Cooking for one (Mark Two)

SunnyGirl

It's like reading a novel reading about your discovered history PN I'm
loving it.

My Mum and Dad were big entertainers throughout my childhood and time living with them until I got married aged 22. They had regular dinner parties and were invited back regularly too. They loved cooking, still do, and things they serve are restaurant quality and look as nice as they tasted. I had a steady stream of children round to play and have tea and my children did too. I was never sure how many I would be feeding for tea until I picked them up from school

Once married I had friends round for dinner at our house and received plenty of invites back. As the children came along I'd often have other Mum's and their children round to play and we'd have lunch - nothing special just soup and a sandwich or a baked potato- but it was nice and reciprocated so I got a day off from feeding mine lunch too:) These days I tend to only feed the kids and their partners or my parents but I have a few friends where we take it in turns every so often to have lunch or tea. When I'm at uni food is eaten as efficiently as possible so I can get back to whatever essay, assignment, presentation, reading or revision that I'm involved with.

It's been interesting reading everyone's different experiences and ways of doing things.

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

When my mum was growing up they didn't have an oven; that was commonplace back then. They had an open fire and cooked over that. She said that if they wanted to bake anything she had to carry it across the road to the bakehouse (the local bakery), then collect it later. This was what most people did. The local bakery would get up early and bake all their bread, then make their ovens available for some pennies to bake locals' food.

I discovered a newspaper piece from 1919 where my granny's (future) mother-in-law was renting a room in a house where you had to pay two pence each time you used the oven. She was baking a cake that day and got into a fight as another lodger put a beef joint in the oven and she asked her to move it away from the cake so it didn't spit beef juice over it and ruin it. They got in a fight over it and the other woman punched her lights out... they got in a ruck and a broom was used to attack her.

From the late 1910s until after WW2, my maternal grandfather's family who were butchers but also made pies & other cooked meats also ran a communal oven as many families didn't have one. Apparently it was a big gas beastie and my Papa's first paid job as a teenager was to clean it out on a Thursday before the weekend rush. It was a mining village so folk got paid on a Thursday so Fri/Sat were always busy. They didn't charge for use but my Papa & his sister used to make good money "minding" folks food so it was turned etc. for a few pence. Interestingly his Dad had been a miner who had been in a pit accident and was no longer fit to mine. He used his compensation money to buy a portable wood/charcoal oven. On a Thursday him & the local butcher used to cook to order at the pit head and folk collected it at the end of their shift when they'd been paid. The butcher had no family and when he died he left his butcher's business and house to my Papa's Dad, so they went from having very little to being quite comfortable overnight. In one of these "Scotland's a village" scenarios the butcher had been a friend of the Harbour Master in Ayr who kept in touch after the butcher died. My Papa ended up marrying the Harbour Master's youngest daughter:)

PasturesNew

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

Yep, there's a real thick texture about it and a nice satisfying depth of flavour going on

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

You know how, when you're growing up, you hear local gossip/rumours and you always wonder about the truth...?

When I was at school, one of the lads (who I didn't know to speak to) started learning how to fix bicycles at the local bike shop. It was typical of its time, where the whole ground floor of a standard mid-Victorian mid-terraced house had been converted over many years to be a bicycle sales and repair shop. Inside it was an aladdin's cave of anything/everything for bikes. The old man who owned it had lived in the village all his life, as had his folks before him.

In the year I left school, the old fella died - and the word on the street was that he'd left his entire business to the young land who had been fixing bikes with him for just the past year or so ...

Now, there were some legs to this idea as the lad WAS then running the business and growing it - opening up a huge household goods warehouse on some land in another part of the village.

But I've always wondered how much of that rumour was true.

I recently did the old fella's tree - and discovered he had never married/had no kids ... but it all just seems "so bl00dy lucky"

I've got three options:
- forget it .... you'll never find out
- buy a copy of the Will and read it for myself....
- wait until one day when I am 300 miles from here and back in that village, go into the shop, ask to speak to the owner/manager and ask him outright

I'll end up ....just never knowing won't I.

This one's definitely kosher, I don't think my Papa's family ever quite got over their good luck (well apart from my 2 second cousins, from my Papa's younger brother who think they are "to the manor born"). My Papa's family went from living in not much more than a "room and kitchen" to living in a fairly substantial house in a village. I think for your own peace of mind you do need to find out.:)

PasturesNew

I remember years ago, ~1990, I used to be able to buy a tin of cannelloni. The same size as a ~410gram tin of beans, when you opened the lid there were about 6 rolls of canneloni in there.... which used to be lovely nuked, then sat on a bed of noodles.

I remembered these the other day and searched online for them - but no joy. While it still exists, it can only be found as a very pricey item now, whereas it used to be priced the same as any other common or garden tinned food...

It used to qualify as one of my "instant meals in a tin" that I used to keep in the cupboard... because tins don't take up freezer space and they keep forever.

It's only really the same as a lasagne, but rolled in individual pieces and topped/grilled with cheese... but it was a nice variation of a tinned meal.

I think as there's a constant push these days by supermarkets/suppliers to continually reinvent food and keep up with the latest fads ... a lot of these "old fashioned ideas" of "gunk in a tin that looks like a meal from the photo on the front" are fast disappearing!

Another thing I used to buy was a can of All Day Breakfast that, from memory, had beans, potato wedges, a sausage in it ...and was a little bit curry flavoured. I know there are other flavours, but I steer well clear of bacon and mushrooms ... so all other flavours were out of the question. They're also about £1.50/tin at full RRP these days, making it a no go...I can make it myself much cheaper.

Doom_and_Gloom

Breakfast : fruit
Lunch : the last portion of sweet and sour vegetable tofu and rice with nori.
Dinner : slow cook vegan lasagne served with brussel sprouts, carrots, sweetcorn and peas.
Drinks : coffee, mint tea, green tea, aloe juice and water.
May snack on a rice cake with peanut butter before bed.

The vegan lasagne kind of ended up as a vegetable pasta bake, light on the pasta, but oh well, tastes fine. 4 portions for the fridge (lunch or dinner over the next four days) and a large portion will go into the freezer.

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

I remember years ago, ~1990, I used to be able to buy a tin of cannelloni. The same size as a ~410gram tin of beans, when you opened the lid there were about 6 rolls of canneloni in there.... which used to be lovely nuked, then sat on a bed of noodles.

I remembered these the other day and searched online for them - but no joy. While it still exists, it can only be found as a very pricey item now, whereas it used to be priced the same as any other common or garden tinned food...

It used to qualify as one of my "instant meals in a tin" that I used to keep in the cupboard... because tins don't take up freezer space and they keep forever.

It's only really the same as a lasagne, but rolled in individual pieces and topped/grilled with cheese... but it was a nice variation of a tinned meal.

I think as there's a constant push these days by supermarkets/suppliers to continually reinvent food and keep up with the latest fads ... a lot of these "old fashioned ideas" of "gunk in a tin that looks like a meal from the photo on the front" are fast disappearing!

Another thing I used to buy was a can of All Day Breakfast that, from memory, had beans, potato wedges, a sausage in it ...and was a little bit curry flavoured. I know there are other flavours, but I steer well clear of bacon and mushrooms ... so all other flavours were out of the question. They're also about £1.50/tin at full RRP these days, making it a no go...I can make it myself much cheaper.

Yikes tins of "all day breakfast" and "bacon grill" bring back fond memories of caravan holidays when I was wee. I've never heard of canneloni in a tin just ravoli and spaghetti:)

karcher

caronc wrote: »

Yikes tins of "all day breakfast" and "bacon grill" bring back fond memories of caravan holidays when I was wee. I've never heard of canneloni in a tin just ravoli and spaghetti:)

I've never seen or heard of tinned cannelloni either....I never liked tinned ravioli and I positively hate tinned spaghetti _pale_ so I'm not feeling too sad or deprived

PasturesNew

I always have a can of the cheapo spaghetti in the cupboard - easy to serve half a can on some toast, with/without a spot of cheese.

At 15-16p/can it's useful. A splash of balsamic makes it palatable. Balsamic/59p a bottle at 4ldi.

I don't care if it's spaghetti, or spaghetti hoops ...so long as it's 15/16p per can.

caronc

karcher wrote: »

I've never seen or heard of tinned cannelloni either....I never liked tinned ravioli and I positively hate tinned spaghetti _pale_ so I'm not feeling too sad or deprived

With you on both of these not to my taste at all - the pasta's too slimy. I could just about manage tinned ravioli if I had to (and it was covered in cheese and grilled to crispiness;)) but tinned spaghetti just ain't going to go down (texture as much as taste issue for me_pale_)