The 12 days of Old Style recipes

greenbee

splishsplash wrote: »

Yes, sounds nice, but now, between the recession and recent fuel hikes, I wouldn't like to be facing their heating bills.

I've been wondering... if spending more than 10% of your income on fuel puts you in fuel poverty, does that mean if you have £10 million in the bank but it costs you a million a year to heat your stately pile, that you're officially poor?

julieq

Unbelievable.

I repeat. Unbelievable.

Staggered out of bed this morning to a crescendo of cooing, clucking and twittering from the front door.

I open the door to find a pile of cardboard boxes. And tucked into the top one are two pieces of paper.

One the first one is a short note: "With apologies for all your problems, please find attached your complete order. Wishing you a Merry Christmas, John Fitzsimmons".

The second read as follows:

Dear Valued Customer.

Unfortunately not all of the items in your order were available, so we have substituted the following items:

- Goods requested: Four Colly Birds.
- Goods supplied: Four budgies.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.


The process of dragging boxes of birds around the house to the holding centre/abattoir/garage does provide plenty of time for considering recipe ideas, but I have to confess that budgies are a challenge even to the most resourceful cook.

Any advance on budgie kebabs?

purpleivy

That's OK, if it's a substituted item then it shouldn't be a problem to return those. Cooking the budgies was never a good idea, too much bone for kebabs IMHO. Best get them collected as not required and tell 'em you're quite happy to await new stocks of colley birds. With any luck you'll have to wait quite a while for them. I understand they're in great demand this time of the year.

greenbee

julieq wrote: »

Any advance on budgie kebabs?

If they won't take them back, try re-gifting. Alterantively, if you have a cat, they could come in handy as a combination of exercise and food... it's good to make sure your pet's hunting skills are kept up to scratch.

julieq

greenbee wrote: »

I've been wondering... if spending more than 10% of your income on fuel puts you in fuel poverty, does that mean if you have £10 million in the bank but it costs you a million a year to heat your stately pile, that you're officially poor?

Interesting question that, if we could find a few Lords with heating we could do a survey or something.

greenbee

julieq wrote: »

Interesting question that, if we could find a few Lords with heating we could do a survey or something.

It's certainly worth bearing in mind, just in case we come across anyone who might be able to answer the question. After all, you meet all kinds of people over the Christmas holidays who you wouldn't normally see.

Gryfon

It's a shame you didn't get the colly birds:

"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For those of you with an interest in etymology, the term 'calling birds' in the song is a deviation from the original term 'colly' or 'collie bird'. 'Colly' means 'black' and came from the old word for coal, so the four colly birds in the carol are in fact blackbirds. This doesn't really explain why anyone should want to give their true love four blackbirds, but there's no accounting for taste..." Taken from bbc.co.uk website.

You could have put them to one side for a pie!
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

purpleivy

Gryfon wrote: »

It's a shame you didn't get the colly birds:

"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For those of you with an interest in etymology, the term 'calling birds' in the song is a deviation from the original term 'colly' or 'collie bird'. 'Colly' means 'black' and came from the old word for coal, so the four colly birds in the carol are in fact blackbirds. This doesn't really explain why anyone should want to give their true love four blackbirds, but there's no accounting for taste..." Taken from bbc.co.uk website.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You could have put them to one side for a pie![/FONT]
[/FONT][/FONT]

I still maintain that the budgies should be sent back, as they weren't what was ordered!

Tabatha_Kitten

Please somebody tell me this is a wind up ??

julieq

No, every single word is true.

Certain liberties have, however, been taken with the order in which they've been typed.

I did some research on budgie cooking, and the best bet so far seems to be the centrepiece (literally) of a four bird roast. Most of the rest of what you find appears to be warnings that budgies may spontaneously cook themselves by flying into pans of hot water, but that they're allergic to teflon (fortunately my main frying pan is a great big cast iron one, so that won't be an issue).

I'm not sending them back though, it's just a sort of store cupboard challenge, making the best of what you find you have. If we never ate the odd things that came to hand, none of us would have ever tried rat, and just imagine what a loss that would be?