they said 4 days from 200k to 300k.
I've been working on my NZ region covid map, extracting data from Wiki page and presenting it on a map. Legend next part of exercise.

Weather still nice, airport totally inactive.

 At the supermarke a few shelves were empty, mainly staples (flour in Pak'n'Save) and sanitisers etc, and in Countdown no Tonic water, but otherwise all fine. People were shopping as normal, a few with masks on.

There were a couple of police checking up at Pak,n,save and countdown with the managers, but all seemed fine.

At countdown there were cones up for getting in and staff were counting the numbers going into the shop, also manging people at the tills, Keeping people back so that there was clear distance at checkout. Nothing of that in Pak'n'save, that seemed to be business as usual.

Filled up with petrol, that seemed a lot cheaper than the last time I purchased it, it was, on returning from Zoe at the end of last month at about $2.30/l and it is about $1.94/l at the moment.

I went out in the afternoon to get some batteries and a couple of other non supermarket items before lockdown. I got all the stuff at Uncle Bills, it was pretty relaxed in there, I was going to go into the Warehouse but they were only letting a few people in at a time, so there were queues outside and what I wanted in there wasn't impotant enough to queue for. It was lovely down the beach, nice weather.

Lockdown in about 5 hours time. This will be interesting. 

covid diary 24th March 2020

The process continues, now some self isolation is taking place
World - 374,921 confirmed cases globally.
NZ has 102 as of about 2pm yesterday

The Bing map is getting more granular for the countries top on the list, as well as the US. So Italy, Spain & Germany are being shown as Regions within countries now. UK and Ireland still only by country.

I started to look around for Data for New Zealand by district and found that the Wiki site was pretty good.  Wiki NZ Covid page.
So I'm trying to exportXML in Google Sheets from this page to get regional numbers.

I was trying to think what this reminds me of and its Election nights when you watch the numbers coming in.
I'm also reminded of my 9th Birthday (1967) when Beirut was being strifed by Israili jets going after the palastinian camps in the Lebanon (in my memory I thought it was my 6th birthday). We had to stay at home and indoors and keep out of trouble. I drove the family mad as I was complaining I had no birthday presents and my dad took me into town to get something, he was not happy about that.
 I went for a walk at beach this morning, a few people out and about but a southerly so Lyall bay a bit exposed. It is quite though.


1pm news is its up to 155 confirmed at the moment. But the wiki page has not been updated as locations of new confirmed not released so far.
An early afternoon stroll in the town Belt, and a few people out doinggeneral activities. Tomorrow may be busier as kids off school and wanting to get out and about.

Coronavirus: Pandemic is 'accelerating', WHO warns as cases pass 300,000

 It took 67 days from the first reported of Covid-19 to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000, and just four days for the third 100,000

covid diary 23rd March

 23rd March 2020
NZ - 66 cases reported
World - 329,275 
Deaths- 14,376
Recovered- 95,656

This is a global pandemic that is becoming more serious all the time.
 I thought I'd start a post on how it seems to be evolving here in New Zealand. There is a lot of information on the web, but I think it will be superceded and some deleted, so I'm trying to do a basic journal with screenshots.





So far there have been 66 reported cases in NZ, so still in its infancy. China seems to have plateaued at the moment and Italy and Spain seem to be ramping up quite a lot. The US has now taken 2nd place, so that is spreading quite a lot. I think more being reported now.
 
India and Africa are both being under reported in my opinion. India should have it sweeping through the country as they are well travelled from all parts of the globe and have a very high density population, so I can see it really taking over there.
Africa will be under reported due to limited medical facilities for testing. Over time that will take off when more people are infocted.

I think the more western countries are going to have a more difficult time of it as they are a lot more open. 
The example of closing Bondi beach in Sydney as there was no social distancing occuring.

The reporting seems to be haphazzard as detection/testing seems to be pretty limited. So countries could have far higher rates but as they have not been tested, so the cases are not reported.

Also the incubation period, when people have it but do not display symptoms, seems to be quite long, up to a week I think. So there is a discrete time when it can be passed without awareness, hence the explosion of cases that suddenly come to light.

My current knowledge of symptoms is pretty limited, I'm sure I'll be a lot more knowledgeable in the near future as the risk becomes greater.

Wellington and travel

Currently I'm looking out at Wellington airport and there are no planes on the runway, I can hear one small cesna in the sky heading north. monday morning is a busy time for flights up and down the country. Also not many planes at the terminal either.

 Also cobham drive traffic (to Airport & miramar) seems to be light, definitely not as much traffic. Especially going into town. It is 10am but its usually far busier.
The neighbours, who work over in Miramar, are at home on monday, that is unusual, so they must be self isolating early. 
 
I just put 1200 into KiwiSaver, as the Government puts in a dollop too. So that is worth doing for that amount. May not have been the wisest thing to do at this time, but its done now. But maybe Govt will give access to those funds later when things start biting.
Countries talking about relief packages so that will be interesting to see what is coming.

Mapping

The Bing map for the USA is mapping by  state and even by city regions, Japan, China and other areas of the Globe. I think Bing being US is doing this in US but not elsewhere.

NZ is still one dot for the whole country, so infected cases, although mentioned by region, are only giving country totals to date. I think soon there will be regional and city maps
There is the alert system on at the moment in NZ, and we are at level 2.

So, airports closed to tourists, only NZ nationals allowed in.
there are calls for total lockdown and for Schools to close, but that has not happened to date.
There is an economic balance to be struck with making people unemployed and keeping things going in the short term. The government seems to be taking the middle road at present.

Who's being affected

This will affect the vulnerable of society the most,as usual. Especially economically.
 But there seem to be distinct groups who will be more vulnerable, the eleerly and people with underlying deseases.
In Italy, where it is the worst at the moment, there is talk of triage and the more elderly are unlikely to get any medical support, the thinking being the younger have more years , and of productivity.

Services

Jobs being advertised in Wellington region today: 2369

Jobs advertised will drop a lot in the coming weeks.
 Council services: Most public facilities closed down.

Metlink:

Update 2pm

Up to level 3 and level 4, full shutdown in 48 hours. There will be a party at the supermarkets from now on. and a few empty shelves.
36 more positive cases identifide so over 100 cases now. That must have been the trigger point for moving to the next level. 
Lots of TV watching I suppose, or some drawing details.

Coconut macaroons

I found this recipe Bakery Style Coconut Macaroons and I thought I'd give it a try, it looks pretty simple and only a few ingredients:

• 2/3 cup (82g) flour
• 5 1/2 cups (402g) shredded sweetened coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 14 ounce can (396g) sweetened condensed milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (I didnt use as I dont have)
• 4 ounces white or semi-sweet baking chocolate or a combination of both or almond bark

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpat baking mats.
• Stir flour, coconut, and salt. Stir in sweetened condensed milk and both extracts. Stir until combined.
• Drop 2 tablespoon balls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. These do not spread so you can crowd them close together. Wet your hands slightly and push down any sticking up or out single pieces of coconut as these might burn.
• Bake for about 11 minutes, until the bottoms are golden and the tops start to turn the tiniest bit golden. Cool completely before eating or dipping.
• To dip: melt chocolate according to package directions. I like to melt my chocolate on 50% power in 30 second increments, stirring after each, until it’s melted and smooth. Add a teaspoon of vegetable oil or crisco if needed to get it to melt smoother. Dip the bottoms or tops of each macaroon in chocolate. Let dry.  

   

  Tasting

  Yum. I used the air fryer, for about 7 minutes. For the balls it gets browned lightly on all sides, but if you do biscuit shaped  then you have to flip over to toast the underside. 

  Worth doing as they are simple and tasty and not too sweet. 

  Not sure whether to freeze the dough or cook and then freeze. 

  They haven't even beendipped them in chocolate, they are fine as they are. 

   A few I over browenedat the beginning, the outer layer is a bit more crusty but inside is fine. 

  I think I may put dough in the freezer otherwise I'll eat it all up. 

  
  

  
  

Hamburger buns

I've been enjoying juicy hamburgers of late and i want to now make some hamburger buns.

I like the Food wishes videos and will follow Chef John's recipe:

Here are the ingredients from his web page:
https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2013/07/homemade-hamburger-buns-oh-my-god-becky.html

Ingredients for 8 large hamburger buns:

1 package (2 1/2 tsp) dry active yeast (I used Fleischmann's “RapidRise” Yeast)

1 cup very warm water

1 large egg

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons sugar

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 pound all-purpose flour (about 3 1/2 cups)
Note: add a 1/2 cup of the flour to the yeast and water, and then the remainder before kneading
 

for the tops:

1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk

sesame seeds

*bake at 375 degrees F. for 15-17 minutes

After mixing with stand mixer, the dough was a bit firm . I let it rise for an hour and it doubled in size. Cut into8 then on tray to rise for an hour

 After an hour a good rise. I'd left them in the oven (off) to do the rising, out of the sun. I put milk on for wash and then sesame, I thought egg was a bit OTT.

After 15 min I turned for 2 minutes and the result looks good

I'd a beef burger pattie in the freezer which i trhawed, 3 min one side then 2 on other, I put processed cheese on top to melt once I'd dome the fist side

I put frying pan lid on to allow for heat to stay in to melt the cheese

2 potatoes in air fryer, coleslaw, potato salad and the burger. Mayonaisse buttered to both sides of bun, lettuce under, pattie with cheese , onion, gherkins and tomatoes. A big meal

 The bun was great. A good size for the burger, and tasted nice and fresh. I've put the other 7 in the freezer for later meals. 

28th May 2020- Another recipe to try

I'm trying out a macdonalds type one, looks softer. 4 eggs. Solighter I presume

Here is link to recipe

Hamburger Buns  (yields 12)

• Measured        Weight          Grams         Ingredients
• ¾ cup                  0.38 lb.            180 g.         Water (room temp.)
• 2 tsp.                   0.02 lb.                 8 g.         Instant Yeast
• ¾ cup                  0.38 lb.            180 g.         Whole Milk (room temp.)
• ¼ cup                  0.15 lb.              70 g.         Canola Oil (or vegetable)
• 4 each                  4 each            227 g.         Eggs (large, room temp.)
• ¼ cup                  0.12 lb.              55 g.         Granulated Sugar
• 5-¾ cups             1.73 lb.            800 g.         Bread Flour (King Arthur)
• 2-½ tsp.               0.04 lb.              18 g.         Sea Salt (fine)
• ¼ cup Natural Sesame Seeds for Topping the Buns

A very sticky dough, I used the blades to mix it. 

Salami

On curing the meats I have been watching videos on sausages and salami's. What has put me off with these is getting the skins, also mincing the meat and pushing it into the tubes. In fact, it all seemed a little complicated.
My specific issue was trying to find out where I could get my hands on some skins. And that is not that simple either as to do you use natural or man-made skins?
On looking online there are skins on offer, of both sorts, in NZ. Trade Me seems to have a few listings and there are a couple of boutique suppliers. An issue I have is the quantities, I don't want to buy a massive anmount just to find i'm not interested in taking it further, so I want to buy some skins in small quantities.
At the end there were a couple of places and i chose the Christchurch Oskar butchers to order online from. Their delivery was cheaper than the Boutique in Auckland, for them the cost of delivery was more expensive than the small product I wanted to purchase. I only wanted to purchase a small amount to try. I got them at Oskar Butchers. 
So I thought I'd try the simplist one which is fibrous Salami Casings 50mm dia and there are 5 of them. Here is the link to what I'm getting :
https://oskarbutcher.co.nz/product/fibrous-salami-casings/
One thing I noted about the casings was that they have holes in to allow the air/moisture to escape from the meat inside.
I got an email with a link to some recipes, which is a nice touch:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6AQVxFelBcmlN_Dum8jZOlY54hsDNVd1udfnCsxLDU
Also one for making your own cold smoker:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gDs416oEJFLJGil5JuPPGuvNnW4GINoZXAsPoiflFrk

 So I'll wait for the skins and give it a try. I'm interested in hanging them in the Biltong box and also in the fridge. 
The cool italian dude has a few sausage and salami videos and I'll watch them before I make the salami. 
It seems with the salami tyou use a mix of meats so you may need to grind your meats up. There are these types of grinders on Trade Me for about $60 + Delivery (8-10$). They will do the sausage stuffing too with attachments.

 I intend to try out the Salami making manually first of all, and if that works out well I may plan to move onto making sausages and outher skinned meats.

11th March

The skins came yesterday. They are about 50mm diameter & about 400mm long, a bit longer but you have to tie the ends. There are 5 of them.

I've been watching videos on how to make salami, I quite like the mixture in this video, it looks pretty straightforward.

 INGREDIENTS:
 - minced shoulder of pork (2.5kg) 
- 3% salt to the weight of the meat (75g) 
- chilli (30g) - cracked black peppercorns 40g
- orange zest (1 orange) 
- 350ml wine 
- sausage casings


I started to look at how much meat I'd need to fill a single casing.
So using Pi x R Squared (area of a circle) x 400mm long to get volume I get .75l (or .00075m3)

Then I went looking for the density of pork mince, which is not easy to find, there are some variations.
So I have a litre volume, but need to relate to a weight, so density is what is needed.
I seem to have a number about 1033kg/m3  for pork mince so slightly higher than water of 1000kg/m3
So slightly higher than the weight of water, so if I need .75kg of water I'll need about .8kg of mince.
That seems a bit excessive for a simgle salami. I think I may have my maths wrong.

The other thing that is a bit daunting is getting the sausage meat into the casing. I'll have to use a spoon and maybe the top cut off the top of a bottle to act as a funnel.
I may just have to go with his recipe and weights and see how many I fill.