Cooking for one (Mark Two)

candygirl

Still following the thread, but not eating much due to a dodgy tum We had gorg hm veggie burgers, for a pub lunch the other day, n I haven't been off the loo since :eek: I think i've become intolerant to chilli, which is a shame cos I love it

Farway

PasturesNew wrote: »

On that line I'm stuck at ~1660 though ... but it's very close to where I now live and one day I might have a go at that.

It's frustrating, sad, annoying ... but it gets under your skin.

True, I'm stuck around 1600, in Devon, trouble is pesky Civil wars & religion changes made it very unsafe to write anything down, especially a baptism when the Monarch changed and everyone who was not of that faith often met a grisly end

Up early, too early for feeling like a breakfast so put the washing out and popped into town. Found a YS pack of Poppadoms, 20p, I never buy or use them really, but at 20p I do, and they will just fit in with tonight's dinner / tea / supper:D of the Lidl Chilli con Carne

Poking round £land spotted a 50p metal shovel, just right for shovelling the cat poo off my grass:(

Loads more windfalls with the recent wind, gathered in and ready for another lot of stewed apples. Also loads more blackberries to pick. I'll do them separately and freeze the berries for another day

I had a CBA breakfast for brunch, burger sarnie. I have apcket of 4 in the freezer from a while back but have since gone off them after a burger overdose. Only 3 left now

Lunch was good old kipper pate & toast, eaten as a thunderstorm crashed & flashed and tipped down on my nearly dry washing, bummer

Bank sorted as well while in town, "only" took 30 minutes. Seems someone had sent a mis delivered mail back as "not at this address, and my account had been frozen. I would have noticed sooner if it was thousands of pounds, but £3 is not something I check very often

All the roast dinner talk, tomorrow could be one of the lamb shanks, I have all the rest to do a roast

Farway

PasturesNew wrote: »

All those missing kids' first birthdays .... 100 years ago mothers were receiving letters that said they'd never see their sons on their birthdays again ... and not even a body.

True, here's where one of mine are, 100 years ago, or maybe not given the size of the explosion

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-38677071

B17c

Happy Birthday to your son SunnyG, hope you managed to get a bit of extra shut eye after your 5am phone call!

Have been a bit quiet of late, trying to keep my head down working for extra pennies... I have my start date for my 3rd job now (17th Aug) so that'll be more working and less opportunity to spend!

I'm quite pleased with myself that I haven't spent anything at Starbooks
or on random bits from the shop that aren't essentials, I've been taking a thermos travel cup of coffee to work every morning and my packed lunch too.

Made a big corned beef hash yesterday and portioned it into 6 so that will see me through dinners for next week, also made up 6 portions of strawberry jelly and custard for snacks/desserts. Will make up a couple of cheese sandwiches tomorrow evening for Monday and Tuesday breakfasts!

moneyistooshorttomention

suki1964 wrote: »

Going back to the naming of meals

When I first came to NI I was talking to a lady who later became a friend, and she was saying how her son was in England and how weird his future in laws were. Apparently they had invited her over for tea. And tea is what she got. A cup of tea and a biscuit

Here tea is a meal. She was mortified as she had only a small sandwich at lunchtime thinking she was going to get fed, and she had to sit there for two hours making small talk and her belly rumbling lol

Oh dear:(. Tea is a meal in England as well. If asked round for tea then I would be expecting sandwiches, cakes, etc.

I always thought if one is asking someone round just for a hot drink that it gets phrased as "Come round for coffee" and then they know all they are getting is a (non-alcoholic) drink. Followed by one would expect to be offered a choice of coffee, tea, herbal tea or a cold drink.

The specific act of inviting someone round specifically for a hot drink (rather than just offering them a drink whilst they were there anyway iyswim) means offering them cake with it (not one solitary biscuit) imo.

Admits to sitting there in the house of a relative of a friend recently and she got the kettle on for a drink. I was laying little mental bets with myself that when she had said she'd make a cup of tea for us that she was never going to offer the other drinks one also offers at the same time. It got all the way to a cup of tea being placed on the table in front of me without her offering choice of drinks - at which point I had to say "I don't drink tea I'm afraid" (hate the stuff...). I hadnt been able to get a word in edgeways to say that I don't drink tea...

Visitors must get very confused by us sometimes. If anyone asked me round for a main meal, then I'm assuming there will be a pudding after the main course and certainly always do two courses myself. But I've been round to a friends relatives place years back where the woman actually asked "Oh - does anyone want pudding?" in a tone that implied the answer was supposed to be "No".

If someone invites you out for a meal in pub or restaurant - then the expectation is one will be offered all 3 courses basically. I certainly offer all 3 if it's my treat. I'll probably have two courses myself and expect that most others will have 2 (rather than 1 or 3) - and regard it as mean to not even offer a pudding course. But there are people that don't offer.

I would say the basic rule of hospitality (whether at home or out) is "Always offer more than you think they will really want and repeat the offer once or twice to be sure - so they don't go hungry or thirsty".

PasturesNew

Today I've had:

- 2 digestives.
- Toast, beans, scrambled eggs.
- A packet of crisps.
- A slice of toast with chocolate spread.

moneyistooshorttomention

My parents (or, to be more accurate, my mother) never did any "entertaining". It was all I could do as a child to have a friend or two round for a once in a blue moon meal:(

I've never given a "dinner party" as such or been to any - think it's down to never having got married I guess. So it's been informal invite friends round for a meal or get invited by friends to a meal basically. But that is something I expect noticeably often.

I do recall meals out as something I expected pretty often back when I had various boyfriends (usually one at a time:rotfl:). Also I would invite them back for a "special meal" at my place in return at intervals (ie more luxury type food).

Anyway - just finished dinner. Courses "wrong way round".
Started with frozen banana "nice"cream with Oatly "cream"/"chocolate" chips (ie cacao). Then roast sweet potatoes and cauliflower/tomato sauce/mixed grains.

poppystar

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

My parents (or, to be more accurate, my mother) never did any "entertaining". It was all I could do as a child to have a friend or two round for a once in a blue moon meal:(

I've never given a "dinner party" as such or been to any - think it's down to never having got married I guess. So it's been informal invite friends round for a meal or get invited by friends to a meal basically. But that is something I expect noticeably often.

I don't think I ever had a friend round for a meal as a child. Once in a blue moon one came to visit, not stay over, and my mother would insist on giving them their own towel to use when they visited the bathroom. Not sure who she was protecting from who! And can't imagine she got that one from her mother. It certainly didn't make anyone feel at home.

Ditto on the dinner party front although there is one friend I stay with who does entertain.

Ditto too on the never married front - sometimes I wonder if these aren't somewhat linked and whether if we'd been a more entertaining family I might have been more likely to have married.


PN You've done really well on the genealogy front. I was going great guns until I hit the 'parts foreign' under place of birth on one line. Later documents - and the names of children - suggest France but it's a big place and I can't see any way to be more specific. Also got stuck on the other half of the maternal grandmothers line - either someone went off grid or there was a touch of bigamy going on.

I must get back to it sometime although now I'd probably need to visit churches to get more information.


Dinner tonight was another MS YS success- cooked beef 85p and potato salad 40p. Makes up for the expensive ready meal eaten last night:)

caronc

Good evening.

My folks were big on having folk round the table even though they didn't have much spare cash so the house was consequently frequently full of waifs and strays both adults and our friends. As long as folk were happy to take pot luck they were welcome and the food always seemed to stretch. More so when my Dad worked in the fishing industry (harbourside) where bad weather sometimes meant the crew were stranded so there were frequently random trawlermen round the table for dinner mainly many of whom were Dutch so interesting times. One young French guy ended with us for the best part of a fortnight due to storms and the Fishermens' Mission full. At the end he gave my Mum an envelope saying she must take it towards his board. She opened it when he was away and there was £150 which was a huge amount of money to them. We had steak that night:D. My sister and I have both been the same so there was always houseful of kids at various points usually starving when our kids were younger;)

Steak is what I've decided to have tonight with some steamed veg and new spuds so an easy dinner with little washing up!:D

Farway

PN, have you tried the 1939 registers? They are on Find my Past, I have a subscription, but probably your local library has free access

Back to food, dinner was the Chilli, and as nice as PN said it would be, so that can join Hunters' chicken on my list to buy it if YS

The weather improved and I did pick the blackberries, this rain of late hs made them plump & juicy. I picked nearly 500 grammes. Now stewed and cooling for the freezer

There are 3 main blackberry bushes ripe at present, two are mine and are named varieties, the other is just rooted in the gap between my shed & next door's. And that is the plumpest sweetest one of the lot, but it also has thorns. The thorn I was stabbed with last week is now out BTW and my fingers have not dropped off, so should be OK