Nice people thread part 5 - nicely does it

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

For those keen to follow my exceedingly good examples and strive to achieve my culinary high standards, today's meals have been:

Lunch: Frozen £1 chicken curry and 1 microwaved reduced Asda small flatbread. A Twirl bar for afters.
Tea: 1 microwaved Asda flatbread and 2 Twirl bars.

Flatbreads: http://i1-groceries.asda.com/g/466/201/5052449466201_21000_IDShot_2.jpeg

They're the size of pittas, but folded.

I've also saved the planet today by reducing washing up as the nuking is done by wrapping a flatbread in a piece of kitchen paper, nuking for 25 seconds to warm it, then eat it from the kitchen paper...

It's a pack of 6, so that'll be one more later.... and I'll chuck the rest in the freezer as they were reduced so "best by today".

You should write a Nigel Slater-style Kitchen Diary. It would be refreshing to read about Asda curries and discount Kit Kats rather than home grown lentils with organic Japanese plums and saffron.

lostinrates

Oh but lentils and plums sound so good. Saffron i can take or leave tbh. I love lentils. Oh drat, gen has made me crave puy lentils. Darn you generali!

lostinrates

Oh, i had a horrid thing today...any one her had a bottle of aloe vera drink, with real aloe vera pieces? Yuck, it was like a sweet version of some thing you would cough up with a bad chest cold.....no,no,no. One swallow was quite enough! I have no idea why dh left that for me, bet it was full if sugar too. Shudder.

LydiaJ

Poor Isaac. I hope he only has it mildly. I had chickenpox at 20 and it was awful. I barely slept for more than 48 hours, except occasionally when I dozed off to dream of somebody itching, and then wake again to realise it was me.

LNE had it at 27 and was very ill with it. The GP took one look at him and said if that was how many spots he'd got in the first day then he didn't want to see how many he'd get in the next two days, so he'd better have the mega-expensive anti-viral drugs. His temperature shot up and he could barely move, but at least he didn't itch as badly as I had done because the doc told him to take piriton, which is magic in the circumstances. Seeing the dramatic effect the piriton had on him (and the equally dramatic but much less pleasant effect when it wore off) left me wondering why on earth nobody had recommended it to me when I had chickenpox. NDG - you can get piriton for kids in syrup form, and I really recommend it.

DS had it not too badly when he was three and a half. DD had it much worse a couple of week later - she was about 7 months. She scratched her spots and they went septic so she had to have antibiotics, which she wasn't impressed with, so it was a challenge to get her to swallow the nasty banana-flavoured stuff. Incidentally, I have never met a child who liked the taste of the banana-flavoured penicillin syrup they give to children, and both my two detest it. However, I have discovered that it is only the sugar-free version that has the foul synthetic banana taste. The sugar-containing version of the same thing is orange flavour, and according to my kids it's quite pleasant.

The saga of the house next door continues. My friends have put in an offer, at the asking price, but the EA is not willing to take it off the market until they've provided their proof of funds. Meanwhile there are some other people booking second viewings, one of whom is the mother of a girl in DD's class, who is texting me asking me if the road is a nice place to live etc. I'm beginning to feel a little awkward about it.

silvercar

My youngest had chicken pox at 4 months and hardly noticed he had it. He caught it from his brother who was 4 and picked it up at his birthday party. They both developed terrible coughs 3 weeks later, often happens according to the doctor.

Davesnave

PasturesNew wrote: »

Is that a Yugo? My dad had one of those.... worth about £250 at the time.

Probably, but before then it was a Fiat. (Fiat sold off their obsolete car making machinery to the East Europeans.)

When I married, over 30 years ago, apart from a dog, I gained a Fiat like that. I think we had it put to sleep about 6 months later.

The dog lasted much longer.

PasturesNew

Generali wrote: »

You should write a Nigel Slater-style Kitchen Diary. It would be refreshing to read about Asda curries and discount Kit Kats rather than home grown lentils with organic Japanese plums and saffron.

He is SOOOO annoying. He swans about making things that take 2-3 hours to cook, using ingredients from his ever-sunny backgarden - I'm sure he calls up his business and tells the lads to pop round and plant something just for the show, then they take it back once the show's recorded. And he's got a huuuuuge fridge.

He's got the resources and supplies of somebody who cooks for 4-6 people 2-3x a day and makes out he's making a simple supper for 1.....

My top shopping tip this week is: Check out Morrisons' frozen section, they seem streets ahead of the other guys; their £1 offerings are awesome.... and I'm trialling their 80p bags (3 portions) of microwave chips, which are crinkle cut (which is a shame) but more moist and value for money than standard micro-chips boxes.... although they are actually completely tasteless

Yesterday I whipped up a tasty (microwaved from scratch) 2-egg cheese omelette and some of those nuked chips. Eggs are best before 1st Feb so I'll be doing that again tomorrow as I still have 2 eggs to use up.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

Oh, i had a horrid thing today...any one her had a bottle of aloe vera drink, with real aloe vera pieces? Yuck, it was like a sweet version of some thing you would cough up with a bad chest cold.....no,no,no. One swallow was quite enough! I have no idea why dh left that for me, bet it was full if sugar too. Shudder.

I thought Aloe Vera was posh shampoo!

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

You should write a Nigel Slater-style Kitchen Diary. It would be refreshing to read about Asda curries and discount Kit Kats rather than home grown lentils with organic Japanese plums and saffron.

There's surely a gap in the market for minimalist cooking on a budget.


I don't know if anybody will remember these but in my student days I had a book called Cooking in a Bedsitter by Katherine Whitehorn. It assumed you had one ring to cook on or, if you were lucky, a baby belling oven. It didn't presume you had a freezer or even a fridge. It advised wrapping ice cream in blankets and keeping food under the bed as it's the coldest part of a room. Yes, I know some of you have under-floor heating but that wasn't one the scene in those days.
Hardly anything had more than four ingredients! Which frankly appealed to me with my ability to burn ice cubes

Perhaps surpassed by "]Superpig by Willie Rushton which was a more male-oriented equivalent written in a comic style.

PasturesNew

Cooking for one, in the type of place that most singles can afford to live in, can be challenging because so many families in 3 bedroom houses are giving advice based on their lifestyle.

One thing is the spaces tend to be small, so anything you cook will stink out the place and all your clothes - and you don't want to open a window if you've just got home from work as you'll lose any precious heat that you can't really afford.

Then there's the "freeze the spare portions" bit .... you can only do that a few times before any freezer (if you have one, if you have room for one even) is full.

Some things can't be reduced in volume. If a recipe that serves 4-6 needs 1 egg, it's hard to measure out 1/6th of an egg.

Many things are simply not economical to cook in smaller quantities either.

So, by the time you get home from work, probably 10 hours after you left - and you're home alone and now got to cook etc in a confined space you tend to think "mmmmm .... peanut butter sandwich will do".

Living entirely alone, all the time, in a small space, cooking with limited facilities, is a whole new world that most people don't enter as a lifelong lifestyle.

For my limited exposure to foods, I'm sure I could cook anything I set my mind to and it'd be tasty and perfect .... thing is, when "it's just me" there's no point putting in all the effort and over the years any enthusiasm wanes. I know how to cook, I could cook .... I choose not to as it's tiresome with inadequate facilities and the smell.

I was on a thread earlier, somebody asking about cookie recipes "just like the supermarkets" and she said she'd made some and made 24 ..... my requirement for such cookies is 1/year at the most. I could easily cook 100 varieties of perfect cookies to die for... but I'd never eat them. Far better to grab a bag reduced to 10p for 5 when I spot them about once a year.