Fun Food For You

Chapter 2 Hot Drinks, The 21st century way: tea, coffee, drinking chocolate, and night strength drinks

2 a) Hot drinks are far too hot for drinking when u've made them, if u make them only with very hot, as in Boiling, water. Many folk do; sad. Yet here is comfort, so please read on.... u Only heat to do the dissolving and the stewing, a half or less of the water that u’ll drink; it’s enough. U heat less water so u use less power, which is cheaper and it chills Mumsie Nature. It takes less time and it tastes nicer, too. Win win win win :-))) . U don’t even need it at boiling point, neither; Hot water from a sink tap is fine. So, even less power used means even More money saved, and Mumsie Nature is chilling yet more.

  It’s totally quicker than the old way when u're either sipping it too hot, or leaving it forgotten until it’s cold; Which Is ok to drink ? [Right ! with a cream-line, and dust on it]. Plus, If, sadly, u tip the glass a bit when u're doing it, it’s no big deal, ‘cos it’s only half-ish full. So, drink rarely spills out in the making; ok!. And, this way is easier to cosy, ‘cos u only must cosy half of it or less. But still be sure to lid it as it stews; to hold in its smells and radiant heat, for now. Once everything is ready, in a couple of minutes or so, u (remove its teabag(s) and) add extras like sweetener and milk. Now, top it up with tap-water at the right heat(s) for maximum comfort in the drinking. Stir it thoroughly for certainty, testing the liquid’s heat from that of the spoon on yr lower lip to catch its drip; if u like. Drink it with a smooth smile of joy and the spreading of good vibes . U can use cold water and tea(bags) in an mwave: half-full, on High for half-a-minute as u bring it up to the boil, off the heat, leave it a couple of minutes, then doing it again, twice... really stewed tea.

 2 b) Stock-cube soup. Put a stock-cube or so in a glass, according to taste. Like, u can break/slice from a couple of cubes, a bit of each to create variety in yr cup of soup. Add the hot tap-water, prod it smallest with a fork's tines, cool it with added water/(red) wine/beer and drink !. Thicken it into broth, if u like, with a little flour dropped onto the fat which will be on top. Stir it enough until the flour's cooked, and Then add the coolant. 

2 c)  Coffee. I)  Like, this is instant coffee; not hard labor. Better than tea because no teabag;  so less waste, and less to do. The world’s easiest-to-make hot drink.

  How to do it?: Have a mug the size that’s right for u. If it’s an ordinary mug size, put into it about a coffee-spoonful of instant coffee, with sugar or other sweeteners. [The milk: if u like it scalded, put it in before the hot water; if not, after the coolant.]  Pour in water out of the hot tap to about half full. Stir everything liquid. Fill it up with hot/cold waters to get the drink at the right heat for u and Drink it instantly, smiling happily!. To make more, u just add more coffee, milk, water; to suit. One mug all day; but Do wash it thoroughly clean occasionally, for comfort's sake. 

  For an easy cold drink, like, in summer, try instant coffee in cold water.....the same caffeine-hit, or better. How?. Use a finger-width or two of hot water for the dissolving, and fill up with cold water/milk, as u like.  Deelicious  ! ! ,                  

          It's the Instant way to Coffee-flavored Milk [see 2c III, please].

 2 c II)  Instant coffee is fine, but u can make coffee from beans. Sadly, coffee-making equipment with its Plungers and Pistons and Filters are washing up gloom of effort and complication and taking lots of time to wash Clean;  Baaad.  Life’s too short.  Aand, it takes up too much space when stored.  So, What?  THIS real coffee made by u Has No Machinery. It is low maintenance high fun from beans ground Turkish fine [as in finest fine]. Coffee-grinders are a hassle to clean and get the finest coffee; so buy it ready-ground. It'll brew up very strong, if u like, as Turkish coffee can. Have a steel hotflask; small or large.  First, warm the hotflask. Next, using the same spoon, add Sweetener to taste [’cos sugar in coffee usually ok, but coffee in sugar is mostly uncool]. Then add the Turkish-fine coffee, about 4 or so rounded coffee-spoonsful of coffee per half liter or so.  Pour in very very hot water to about halfway, stirring thoroughly.  Stop the pouring to max the stirring, then continue pouring till the jug’s full enough.  Lid the flask and Cosy it (?to be doubly-sure). Leave it to settle for about 10 minutes, then u stir away the grounds floating on top. And mebbe excite the ones further down, too. [It’ll then take a Really really long time to clear.] Wait a while/multitask (pour some out and dilute it if it is too strong, add milky extras if u do, and) Drink.

  How often d’u drink coffee? How often d’u wanna Make coffee? If u make the coffee too too strong, u can dilute it to taste in yr drinking mug before drinking it, and there’s less work ’cos u’re making coffee less often. So, Add the coffee to the pot by the pudding-spoon load, and u’ll be sorted for the day! and maybe up the sugar by the same amount Ok. Thinking it through, there’s more of the pot filled with grounds, so there’s less coffee to drink; but not much, compared.

  Or, we mwave it in a half-filled glass/jug:  bring it to the boil on High 3 times, then leave it for at least 3 minutes. Then, let it settle well for 10 minutes. Once out of the mwave, smell the coffee’s lovely hot aroma as u off its cfilm lid, then cool the item to drink-warmth by adding cold water/milk to the drink, to drink it as u like. 

 2 c III)  Stir the coffee-grounds with milk after u've drunk its coffee, to make Coffee-flavored Milk: In a glass jug, this looks lovely as u mix the milk with the swirling coffee-grounds which slowly settle in their own time and way. Then drink the coffee-flavored milk with joy when it’s settled enough for u!. To make coffee-flavored milk with instant coffee: since milk doesn’t dissolve foods as easily as water does, we help: start with a little hot tap-water and stir the solids until they're dissolved, then add the milk.   The Rhode Island state drink is coffee milk which is milk flavored with a coffee syrup; "Coffee Milk" is a registered trade mark. Sounds OK to me; it's sure to taste good too. 

 2 c IV) Or, u can easily vary the coffee-taste by switching one spoon of coffee for drinking chocolate and/or night-strength drink.  Add a little vanilla or a crushed clove or a crushed clove of garlic; peppercorns/chili seeds, crushed or not. (Instant) coffee made with crushed chili seeds as an extra explodes yr insides, well.

 2 c V) Black coffee and alcohol fit easily. [see also 17 g]. Whisk(e)y, and ginger-wine, other spirits,  fortified wines. One of the many easy ways to get yrself drunker than u think u are. 

 2 c VI) If u leave made ground coffee longtime before drinking, like in a hotflask, most of the grunge around the top edge will have been dissolved by condensing moisture, so it’ll have nearly gone.  If the coffee’s in a cosied metal coffee pot put on a bit of hot pipe of an indirect hot water system with an automatic timer, then yr coffee/tea/whatever will be as hot as hot needs be when u want it to be. Heated by the hotpipe/radiator that it's sat upon.  Neat, ok?.

 2 c VII)  The coffee grounds. U could get a second use of them,  by refilling with hot water to get a weaker brew.   Eventually u gotta Get rid of the coffee grounds. As solids, in a bin/recycled. Even Turkish-fine coffee grounds will sit in a U-bend; and they'll coat a waste-pipe's insides. So recycle/bin them too.

2 d I) Tea. This lovely drink has been around for a very long time, because it is so nice and calming. Have the tea-leaves loose, or tucked into a tea-bag. There's strongest tea such as Assam through Earl Grey to the ways that many folk brew China tea, weak without milk.  There's many sorts of China tea, too. And ginger tea, camomile tea; both said to be specially medicinal, even more than the well-known pickmeup quality of all teas. Green tea is also said to be specially healthful. How many teabags?: Many folk suggest that two or three per half-liter is about ok; more if they're herbal t-bags, which tend to be smaller. 

 2 d II) The British/American way to make tea is to stew the leaves/bag in a preheated cosied teapot in boiling water, then pour some out into a drinking vessel, add sugar and milk, wait for it to cool; and drink it. Done my way, no need for the wait 'cos u only half-fill with hot water, and finish with cold; so it's instantly drinkable. Instead of a cosied t-pot, a steel hotflask is quite as good if not better. Or, in an mwave, put the tea(bag) in an mwaveable lidded glass half-full of tap water. Bring to the boil on High or Medium and let it settle, for two or three goes; take it out, off its lid and sniff the lovely smell, stir in the sugar and milk if u're going to, fill it up with cold water, give it another stir to even the heat and drink :-))) .                Tea without milk is popular in many places, with a squirt of lemon juice instead; either hot or cold. Cold/iced tea is Very refreshing; with and without milk. Iced cold lemon tea is a big favorite for sunbathers, who often cool their foreheads with its drinking-glass before drinking the tea. Milk-free tea takes honey very easily as its sweetener. [Honey curdles milk].  Mint tea isn't only mint on its own, u could twist a couple of leaves which u add to a tea-pot as u add the tea. Very nice every way. The same with camomile.

2 d III)  Tea and alcohol are not often linked. Yet milk-free tea with a shot of rum is well thought of. Spicy dark rum to enrich the tea's strong flavor, with muscovado sugar. Drunk from a straw can be exciting as the hottish tea hits on the back of yr throat, the hot alcohol vapor fills yr mouth and u feel the need to hiccup; Be Warned !. Be Doubly-Warned against too-hot tea scalding the back of yr throat; this is seriously difficult to medicate for: Gargle in milk.     Vodka too goes well with hot tea, but it Can give u hiccups if drunk too swiftly, like rum; and brandy [evaaan, without the tea]. Or if u sniff their alcohol-rich aromas, u might be persuaded to sneeze. [Medicinally, it's a way to clear a blocked nose. But be sure to have a large hanky ready to catch yr sneeze's explosion.]  

Spirits are even more the stuff if drunk in cold tea with a  squirt or two of lemon juice. Mebbe u ice-cubed it cold. Such as, Earl Grey tea with white sugar left for a while to dissolve in the hot tea and cool, then add ice-cubes, a shot of lemon juice, vodka to taste.  U're much less likely to lose any from involuntary body reactions. They are delightful hot-weather drinks.

2 e) Drinking Chocolate. Per ordinary mug, one or two teaspoons fullish of drinking chocolate, half fill with hot water in the usual way. Add sugar to taste. If u don't add milk, honey is a cool sweetener; nor will the alcohol be wasted, if it's there. Add cold water to suit, sniff, stir, sniff some more, and Drink ! .                                                           The same with night-strength drinks such as Horlicks® and Ovaltine® .

Chapter 4. Tinned beans and other prepared food

4 a) Have a tin-opener as a lucky charm if u like, against a non-ring-pull event. But have one: dull, simple, easily useful.  Tins of beans are edible cold, 'cos they say "Baked Beans", not 'to-be-baked beans'. It's the same with all tinned food: a tin-opener and a spoon and u're fed. Very nice too. If u rinse out the last remains and drink them, there's zero waste and maximum food-eating per money spent. And less to wash up after. With the spuds in the tin, add sliced-in cooked chicken/other protein /(tinned) veg/mayo as u like, using the tin as yr mixing-bowl; adding more as u go.

U can heat tinned food in the sun, or on a radiator or hotpipe. Turn them from time to time, so that all gets the heat. U can also heat a tin of food in a pan on a hob...still in its tin, in water that's boiling something else.   Or, in an mwave, out of its tin and into a lidded mwave bowl; with extras, if u like. Like, with beans, stir in some paprika powder; add tinied spring onions, red onions, olives, mushrooms, curry sauce, crushed chilis, tinied carrots, caraway seeds, sliced cabbage, tinned anchovies. If u add the (ex-tinned) beans and extras to mwaved noodles, u have yr stodge with yr protein and veg; all together. Ready for u  :-)))    .

4 b) Black/white pudding, haggis, pies & pasties, all them: they'll keep months, in the cool and dry; airless. In a working fridge, years (?) for sure; for they are already as fully cooked as u need. Any warming that u give them is purely for effect. Totally ready to eat; like, broken into a salad. If they're tinned, then u're talking of them keeping for as long as the tin. Like decades, man.  Same in a placcy wrapper.   Salamis in their skin need to be hung in the air; with cool and dry around...not worth it. Sliced salami/ham in a placcy packet = perfect.

Chapter 6 microwaves/mwaves, Cookers. The sun's free heat, and yr hot-pipes' and radiators'.

For zero maintenance cookery, use a microwave that cooks and doesn't just warm thru. Called the mwave by me 'cos it waves a quiet hello to blissfully happy cookery : Prepare yr food/buy it ready to cook. Put yr lidded food in the mwave in an mwave-friendly pan, press the correct few buttons enough times and it'll ring a little bell to tell u when it's done. Is that cute, or what?.

How hot and fast can u organise it?: In the mwave, as High as u dare considering how full the glass is. Which adds on time until it's slower than a hob, perhaps. Still zero maintenance, almost; and so still cute. Some recipes say that u must stir it once or twice, but it's rarely needed; like never. It's a very relaxing way to prepare food that's nice to eat. The mwave is as good as a hob and it's faster than a hotflask. It's faster than a hob, too, when it's on High; takes about the same time on Medium; on Low or Simmer, it's quite as long as a hob, and longer; but it's Still almost zero maintenance cookery. Bliss on !. Totally different attitude towards the cookware, mind. Er? Yr mwave pans are glass or pottery, which are fragile, so it must be treated with care and discretion at all times, 'cos there's no metal allowed in the pan-department here. This is Not like cooker-pans of aluminum and copper and iron which u can bash about any old way, Oh, No! It's Delicacy-time when cooking mwavely. Nor are the portions large: feed two, basicly. So families might need two; three?. Like hobs on a cooker; u don't have just one of them, mostly do u?.

Another zero-maintenance cooker is the sun, which is also free . Ok, so the sun heavies leather and hurts herbs and spices, but if it's beaming into a glass with stew in it, it cooks the stew. As a cooking bowl, a smooth drinking glass is excellent 'cos u can put in what u like: rice, water, stock-cube, salt, tinied onion and another veg or two, lid it and leave in the hot sun. When it's cooked, leave it if u like, then (pour off and) drink its liquid and add a coolant for comfort. Recipe time: water with lentils and mdf, onions. All of them long-keeping items. Or, red wine and sliced ginger root with mint and a lamb chop and chestnuts. Or, minced meat, tinied leeks, mdf, salt. Carrots, evaan. I don't much use carrots 'cos they take forever, but a day's summer sun will cook carrots in water/beer/wine. With caraway seeds is often nice, and cross-cut celery. Being in a glass, u can finish it in an mwave if the sun runs out. No sun at all? into the mwave at the start :-))) . Make porridge in a glass (bowl) in the sun, with mdf and sliced fruit; lidded, of course.

There's also hot-pipes and the tops of hot radiators; more free heat. Both are fine for cooking from, if u can balance the food securely and are prepared to wait. U can cosy these a lot, easily; for even cooler cookery, the 21st century way. Ok.  If the hot-pipe is part of a timed central heating/hot-water system, then it'll be hot when yr house is, when u return home to it. Total bliss! . Cosy the pan, for completeness. 

Old-fashioned hob cookers with a grill, u can use their grill as yr room-heater. If its top is flat, then u can put pans on top of its vent to be cooked from its heat; it works, freely. Cosying?, the heat can be tremendous, so it's safer to only cosy pans that are on the back of the grill-top, and only insulate the top. It doesn't need it at the sides, anyway, 'cos of heat around. 

Chapter 8 - Hotflasks and some recipes for them

8 a) to buy a hotflask- what sort? a preferably steel vacuum flask. Glass ones go to pieces if u drop in a spoon. Where to find one, in the UK 2010?; At Argos so cheap, by Thermos so solid: Check it out at www.argos.co.uk  [Argos's "A-Z Index" is unusual, as it reads left to right instead of down each column]. There's almost zero heat-loss over 8 hours.... this is cool.; especially if u up the insulation with wooly hats.   Mumsie Nature and yr cash-flow jus' Love the hotflask 'cos there's only the One little heat-input and a Total cook. This is super-neat :-))) .

U can make yr morning hot drink in it the night before and u'll have a truly made hot drink. Such as Turkish coffee: do it like 2 cII above, with variations in 2 c IV.

Or, several sorts of tea: think richness, and a Massive tannin-hit which could cramp yr tummy unless u chill it with milk. Details on tea-making in 2 d .

Or, u Do it before u leave for work, making a truly succulent really easy stew with veg and stodge too; for when u return. It'll be ready; without u doing anything :-))) .             To max the heat input, leave it in the sun, covered in a woolly hat or two.

8 b) Stuffed noodles = stodge and protein all in one. Have salad on the side, and u're sorted. How? Warm the hotflask with some hot water, lid it, and find the noodles and some butter. Empty the hotflask of water, shaking out the last of it, if u like. Put in a little butter or similar fat to swirl around the insides, and to lie atop the hot water to seal in all the goodness. Next, add some of that hot water for the noodles to land in. Put in the noodles. Fill with hot water, seal, cosy-cover, and leave in the sun. How many noodles?. Noodles roughly double in size as they're cooked, or more like triple. Are u wanting to drain water after cooking, or to eat them as a semi-solid, with a spoon? from the hotflask, with ketchup stirred in with chopped chives as coolants. Using plain noodles, why not add some pitted black olives, ground black pepper, pour in the scrambled eggs to get cooked around the noodles and the rest as u reseal the flask and shake it lots .

U can do this very easily with spuds as yr stodge with root veg like turnips and swedes . But, after the cooking, there IS its boiling water to drain off and drink. Or, u use this hot spuddy water as a broth-base, so u pour it into a glass with bones and paprika powder already in with a bay leaf; which is cooked yr way: in the sun and/or mwaved.

8 c) Stew in a hotflask. Warm the hotflask, tiny the veggies and put them in. Add a stock-cube to taste. Add your protein such as a lamb chop, diced meat pieces, lentils, tinied chicken, totally-tinied sausage. Fill it with hottest water and leave anywhere for a few hours. Cosied, in the sun, is best. Shake it if u like, every now and again. For stodge, rolled barley is nice: As in, it's as tasty and full of goodness as yr whole barley , but is much quicker to cook because flattened.

 Goulash has paprika powder, (crushed) caraway seeds, honey as the sweetener, a bay leaf, mdf, rolled barley and lamb: as in lamb chop, diced, mince. After half a day in the hotflask, strain off its juice either straight down yr throat or into a glass for cooling beforehand with poured-in fruit juice or red wine/brown beer; or keep it on one side as the liquid base for a soup in another meal. The goulash will be almost paste. Eat, happily :-))) . U could add noodles halfway, as stodge; but they're more solid than rolled barley . Spuds are cool, too, sliced quite thinly for ease of cooking and mashing into a purée.    So is rice (with crushed curry-making spices) with (?) tinned dahl to add at the end to cool it.                                                                                      Curry: sharp hard spices like crushed cardamom, crushed cumin, crushed clove, ground black pepper, crushed chilli seeds, they see off germs. Which is why they were first used [it's a hot country item , right?]. Add some or all at the start of the hotflask preparation as u put in veggies 4 u, protein u like, and some stodge if u're going to. Fill the already hot hotflask with hottest tap water, put on the flask's stopper, and leave it for a while. To max the heat, cosy it and leave it in the sun. At eating time, strain the juice and drink it. Add curry paste if u like as well or instead of the u-crushed herbs; mix them together and leave it all to seep in more . And cool to a cool heat, then eat.

8 d) U can use a hotflask as a cold-flask when u're chilling; it's heat intolerant both ways. Put the open flask in the fridge, to cool it before filling.

They're so useful, that I have two; of different sizes. 

Chapter 10 Stodge for cooking.

10 a) Porridge. Oats simmered in a liquid. Often, with sugar [of yr prefered color and taste] and/or salt [of yr sort]. Dieters might use water. Usually cows' milk. On a hob, on a low heat warm the liquid and add about a third of its size in oats. Stir. Mdf a favorite extra. Keep on stirring. Off the heat when it's fairly solid, and let it finish in its held-in heat. Add salt, sugar. Eat. Takes an easy 20 minutes. Easy extra is sliced fruit/bought fruit salad which cooks along with the oats.                                           Mwaved porridge: it depends on the setting, but only 2:1 liquid:solid; and for 5 minutes or fewer on High. It takes longer on Low; but u can cook more, 'cos it's simmering not Boiling!. To have coolant for soon-eating, u could over-solidify the porridge in the cooking, then thin it with cold liquid. Fruity extras like (cooking) apple/pear: slice in at the start and they'll cook along the same as on a hob. The crushed clove is well-liked here, in both ways of cooking. A ripe plantain might provide enough sugar; put in late on as a contrast to the now-cooked apple that's in at the start. Mdf in whenever.

Crunchy porridge: Add (salted) peanuts, crisps/chips; whenever. Tinned anchovy fillets also nice. Add to cold porridge (in summer) one or more of chopped cucumber, sliced tomato, pitted olives, smoked mackeral pieces; with salad dressing or mayo, if u're Really out-of-it.

Hot muesli. Make it like porridge instead of eating it cold.

10 b)....ordinary rice is long-keep, easy keep; easier than spuds. Tastes nice. Folk often add salt to rice; [but too much salt is bad for yr heart]. 15-20 minutes stir-stewed on a hob; 5 or less on High in an mwave. U can add the brown bit which is its husk, that makes the brown rice brown and takes ages to cook. It's called chaff. Lots of the rice's goodness is in here, the brown husk.  It cooks in no time, really, when it's off the body of the rice; it's in muesli. This is easy-go wholegrain cookery; speedy, too.

Ratios of water to rice in the simmer: on a hob 3:1, in an mwave 2:1 'cos they're so efficient. The rice-grains stay whole, too. Double nice.  Boiled rice Plus. A major building block of many meals. We all need stodge to keep us going. Getting rice to be cooked can be Really easy. The utterly basic recipe. Is what? About 150-200gms of rice, and water multiplied up ; Or, a third to a half of a glass of rice with one to one and a half glasses of water; washing any stuck rice-grains into the cook-bowl. On its own or with only salt, it's food. Plus, easy-keep vegetables like onions. Mushrooms, too. Any veg, really; even the long-coook ones, which u start first. It'll cook lentils and meat for protein. It'll warm up beans and other cold cooked protein. Cheese is an easy-keep item; very nice too. Added after. As are tinned meats. Mdf, whenever. Spices? a bay leaf, 10 black peppercorns, thyme, garlic. Curry sauce, bolognese sauce added as coolant at the end.

10 b I) Quickest way on a hob is to peel and chop the onion as 2/3 of the water boils in a kettle while 1/3 of the water comes to the boil in the lidded pan where u’ll be putting in the onion. As the kettle boils, u pour its water into the pan while u next pour in the already measured rice to take the heat, and then lower the heat to simmer mode. U refill the kettle with hot water, to comfort its element. Then, if u're cooking the protein, it's in either before, with, or after the rice and veg. Then u balance the lid on the pan for it to breathe!. Add quick veggies, starting with the onion. Stir it often, thoroughly. Once everything is nearly cooked u can off the power. Keep the pan lidded, and let it continue to cook in its retained heat. Then when it Is cooked, add the coolant foods. If u need it soon, put the pan in a sink of cold water, and stir it in the sink; maybe adding tomatoes to cool it. Add the by-now chopped cheese that u didn’t snack on as u cooled the rice. Eat :-))). Absolutely basic and Delicious! And quick: a quarter hour for preparation, the same for cooking, plus some to let it cool and it's gotta take 45 minutes. Think an hour and u'll be ok.

10 b II) Mwaving rice ...get the food bits small-enough for the mwave bowland for easy eating; put them in and cover them with liquid and lid the pan. 5-10 minutes on High Or u mwave in two goes:- the frying when u sprinkle the food with oil; the boiling when u add water to about half-full plus a bit: Half-hour, tops, on High; and curry-sauce as coolant . That’s powered time, when u multitask. It omits the work routine, of preparation and taking it out and putting it back in, twice. Reckon preparation-time as long as cook-time, and the time taken is still less time than on a hob.

10 b III) Veggies with boiled rice, such as Onions half-cooked in fry mode with a sprinkle of paprika powder continue to cook well when boiled. Paprika powder copes with both boil and fry. Salt absorbs heat. Celery fries and boils very nicely. Or saurkraut, tinied and added to cooked rice and onion; broccoli ok here, if u rinse it in a sieve.

10 b IV) Cheese added as protein to the boiled rice and veggies. Yr choice. Hard cheese is probably best such as Cheddar, or cream cheese. Perhaps best to avoid the softies on this one....unless u’ve been boiling the rice in white wine, Or adding it as the thinner after final cooking after the heat turn-off. Cottage cheese kinda dissolves and goes meltingly small. Tiny the cheese of yr choice, as u mix it into the food. It’ll melt very easily. Really totally appetizingly. If u sadly put it in too too early, then it will Overcook and become stringy going on silly munchies seriously difficult to eat, thus u’ll both be totally stressed. The only thing to do with cheese that’s as stringy as that is either melt it in alcohol [if it will] or throw it out or chew it as hard cheese and warn yr stomach of what it is about to receive. Better put in late than early, cheese.

10 b V) Meat bits as the protein with boiled rice plus. Stewing steak fried in a pan on a hob with veggies before u add the water and rice. Salami slices mixed in whenever. Quality meat like sirloin steak, bury in the rice after 5 minutes. Chops the same, or a bit later. Offal, slice small, and add late. Liver likes lemon (juice); in 5 minutes after the rice. Baked beans are a very acceptable alternative or extra.

10 b VI) Fish, Or fish fillets, as the protein here. Fish takes less time than meat, so put it into the stew towards the end. Evaan, as u off the heat: The retained heat of 200gms or so of boiled rice and veg will quite cook a fillet of sole, even one with lemon juice squirted on it before-hand !; if u mash it in thoroughly and leave it, with it's lid still on.

10 c) Spuds are a meal in one, and they Have got character, I"ll grant u that; each one had quite a life as u find as u meet it to prepare it, and cook it and eat it. That's why they're less easy than rice. But they're more of a meal, as there's more vitamins, stodge and protein in them than in rice; nice though rice is. Lots of spuds' goodness is in their skins, and it's easier to scrub them than to peel them. So this is a win-win situation.....Scrub them clean. How? Soak them if they need it to soften their dirt; then, wearing kgloves, use a scrubbing-brush or pan-cleaner. Finish with yr fingers so the spud feels smooth. If there Is some skin that doesn't look appetizing, u can knife-slice it off, or use a spud-peeler.  Then, gouge out the little black bits called eyes with the sharp curved end of a spud-peeler; or, as u tiny, u cut around them to remove them. Tiny the spuds yr way, cutting off the green-skinned parts [if there are any], which are not really ripe-enough for eating, and could give u colic if u ate them. Put the tinied spuds in the right pan for how u're cooking them and simmer the small pieces in yr chosen way: hobbed for 15 minutes on the simmer....if it drops from a skewer or prodding knife, it's cooked. In a hotflask, twice that, plus a bit more time, perhaps. In an mwave on Low, about a half an hour, too; and almost as low maintenance . Some folks add salt before during after.  Or, add the spuds to root veg and/or stewing meat already cooking. Spuds don't take quite as long.                              After they're cooked, strain off their juice for later soup or drinking; mash them as finely as u like, then lightly thin them with a little milk and u could fatten the meal with a little butter or goose fat. Tinned anchovies in oil provide the extra fat, with the protein and saltiness, all in one; OK! .  Or, u eat them in the shape that they have after cooking; daintily sitting on a plate next to other veg and some protein; with a folded napkin to one side. And/or add no-cook coolant food flavorings such as tomato ketchup, pickles, chutney; pitted olives and tinned mushroom soup are a second veg for u. Protein like tinied cheese, tinied Spam, mdf, scrambled eggs to be cooked in the spuds' remaining heat. Spuds are really tasty, so they're worth boiling/mwaving for eating; even without any extras. A meal in one. If boiled with tinied onions, u've two veggies for the effort of watching one.

  Plus, there's the hot-weather option of letting boiled spuds cool to saladify them. On their own or with lettuce and other veg; and/or a cold boiled egg, very popular. Just add dressing u like, tiny in some parsley/chives, and u're there. Deep-fried bacon bits are also well-liked, bringing their own saltiness, to save u the trouble. Salted peanuts are less well-known as the protein input here, but they do the job ok.                                                                                                                                                *** NB: almost all of a spud is poisonous, apart from its tubers; which is what we eat. So, Don't experiment with its leaves and stalk.***

10 d) Why no spaghetti?. It's tiresome to carry, to store and to cook with its long fragile length. If u like it, follow the instructions on the packet, but there's noodles instead.  Noodles are easy-go spaghetti. Stuffed or plain. Delicious. Follow the instructions on the packet, and u'll be ok. After their boil, and u've strained off the last water to either drink or throw, why not chop in some chives, sliced tinned meat, and a knob of butter slithered in? delicious .

Chapter 12 Cooking veggies: for how long. With their skins on, for their goodness and street-cred.

If u're hob- cooking hulled as in white rice as stodge, the root veggie protein goes in 10 minutes before the rice, meat with the rice, and fish after. Mwave or hob. Mwave is easier: on Simmer or Low, for 30-50 minutes while u multitask. :-))) .              If u're keeping veg, onions and root veggies such as yam and parsnip Do last, but u'd better pack 'em right for them to last months for u....in the cool and dry and dark. The yam's tough skin holds in moisture, but root veggies with edible skin, most of them, they wilt from moisture-loss, unless in a fairly airless environment, where they could go moldy if not dry.

Aubergine and eggplant, put in before mushrooms; everything's after carrots.

12 a)  Artichokes. Two very different vegetables:                                               12 a I) The leaf artichoke is a leafy item of a globey round shape. {It's also called the globe artichoke.} U can keep them freshly alive when storing them by letting them drink by resting their stalk-ends in water.  They'll thank you by filling out. Before u cook one, rinse it clean in cold water, then remove any leaves that u don't intend to eat: they'll look old, dried, cracked. Its edible bit is the soft yellowy flesh at the base inside of every leaf.  And the heart of the leaf artichoke is delicious; concentrated leaf-food. It merges into the also-edible stalk. This is below little spikey bits, its smallest leaves. Cooking: Either, Put it into boiling water on a hob for a half hour, covered, salted. Or, Mwaved: Cut off all the stalk so that the artichoke sits in the small amount of water that u can have on High. Slice the stalk lengthwise, once or criss-cross, and lay these bits around the leaf artichoke in its bowl. For 5-10 minutes, depending on its size, its age, and the tenderness desired. Plus, their cooking-juice is drinkable (or, with flour to thicken it. And with broken-in sage it's a soup). After cooking, u  lift it, turn it upside down above its pan, to drain it of its hot water, and leave it upside-down on a draining board to let it cool and drain a while longer.

  Eating the leaf artichoke: (Wearing kgloves for cleanliness)... u pull off a leaf by easing it back with maybe a (s)light twist and u look at the fleshy cup-shaped end to check that there's no dirt built up down in there. Wipe it away if it's there. Then, put its fleshy end in yr mouth, fleshy side down or up, about halfway in; dipped in ketchup if they're hot; in mayo if they're cold; or as they are. Hold in with yr teeth its smooth yellow underflesh as u pull the leaf out and down (or up) and yr other teeth are pushing in to max the cut, but to not bite through. The flesh is soft and sweet and  delicious squashed against the roof of yr mouth by up-pushing tongue;  squelched thru teeth to cheeks which play with it before allowing throat to slide it down.  Do this to every one with a grin until they're too small and turn all spiky.  Right at the very end, when that's all that's left of the leaves, they're sitting on a concentration of leaf-delight called the heart.  Slice the artichoke lengthways down its center, into the stalk; hold the flat side topside and eat out the heart that's showing, down into the stalk with a (mayoed) spoon; until u meet the spikes from inside; which u leave. 

12 a II)  The root artichoke is a root tuber: edible raw and cooked; sausage-shaped, its edible skin is a light brown color; about 4cms x 10cms. It's also called the 'Jerusalem' artichoke; dunno why. Tastes nutty and crunchy; nice. The food of it isn't starch, as most stodge is, but inulin [no 's': inulin] . Inulin promotes wind in some folk, which is perhaps why this food isn't as popular as it might be. Recipe time: Whole root artichokes rolled inside bacon slices, laid across lengths of celery; With sliced spuds above, and a tomato or two, and a sprinkle of paprika powder.  Lightly covered by veg oil, with 2cm of water in for the stewing side.  Boiled, sliced, simmered on a hob,  5-10 mins, depending how thin and how cooked u do them. Mwave on medium, for half that time; with other veg, if u like and it'll take longer.

12 b)   Brussels sprouts keep best when they're still on their stalk, which u put in water and they'll thrive. Brussels sprouts' outer leaves are a bit too chewy so are usually peeled off before cooking. Cross the stalk of each to let hot water in for quicker cooking, but not so far that u destroy the item. Add these bottom-cut lightly-peeled brussels sprouts to the rice-stew at their best cooking time. In at cabbage-time, which is before the rice/spuds.

  Butternut squash. This delicious vegetable has a toughish yet edible skin, with soft scrumptious flesh within. Its seeds are edible too, if cleaned, dried and grilled, then de-husked and u eat the item inside. The main veg: clean its skin, then slice into finger-width roundels which u lay flat to chop into bite-sized convenience. They hob-fry/boil in about 10 minutes, mebbe a little more. Mwave, the same on Simmer.

12 c) These days celery is as everlasting as carrots, so be warned about time. 20 mins, easy on a hob, stewed; even if u tiny it smallest.

  Its near relation fennel is just as tasty and more compact. Never eaten it raw, but folk do; in a salad.  Very nice cooked, fennel:  mwave it in small-ish pieces in a veg stock stew with sliced ginger/bacon bones/lentils/(split) barley, bay leaf;  On Simmer,  for about 20 minutes.

  On yr own, u can munch cress from their grow-box, 'cos it's nicely edible uncooked. Most folk use scissors. It's a nice pert little extra on cheese, cress is; and on its own.

12 d) Purple sprouting broccoli like peas, a runner; life's too short for all its little bits across its top. The name alone is a warning, right?. Except, it does taste ok. So, if u want to go ahead with it, preparing it in a large sieve will save most of it. First, rinse it, then remove spider-nests and rotten parts; then tiny it as small as u like and either boil, hotflask or mwave. Its stem is quite tough, so must be tinied small; and it'll all take about 15 minutes; except on High in an mwave, when it's more like only 7 minutes. 

    Cauliflower. Also best prepared in a large sieve, or bowl. Prepare as per the broccoli. Tinied as small as the broccoli, it'll be as quick.  plus, there's the world-famous Cauliflower cheese....{it'll arrive}

12 e) Asparagus, from a tin; eaten cold (with mayo!); and crispbread for contrast ?. Nice, but pricey.  Fresh asparagus to cook? Boil on a hob until tender; for about 10 minutes, in a lidded pan. Very ok. Its rich round soft flavor contrasts crispy bacon, cottage cheese, cucumber salad. With cold new potatoes and parsley, white wine; or granary bread and mayo. Sprinkled parsley looks nice when u serve, and tastes nice too.  Or dressed in a salad alone or with any of the above.

12 f)  Cabbage takes a lot of stick. Most unfairly. There’s the frothy deep greens with abundant exuberant foliage; they always seemed to me to be a lot to wash and lots of effort to seriously tiny for what u get as food. Tight white solid, they're nice; and tight red solid, also nice; the torpedo-shaped ones like chicory, also nice. Check the web.  All of them are probably edible raw, yet they tend to be a lot more edible when they're cooked and/or dressed. They’ll last in cut state, if u sort of cover the cut bit a bit, maybe with a stray leaf of itself or on a plate, cut-side down.. And put it somewhere quiet and dark. As it keeps well, it's easily there for Boiled Rice+  and other meals. U can boil cabbage with caraway seeds and/or ginger, which is Really nice. Cabbage is a starting place for lots of meals; and it is ok, so

12 f I) Tight-headed light green cabbage. It’s nice in salads, as coleslaw; and hob-boiled here.  Recipe time: Have a pan and a heat source for it. Start to heat the water; either all in the pan, or some in the pan and most in a kettle from a hot tap for most speed. Which u add to the pan’s load when boiled.  Tiny the cabbage into bits so that it fits in easily, and put it in.  Add herbs such as a bay leaf, 10 caraway seeds, ginger root chopped a bit.  Add the rest of the water, boiling from the kettle. Let it come back to the boil then turn the heat down to simmer and lid the pan with an airvent.  Add some salt too, perhaps, and some bones from wherever if u’re going to. Mince is an easy meat input. Barley should be rolled, for easy-cooking. 

 Cabbage is hard work for a stomach, so it’ll thank u to cook yr cabbage thoroughly, ok?  Soft = sweet = cooked.  With scissors u can tell how cooked the cabbage is by how easy it is to cut down to easy-eat size, When they’re nearly as soft as yr teeth would like, about 45 minutes usually on a hob, off the heat and let it cool to an easy-eat heat; when it's cooked.  Mwaving cabbage generally takes under a quarter hour, even if cook lots. Same ingredients, but a fragile dish.  Add water only up to at least 50ml below the top, lid the dish and mwave it on High. The water should just about cover the food.  Do it on Medium for 10-15 minutes, depending on how fresh the cabbage is [the fresher, the longer], what thinness u’ve sliced the veggies to, and how cooked u like to eat it . Off the heat and leave it until u’re hungry, when it’ll all be fine. Keep the (strained) juice to drink when cool.

12 f II)  Red cabbage. A meal on its own, cooked this way. Hard work, ’cos lots to do the whole way through. But worth it. Like when u’ve nothing else to do.  Try it in the ratios of 4lb/2kg red cabbage, 1 cooking apple; 1 large onion, maybe a red one for its sweetness; 2 tablespoons of plain flour, 1 large spoonful of dark brown sugar, 4oz/100gm olive oil or goose fat, mdf to taste, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, and/or lemon juice, 12 peppercorns, a bay leaf.  Hob-cooked...Have a big ol’ deep size pan, like 200ml+ down and across, and set the oil or fat to slowly get a bit of a heat in itself as u tiny the onion to easy-fry sizes and put them in.  As the onions go clear in their slow-frying, divert the heat’s attention by adding chopped up red cabbage to the cooking process. In the following cool time, add some liquid such as stock or water to boil the cabbage in, like for a while stirring it to lift any stuck onion from the frying before. Add the peppercorns, whole.  If this stock is vinegary, it’ll speed the cooking, but u might not want yr cabbage tasting vinegary when u’re eating it, so sugar gets put in later on if u like. Meantime, the vinegar is softening up any remaining bones in the stock for easy chomping. About halfway, 25 minutes into the simmering, [did u think that I was Joking about the time?]  add the apple, or later;  mdf and sugar. Keep on stirring and tinying with scissors.  Cooking done, off the heat, add plain flour and stir it in. Lid it, and let all stew for a bit in the heat that’s left. The flour will absorb the remains of the liquid that u boiled it with and so will move it from liquid to solid, for easy cleaner eating!        :-)))  .

  That’s the basic.  Options.....  

  Stock-cubes and fresh mint need no cooking so can be put in near the end, Before the flour. [Dried mint, earlier]. How?: Stock-cube broken in, mint leaf put in, stirred around to be sure that it's all mixed in enough. Add the flour, stirring away. Lid back on, drape over it stuff that needs drying, like a wet teatowel, and multitask while the flour totally absorbs the stock-tastes and mintiness. Multitask till it’s cool enough to eat and u’ve stirred it a lot to make sure .

 Lots to do. Worth it . Takes an hour or two.  Mwaving it... as for the white cabbage, Medium for 10 minutes, except there’s taking out and stirring and mixing in more ingredients. So it could easily become 20. But that’s still less than an hour or more .

12 f III)  Saurkraut. Uncooked, it's sour. Have it if u like it. With malt loaf as a coolant, sweetener, and thickener and/or mdf. Best to cook it. Mwave 5 minutes on High with brown sugar, salami sausage, ’cos it’s still chewy even after all that time in brine. After u've cooked it for a bit, the saurkraut is nicer and sweeter. Easily eaten with bread; cooked, or preserved fish; or with (cottage) cheese which antidote's its acidity, a bit; and mdf.

12 f IV) Bubble & Squeak. Leftovers of cabbage and spuds, are reheated by frying with any other leftovers; whether veg or meat. Why it u reheat it, I don't know; except to warm a cold human. U can make it more of a meal with spices or sauces.

12 g) Carrots whole, hob-simmered, 30-35 minutes. Sliced as thin as a coin and it’s only 10 minutes [if u drink their stock, u eat everything]. Fried ok, Taste very nice if long-roasted. Or, mwave to fry on High mixed into fat before, for 5 minutes; caraway seeds are nice mixed in here, and so is chopped fresh ginger-stalk.  Full of goodness. Edible raw, in salads;  but not very easy to digest. So not That worth it, perhaps; unless softend by dressing make a cloeslaw-ish item. Its minerals apparently help you to look beautiful. It's a health food.            

 Turnips, swedes, parsnips: basic healthy long-lasting foods, full of goodness, vitamins, and protein. They keep ok in the cool and dry, and sunless. If they wilt a bit, they're still edible. Their skins have loads of goodness in themselves, so scrub them clean, don't peel them off. They take a while to cook, but the smaller that you tiny them, the quicker they'll become edible. 10-20 minutes, small;  they'll take half an hour  thru to a full hour if they're boiled entire.                                                      Mwaved, on High, just covered by juice/ stock/water  they'll  take only 6-10 minutes, depending how small u tinied them.

Sweet potato. More veggie vitamins than a spud, and lots sweeter. Its skin is more obvious, but just as edible as a spud's is. Boiling times, tinied:  20 minutes on a hob; mwaved on High 10-ish minutes; on Warm, hours, but zero splashing. They taste fine; good with spuds, carrots, celery, dahl, bacon, barley, caraway seeds.

12 h)  Aubergine/eggplant. A quickly-cooked veg. Wash it clean, then tiny: easiest is  perhaps crosswise in finger-wide slices, then lay flat each slice to cut down thru the skin every fingerwidth or so. The flesh inside will collapse as u cook it, so it'll be in easy-to-eat sizes. How to cook it? Fry, boil on a hob, in an mwave. 5 minutes, or a little more if u're low with the heat.                                                                             Courgette is French for the Italian zucchino [-o singular, -i plural, in the Italian]. Clean them by wiping them down to be rid of earth and other dirt, then tiny each into coin sizes, and cook as for an eggplant.                                                                     Capsicums [? see Glossary] are edible raw. Cook them as much as u like, if u like. Their pips, however, have a tendency to be really rather spicey-hot, soa re seldom eaten voluntarily.

Beetroot. This is a root veg. It is strongly flavored and strongly colored scarlet deep red. Rather alarming.  It tends to dominate what it's with. Totally ok boiled or pickled before buying. If u'recooking it, a quarter kilo will need an hour or more simmering on a hob. Barley goes well with it as an antidote, being both bland and soothing. So does a pinch of salt and some sliced celery. Or, u slice it [which releases its color to the stew], and mwave, a quarter kilo on Medium in vinegary water (with a crushed clove, 6 peppercorns whole or crushed) for about 5 mins. 

               Full of homeopathics and vitamins. Worth getting used to.

12 i)  Rhubarb. This bright-red vegetable tastes very nice indeed once prepared beforehand, tinied and cooked. What goes in?. A singleton-small serving suggests two lengths of rhubarb, washed clean, + one small-ish (cooking) apple, three coin-sized slices of root ginger, two thumb-widths of water, a cup of mdf, sliced root or pickled ginger, mdf. Herbs such as (crushed) cloves go well here, and cinnamon, allspice. Brown sugar in at the end.  The frondy bits of rhubarb leaf are edible, so put them in. The skin sometimes is a bit chewy just up from the root. The way to get rid of this is to check how it is at the base...in a slightly wavy line, a bit bubbly from their juices which have seeped back out, evaporated and solidified. U can lift that off, bit by bit, by pressing some of it with a finger-end onto the top of the blunt side of a knife, Then pulling away and up until it disappears; recycle. The rest is for eating:

Recipe 1: tiny it into an mwave bowl in thumb-width lengths. With mdf and a squirt of lemon juice, sliced apple, (melon). Into the mwave for 5 minutes on High in a half-filled dish. Or, 

 Recipe 2: do it on Simmer or Low for 10-20 minutes, with more in. It's the same time-span as a hob, but zero to do.  Or, 

Recipe 3: hob-simmer the rhubarb, stirring it attentitively.  When it's cooked to almost liquid, off the heat, add sugar, squeeze in juice of a lemon, wait till it's cool, and eat it; happily. With a rusk, perhaps; or similar crispbread.                          

With all of the above, custard goes very well indeed. How to make it is ch 14 l).

12 j)  Olives.  Black, green, whole, pitted, stuffed with prawns, in brine, in oil; fresh,  tinned, in bottles, in placcy packets in juice, dried. Have what u like. Very tasty. And full of goodness. Some cats like olives and their stones. Swans do too; & some dogs. 

Gherkins, another bitter pickled fruit. Also delicious, and of many sizes. Eaten out of the jar, they're an amazingly effective PickMeup if u're feeling a bit rough/hungover. It Jolts u awake !, a gherkin does. Drinking its briny juice hits on yr acid stomach in a homeopathic eye-to-eye, which it wins, to yr tummy's comfort.[But a smoothie lite is often nicer !; unless yr tummy really needs it.]

  Most pickled onions are sweeter than gherkins so are a softer hit. Very nice.

12 k) Yam. Tastes delicious: turnip-like, like a root veg does. And there is a puna yam; said to be sweet, like a sweet potato. Yam's skin is strong and solid and Not edible, which means that it's easy to carry and easy to keep. They grow big, like more than 2 meters long, So u could buy one yam per week/month, store it airily in the cool and dry and hob/mwave bits of it until u buy another one. To prepare one: Clean all the dirt off and Skin a yam piece before u tiny its food part for cooking it, 'cos it's most-easily done when the yam's in one lump. How to cook this easy item? It takes as long as other root veggies, depending on how much u cook, how tinied it is, and how old it is: Tiny the strong, slightly fibrous food, and put it in an mwave bowl. With 12 caraway seeds(?), bay leaf, half an onion. Cover it with the liquid for u,  and lid the pan. Cooking yam: Mwaved < 10 minutes on High. On a hob, stir-stewed simmer, 30-ish minutes.  After both, strain off its cooking-juice to let cool before u drink it, and mash its solid lumps around the sweetly translucent onions that were in with the spuds for stodge; with coolant protein.                                                                    Eat :-)))  It's Very nice indeed.

12 l) Leeks. A very nice vegetable. Just about all of it is edible....from its washed roots all the way up its delicious body to its dark green ragged-ended leaf-tops. It's grown in a fine black compost which isn't too pleasant to eat, and its leaves get muddy, so there's a bit of work in washing it clean. U can snip off and recycle the very topmost raggediest leaf-tops, instead of eating them. No-one will mind.  How to cook leeks?. They're good with barley, with bacon, with carrots, with dahl. Leeks herb well with peppercorns and bay leaf; garlic's a friend, but not special.

    I tend to simmer just about everything, so that is first....cleaned leeks, cut across every finger-width or so and then halved, on a hob, dropped into a simmering pan of water/stock or barley/tinied carrots that've been going for 10 minutes. Let it simmer on, lidded,  as u add tinied onions, a knuckle-end of bacon, tinied King Edward spuds for the stodge-input. Allow an easy 20 minutes more, and it should all be cooked. Next, kglove clean the bacon knuckle, returning the bacon to the stew, then recycle its bones and gristle. Thicken the soupy stew with a little flour sprinkled on and stirred in, or have it as is.  In an mwave, put the above bits in an mwave-bowl, lid it, and simmer or warm the first few for half an hour, then add the other ingredients and continue the cooking for another 45 minutes + . 

   There is a baking option. U sprinkle paprika powder onto both sides of a few bacon rashers, roll these around leek-lengths, settle them in a heat-proof glass bowl, and pour on a little veg oil for them to be cooked in. If there's space around the rim, u might add some mushrooms and/or tomato-halves, before the oil-pouring. Sprinkling on More spices is often liked, such as a pinch or two of caraway seeds, a little spoon's fullness of yarrow pieces, a few twisted mint leaves, spud-slices laid on top; all, put in before the oil-pouring. This lot u lid, and bake: in an oven on Gm4 for half an hour or so. In an mwave, on High for <10 minutes. 

12 m)  Mushrooms are delicious fresh either raw or dressed. And also tinned, pickled, softened from dried, or in packet/tinned soup; or cooked by frying, or boiling in water/milk/alcohol.  The most basic thing with mushrooms is garlic. They Really get along, mushrooms and garlic do: Every way: boiled in a soup/stew, fried in ghee; with the garlic crushed or only sliced into a salad.

12 m I) Fresh mushrooms. Buy them, take them to eat somewhere, nibble & munch as u like.  Eat them from their grow-box or the ground, if no-one's looking; Except, each stalk-end might have earth on itself, which u wipe off with a rag (as it's lip-held) .

12 m II) Mushroom salad.  Fresh mushrooms, of the sort(s) u like. Tiny them as finely as u like into a right-sized bowl. Them and spring onions go well [sweet 7 sour]: tiny the long green bits of the onion as a counter to the sweet mushroom. Add the onion’s roundish bulb, as a totally different flavor and consistency, perhaps chopped or even pureed in yr kgloved hands. A Surprise!: in lumps, or softly all around. Celery also goes well, a delicious opposite.  Dress yr mushrooms with oil and vinegar of the sort u like. Putting the oil on first makes a cover for mushrooms’ ability to dissolve if it absorbs the watery vinegar. Then, add the vinegar and/or mayo. Mayo and mushrooms are nice!.

12 m III) Creamed mushrooms. Recipe-time:  Fresh mushrooms 200gm, 2no serving/eating-spoons of plain flour, milk 150ml, ghee 60gms. How? In a smallish liddable frypan on a lowish heat on a hob, melt yr ghee and tiny in the fresh mushrooms  safe for easy-eats, [or are there scissors to hand for in-pan snipping?]. Stir the mix at lo-heat thru to cookedness;  in a while . Once the mushrooms are cooked, off the heat, and add flour to soak up the fat. Add milk to liquify the fatty flour and then return the heat, stirring as u go. Vary the flour and milk amounts and thus the cooking-time according to as u like it: fork-solid or drinkable as soup. It'll take 5 minutes, tops.

 Or, mwave 1 puts into a lidded glass bowl some tinied fresh mushrooms, tinied garlic, with ghee laid over, on High for 4 minutes. (Might be a good idea to stir it halfway.) When these are cooked, take the pan out of the mwave, pat the flour into any liquids in the pan from the cooking of the veg, stirring as u go. Multitask while the flour absorbs the juicy gravy; stirring it as u pass, to help it. Next, start dripping in the milk where the flour is thickest and stir all to smoothness with yr wriggling wooden spoon; letting the milk be absorbed by the flour. Followed by mwave 2 on High for maybe only half a minute.  So u add more milk, so it’s too soft and in goes more flour. Stir away and then do mwave 3 at least, as above. Delicious. 

12 m IV)  Dried mushrooms. Mushrooms get tastier to eat as they dry and curl and look weirder. Store them airily and move them a little from time to time to stop them from sticking.  A little bit of mold is no big deal. If one of them Has Stuck to the newspaper that it was sitting on, wetten it off.                                                                       Recipe 1:  If u’re softening the mushrooms with hot water, then just do it in a cosied half-fulldrinking glass; or                                                                                           Recipe 2 they're broken into a hotflask and are cooking and unfurling in hot water with crushed garlic and (crushed) rosemary and/or a stockcube.                                 Recipe 3: in a screw-top jar in the sun. used to have jam in it, empty enough, clean enough; not yet washed.  Best to wipe around the outside of the jar-top where there’s often old dirty jam. And maybe wash its lid inside, especially the screw-slots; it must be done anyway, before recycling. Now, Break in the dried mushrooms , add (alcohol and) hot water, shake, stir and leave for as long as u want with or without crushed garlic and other herb such as a bay leaf; asittin’ in the sun feelin’ waarm!. Condensing water dissolves the jam-bits which sweeten the mix, and lessens the washing-up. For how long?. Think hours, then lift out a piece, chew it and decide to eat, or mwave, or leave it longer. Drink the liquid and eat the solids.                         Recipe 4:  Milk-softened dried mushrooms[for a day or few in the fridge], put in a pan on low on the hob with their milk and let simmer till soft. Or, mwave on Low for 3-4 minutes in their glass. Or,                                                                                                           Recipe 5: they are almost totally dissolved in alcohol for two days in a lidded jar with(?) a littlest extra of honey & a stock cube/crushed cloves, sun-warmed/on a hotpipe. Way to go!. Shake the jar, once or so. Heavy beers tend to suit mushrooms. It’s a black-on-black experience; and loves black pepper, whole or ground. But so does lager and white wine: mushrooms aren't much bothered about the color of their liquid. They just Love being soaked; after years in the dry, or freshly picked.

12 m V) Mushroom soup. Recipe 1:  Buy a tin of it, get it home, open it, eat it. Or, put it in a bowl with lo-cook veggies (and tinied ham) and mwave on High for three minutes or so.  Or, Recipe 2: have a packet of it. Do what it says to do on the packet and u'll be ok. If u keep some of the water back to add as a coolant, it'll still be ok; even if u add beer/wine/fruit juice instead. Or, thicken it with flour/rolled barley and then thin it with the coolant liquid; after cooking, apu. 

Or, Recipe 3: Needed are Mushrooms, tinied into a pan then tinied further in the pan with scissors, quarter-kilo; onions, a quarter kilo tinied quite finely. Paprika powder, patted onto the mushrooms as they cook, a teaspoon of.  Garlic, thinly sliced, a few cloves of.  One/two stock-cubes of yr sort(s) dissolved in hottish water. Butter/ghee, 60gms-ish. Plain flour, 2 or 3 spoons. What to do?On a Hob: Melt the ghee; tiny as u put in and quietly fry the garlic and then the onion, until they're almostsee-thru, then add the mushrooms, stirring away; and paprika powder, stirring as u go. When the mushrooms are cooked, as in Really floppy and fallen apart, sprinkle on some of the flour and let it meet the pan’s juices and absorb them.  Add a little of the water, then the rest of  the flour., then add the stock-cube(s), stirring away, until all is smooth. Off the heat and multitask for the flour to be totally cooked in the soup's heat. Stir in liquid to get it soup-thin and at best heat, and drink it.  Or,  

Recipe 4:  Mwaving:  Liquify the stock-cube in a bowl. Tiny the m'rooms, spices, onions into the bowl. Pour on a little veg oil. On High for 15-ish minutes. Take it out to find out. Either put it in again for more or sprinkle on some plain flour and add the rest of the liquid, Then put it in on Medium for 5-sh minutes. Mdf(?).

12 m VI) Fried mushrooms. Fry the mushrooms as gently as usual; in ghee. Tinying them before/during/after cooking. Edible raw, so don't hob-cook for very long, and how small are its pieces? as small as u like. On a hob, 10-15 minutes; mwaved. With any member of the onionish families including chicory, celery.  It's a sweet'n' sour together item, again . Tomatoes fresh/tinned/puree'd go well with mushrooms. Add kipper fillets, they hit it with fried mushrooms(and tomatoes); and u puree all as u stir  in some plain flour. Add thin-sliced apples, smoked bacon too.  Black pepper-corns or ground pepper are spices to use. So are thyme and mint.When to put in these? When u like ...apples fresh or cooked/bacon crisp or soggy/pepper sharp and nutty or a bit less so.  Or,  Add a tin of, like, soup or stew to the fried mushrooms and onions  :-))) .  Or, Make it into a soup by thinning the flour-stiff mix with milk/ water/stock-cube/beer.  To be drunk or eaten, depending how thin it is.

12 m VII) Pickled mushrooms. Have a big liddable jar. Tiny in mushrooms. This is a useful way to deal with dried mushrooms. Add a bottle ofvinegar and keep on adding broken-in mushrooms, mdf. Celery pieces may be easily added;  so can mustard seeds, paste; with crushed cloves, garlic cloves (crushed). Leave this in the sun for a while; shaken and stirred. Mwave-Simmer for an hour-ish. Lid it and they'll keep well.

12 n)  Spinach has a good strong taste. Full of iron, which is why it's so popular with Popeye® the sailor man. We need iron. If the spinach is  fresh, rinse it clear of grime. Then u can eat it as is, or in a dressed salad. Cooking it yrself: in water, mwave on High took 10 minutes. Tiny it small before eating it hot, or twirl it with a fork in a spoon. On a hob, 10 minutes' simmer.  Goes with mdf, sliced root ginger, beer/wine,  apple juice, stock-cube, with mango chutney in a sandwich. Recipe time: Spinach with rolled barley by mwave in Guinness , < 5 mins on High; and it will be purée smooth ! .  [Curried] Baked beans are easily added at the end as a delicious coolant. Or, add raw spinach, and dried onions or  [sweet] Spanish onions to nearly-cooked noodles. Drink the stock and eat the solids! .  Or, Straight out of a tin totally cooked is really nice; cold, with bread and cheese; added to noodles; dressed into a salad.

12 o) To peel an onion, and then cook it.... Are u eating All of it or only half, or less?.  Whatever, onion vapor moisturises eyes Ba a adly.  So, wear goggles or do it under water wearing kgloves. The vapor'll get up yr nose, too. So wear a face-mask or a full-face crash helmet; or a corner-folded hankie over the bridge of yr nose, so over yr mouth, and tied behind yr neck. Peel off the onion's loose dead crinkly skin, that was protecting it. Now scissor/cut/tear off the crinkly bits that merge into the edible part. Then, slice it along its equator on something solid, holding the onion in a finger-bridge with the knife between. Next, rock the blade forward and back with a little pressure on. Keep on going until u’ve cut it thru, then pull-lift out the knife as yr finger-bridge keeps the onion in one piece. Yr knife-hand returns with a saucer to put on one half-onion. At some point the root must be cut off unless u wash it. Tiny as much as u need [all of it, or half, or less], then Simmer it, lidded, in oil or fat on the hob for a good 10 minutes thru to 15+ if u like them sweet.

   Sliced carrots take as long as, so should either go in first, or with. Bacon bits: the earlier that u put them in, the crispier that they'll be. U can boil onions: simmer them in milk (with bay leaf, clove) or beer such as lager or stout, or in (spiced) water; for about as long...10-15 minutes. Its stewy liquid? thicken with flour, or pour off to drink, or both.  Mwaved: on High, 2 minutes; very slow on Warm, 20+ minutes.

12 p) Peas. Why no fresh peas? Whole ones run away. Lotsa work. [Like broccoli and cauliflower with their little beady heads. Prepare 'em in a sieve and u'll be ok.] Tinned mushy peas are cool. Dried are ok too, if u roll them to split into halves so they can't can't escape. Soak them overnight then mwave on Simmer for an hour-ish with bones, lentils, parsnip, and onions, ok! . 

Chapter 14. Sweet foods: apple pie, eggnog, sherbet, sundaes, pancakes.

14 a) Apple pie.  Apples in pastry. Works for rhubarb, too.  Making short-crust pastry: equal parts butter and lard to be folded into twice their weight of flour, wearing kgloves. How?: Chop small the fats and add a few bits at a time to the flour, mashing it all between yr fingers. Or use a wooden spoon.  Carry on until it's done.  Then add a little water or fruit-juice, bit by bit, to solidify the mix so u can make shapes with it that stay. Old recipe-books say that u should then let this lot mature in the fridge overnight to get perfection, lidded. Few folk have time for that these days; but even half-an-hour would probably help it. Make the topping pastry-shape first; u could mix in tinied candied peel to the top-pastry in its last folding. Then roll it flat on a floured surface [so that it doesn't stick] about 3mm thin or less, with a rolling-pin or a jam-jar; and shape it to fit on the dish by putting the dish on upside down, and cut around. Then, lift off the dish; perhaps using the flat of a knife to separate the dish top-edge from the pastry. Lay the dish right way up and butter its inside to stop the pastry from sticking to it. Now, put all the rest of the pastry in its bottom and sides by rolling the pastry flat beforehand and cutting shapes to fit. Any with candied peel in is just there, ok.                                                                               Next, cover the dish's pastry with a thickish layer of the washed, decored and tinied apples, then scatter over it a little sugar and lay on more apples; and so on to the top. Apple and rhubarb are juicy-enough to not need any water added; so, nothing extra is ok. Or, mdf, a few ground cloves, a teaspoon of cinnamon powder, the same of allspice, or another herb u like, some citrus rind for zest. How many apples/rhubarb? Enough to solidly fill but not over-fill the dish. Cover this with the pastry-shape u made to fit on top. How? Perhaps, lift it on the flats of a couple of big knives and/or spatulas, carrying it over the dish, lowering it onto the dish and pulling out the knives, one at a time, by their easiest route.  A pie-dish about 15cms diameter will need about 240gms of pastry: say 40gms of butter and of lard, and 160gms of flour. There might be pastry left over, after u've got neat edges all around, maybe make a little design of it for the center of the pie-top. U could use the extra pastry to line a cup or mug, fill with some jam, cover the very last of the pastry and put it in the oven with the other bowl. U can seal the pastry top-layer by painting it with glaze; or else vapors will escape and decorate the insides of the cooker/mwave: ~~baaad~~; u'll not be able to eat them, and u'll have to scrub them off, after.  To be doubly-sure to keep in its flavors, encase the item: in ally foil, shiny side in for the oven; or in cfilm for the mwave. If u use self-raising flour, it will rise; and likely scorch or burn; oh dear. So u're better off with plain flour.  If u'd like the pastry sweet, add sugar to the mix as u fold it. Now, bake/mwave so that all is cooked nicely: In an oven, on gas-mark 3 for about 20 minutes, leaving the pie in the oven's heat to completely cook.  Mwave Simmer 20-25 minutes; or a bit less. 

14 b) Blancmange. Flour and milk, with sugar and flavors. In the ratios of 1 pint/half a liter of milk, 60ml plain flour or cornflour, 45 ml sugar, some lemon rind. If u dare, warm the milk with the lemon rind in, and add the flour. Or, wetten up the flour in a separate bowl with a little of the milk, then gently pour on the hot lemony milk, stirring as u go;  to a smoothness. Pour it all back into the heating pan, add the sugar as u stir stir and stir again. Add flavor such as a shot or two of fruit cordial, jam, and/or chocolate flakes; stirring for smoothness. Then, remove the lemon rind and pour it all into a jelly mould to cool and set. Eat, with whipped cream and rusks.

14 c)  Christmas pudding. Also known as plum pudding, although there are no plums in it; nor even prunes [dried plums], generally.  Keeps longtime. Very nice indeed. With(out) clotted cream in the eating. {Upping the superstition: u gotta make it beforehand to let it mature after cooking and before eating, in October or November, on the Sunday before Advent, on "Stir-it-up Sunday" when each member of the family stirs the pudding-mix in an anti-clockwise direction and tosses in a good-luck charm as they do so. Silver charms and rings are the favorites, silver coins too. But don't try it with brass and copper ones, for they will taint which creates a nasty taste; plus, modern UK copper coins are copper-plated iron and will rust, and rust tastes not very nicely. So, best not to use them. It happened around 1992, so older ones should be OK}. 

  Recipe time: Foods: Sugar as brown or white as u like 225-250gms;  Dried citrus fruit: u need about a kilo, and lots of  it is sold in 250gm bags, so buy the ones that u like and can be bothered to tiny. Mdf is small-enough already! so is an obvious good choice here. But there's dried bananas, dried dates, dried figs, prunes, all to tiny; raisins, sultanas, and citrus peels; to do it differently.  Breadcrumbs as stodge, 250gms-ish; stale ones are ok. As granary or white as u like; but leavened, since pumpernickel or matso is not advised. Nor is flatbread, much, it hasn't the frothiness needed.  Meat such as Suet, about 250 gms.  Eggs to stick it together and for their protein: 2 large or 3 ordinary-sized hen’s eggs. Or have different: 1 duck’s, 1 hen’s, 2 bantams’; Or 1 goose’s.  Liquids, 500ml more or less; made up 2/3 beer [Milk stout is a popular beer choice here] 1/3 milk for its healthiness; or all one, or all the other..  Beer will curdle milk so u’ll have curds [going on yogurt] and whey if u put in both; it’s fine. Spices such as powdered allspice, a spoonful of; or a teaspoon, pudding spoon, it's up to you. Juniper berries say 5-10 of, cloves 3-6 of; all crushed. Fresh ginger sliced thinly and/or pulled apart, about 30x5 mm in size. Or pickled ginger pieces, tinied, 4no coin-sized; choose yr coin.  Fresh citrus peel from an orange that u’ve just eaten, or something; about a thumbwidth a side, tinied. Powdered Cinnamon goes well here, a pinch of. (Powdered) black peppercorns less so. Put one or two in whole to add shocks to the taste, if u like. Add salt to taste, a finger-pinch or two. Add a shot or two of whisk(e)y or other spiritous liquor as a health item, it's a medicine; and will help it to keep for even  longer.

What to do? Wearing kgloves, mix into a paste the breadcrumbs with the wet ingredients, by stirring the eggs in a measuring flask, and pouring that onto the pile of breadcrumbs.  Re-use the measuring flask for the measured liquids: the beer will dissolve the milk and eggs and so clean the bowl; so measure the beer last for least washing up.  Then mix in the dry ingredients; thoroughly. Put the mix into mugs or glasses up to about 50 mm of their top, else it will boil over. Cover with cfilm, and mwave on Medium for about 20 minutes.      That’s one of the basic recipes.   And is very nice indeed. Some folk say that, before u cook it, u should leave the mixture, covered, in a cool place overnight to let everything seep into everything else to get an even fuller flavor; and they are right.

 Or, cooked on a hob, in a bowl: cover the bowl with greased grease-proof paper, and tie this on securely. Either simmer it in an ordinary pan for several hours. Online recipes vary from 4-8 hours, so it's Not a quick food to prepare. !Stick the pan on a hotpipe with plenty of water around the pudding, and let it cook while u're at work all day!.   In a pressure-cooker, it'll take considerably less time: but we're still saying almost 2 hours on High for a 450gm pudding.  

**Plus!! To very young diners its glistening black look is oddly new; and its steamy hot smell has the new odd aroma of alcohol. It often out-faces kids. Christmas pud is quite an item to get yr head around,  when first met. It can cause tears, so bring it to children, gently***. 

   Serving: the hot pudding, turned out of its bowl, sits on a deep plate upside-down. A sprig of holly is put on top, some spiritous liqur such as brandy is poured on top and set aflame, and the pudding is now presented to the diners. The alcohol burns off, the pudding's cut into pieces and served, and is accompanied by custard or whipped cream or brandy butter. [brandy butter will be in ch 18 quite soon].

   Here are some other versions:  some web recipes add fresh veggies. They don't keep as well as the "preserved  fruits only" versions. The web goes for grated carrot, fresh fruit such as apples; Go check for yrself.  Apple adds lightness so u really have to tiny Everything Very Small Indeed:- more work but even more and fresher taste ! . They'll be softer, so won't keep shape so easily if turned out of their pie-dish; and they'll be lighter of color. Put the fresh fruit 'n' veg  in instead of some of the dried fruit.  This makes a rather quieter introduction to the food ! .

 14 d) Crumble is baking a sweet pastry top on already-cooked food, whether stew or fruit. In the ratios 1:1:2 of butter or margarine:sugar:flour which u fold together until smooth: like, 50gm:50gm:100gms. U can clever-up the crumble mix if  u add tinied (wal)nuts, or mdf, or chocolate powder. Then, lay this mix on top of the cooked food and bake on gas mark 2 for about half an hour/mwave on High for <10 minutes.

 14 e) Eggnog.  It's raw scrambled eggs with extras. Contents: a soup-spoon of (full-fat) cream; all of 2no eggs; a tea-spoon of light brown sugar; a thumb-width of milk; spices such as a finger-pinch of one or more of all-spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt.    

Mix this lot together with a vigorous fork. Drink with relish, ok!.  Or, if u think to caramelize its sugar, do the stirring in a warming pan on a hob until it's cooked and Then eat it. Or, have the mix in an mwave-friendly bowl and mwave as hotly as u can so it doesn't boil over. For a minute on High should be ok.  

   Some web-recipes insist that u only use the egg-yolk; right. Sadly, egg-white's almost only use is for meringues, which are tricky to prepare and to cook, and are not That popular. So pop the egg-white into the eggnog with the egg-yolk, ok; u'll be ok.

  Many web recipes say u should add alcoholic spirits for their taste. But, since the milk will knock out the alcohol and alcohol is taxed heavily by the government, adding alcoholic liquor is giving money to the tax-collectors without u even enjoying it; some folk suggest that this is silly. Many folk think that u might be better drinking the spirits on their own,  by the glass. 

14  f) Flan. A pudding that has totally changed since the 1950s: then, it was an open fruit- or cheese pie on a pastry base. Now, it's  a wobbly item with separated eggs and caramelized sugar. Not bothered about either. But caramelized sugar is nice. 

To make caramelized sugar: put sugar granules in a warming fry-pan on a lowish heat and watch as it melts and goes brown. Immediately take it from the heat and lay on a cooling surface to stop the item carrying on into black burnt nasty bitter smelly. This gleaming brown liquid sweetness is an excellent extra, poured over cold fruit pies to warm them and sweeten them; or onto porridge, or into coffee.

 14 g) Sherbet {said "shur but" or 'shurb't", slurpily}, 

Sherbet is a British fizzy soft drink, made by adding fruity crystals [from a bought cone of], to cold water and stirring.  Or, u just eat the fruity crystals which can be taken from the sherbet cone with a liquorice stick. The sherbet will color yr tongue.

   Or, it's an American frozen dessert, with lots of ways to make it, according to the web.  Perhaps the simplest is: a medium egg-white, 100gms sugar, 250gms of fresh fruit. Mix them together, chill in the fridge, eat. [from cooksunited.co.uk].

Or, it's six cans of carbonated fruit juice, poured into a bowl which has the contents of a small tin of tinied pineaple-chunks in it. Stir in the contents of a small can of condensed milk. Stir all; chill in the fridge. Eat. [from sulekha.com]. May twist in some mint leaves.

Or, it's ice-cream soda. Which has many variants. Simplest is ice-cream, soda, mixed together. Add chocolate syrup/drinking chocolate powder, (brown) sugar, lemon juice. Stir, chill, eat.

  Or, it's a largely Muslim invention, a totally cool cool drink devised by teetotallers, made of the essences of various flowers' tastinesses; often drunk by the stoned when conscious-enough to manage it. It's fruit juice with attitude. Basicly fruit squash made with soda; prettified as u like.

Sorbet [=water-ice] {said "sore bay", not 'sore bet'}: Sorbet is frozen fruit juice. It's kinda diet-ice-cream, because milk-free. Ice lolly without the stick. Cold; nice.

14 h) sundae {said "sunday", it's an intentional mis-spelling of Sunday, for historical reasons}. Basicly, ice-cream with extra calories: (hot) chocolate sauce, &/or fruit sauce, whipped cream; and maybe roasted nuts and a glacé cherry or two, one a side. Chocolate nut sundae has crushed burnt almonds,  hot chocolate sauce, cream on and around chocolate ice-cream with bits of chocolate in it; or something like. These items are fairly easy-go about what u put in, amounts of, and flavors.

Ice-cream soda dates from when soda was thought to be medicinal, and alcohol was either illegal [prohibition USA], or not buyable between 3.30 and 5.30pm [UK, 1915 to 1980s]. Ice-cream with soda poured over it. Seems silly to me. The soda melts the ice-cream, everything gets sloppy, and u likely lose some. Soda's full of burp-gas anyway, so What's the point?; have them separate, and stir the soda gas-free, ok?.

14 i) Ice-cream, Too much hassle to make, best bought ready-made and fridged until eaten. If they're left out until liquid, they may be drunk; with(out) a dash of sherry mixed in. Very nice indeed, lots of different flavors, some with added solids like chocolate flakes and (rarely) [salted] peanuts.

14 j) Jelly. To make: Have some gelatin cubes. Do what it says on the packet, and u'll be ok. If it doesn't say, have a pint-ish sized bowl or glass; lightly-warmed ['cos u just cleaned it?]. Put in a jelly-cube; half-fill with hot water. Prod and stir it with a fork's tines until it's dissolved. Suck clean the fork. Let the jelly cool and solidify and eat it with a spoon; or only half-cool and drink it warm. Very nice indeed.

14 k) Knickerbocker glory. The knickerbocker glory's baseline is tinied fresh fruit in the bottom of a tall glass; such as crushed raspberries. If the eater is old enough and desires it, the fruit may be flooded with one or more strongly-flavored spirits such as cherry brandy or peach liqueur. On top of this, drop a dollop of ice-cream of yr desired flavor, squeeze over the top some peach melba sauce, scatter on some flaked burnt almonds and/or crushed walnuts and (half of ) a glacé cherry; finish it with whipped cream. Eat it with a straw to suck up any alcohol before it gets wasted by the milk in the ice-cream; then continue with a long spoon, and feel yr waistline expand as u do so; with great relish,'cos it does taste nice.

14 l)  Custard is delicious to many folk [including me. With prunes, especially], but is Seriously hard work to make. It's probably Best to buy custard powder and cook that. Just follow the instructions on the packet.  Or, u buy yr custard ready-made ! : custard tarts are Nice!. On their own, eaten with a tea-spoon. Custard is good with stewed fruit: like, from a tin; or freshly cooked apples, pears, Christmas pudding, and and.

14 m) Milkshakes require preparation and explanation. Some places call it a frappé if there's ice-cream in, others call it a milkshake; on the basis that that's Italian for milkshake. My web dikko says that it is. But web-searches show that there are two or three other Italian words also meaning milkshake, so speak warily in Italy when asking for one. And know what u're expecting; perhaps learn some Italian, to describe it. 

  If it's just milk with flavoring, some places call it a milk-shake, others call it flavored milk.

 The general run of opinion seems to be that a milkshake is ice-cream, (coconut) milk, fruity &/or chocolatey flavoring, and maybe tinied fruit(s), jelly,  chopped nuts. Best to read the menu before ordering; or, domestically, ask.  Nice, however.

14 n) Treacle tart . Buy a tin of it. Do what it says. Eat. Good with

                                                                                     custard.

14 o)  Waffles. To make them u need baking powder, baking soda, separated eggs, a waffle-iron, and I don't know what. Buy them, ready-made, and heat them in an mwave or oven for a few minutes. Their in-out grid-iron deeply 3-dimensional bulky shape is hard to warm thru evenly: Their outsides get brown to burnt before their middles are warm-enough. A total waste of time, money and energy. 

14p) Pancakes. Lotsa work, but they taste really nice. Into a bowl with a half-pint of milk in it, drop two eggs out of their shells. Stir to a smoothness. Slowly sieve into the bowl 100gms of plain flour, stirring the bowl's contents for continuing smoothness. Add one or more of a little salt/pepper/paprika and keep stirring. Warm a frypan on a hob not too hot to burn butter; add some butter. With a ladle or little cup, or straight from the mixing-bowl, pour onto the fairly hot pan enough pancake mix to cover its bottom not too thickly, but all over. Shuffle the pan around to keep the pancake moving, instead of sticking to the pan. When one side is cooked, either flip the pancake up off the pan so that it flops back, raw side down, to continue cooking, or use a spatula to get the same result. Have a warmed plate handy, lightly dusted with flour, to put the cooked pancake on. Do it and lightly dust this pancake's top with flour to easily take the next pancake. Repeat until all the pancake mix is cooked. It doesn't matter if the last one is  a bit small; or hardly there at all. Finish emptying the mixing bowl either with a to-be-sucked finger, or a crust of bread which u either fry before eating or eat like that. Then, let yr pet cat/dog be disgusted that u left so little, yet they'll give it a licking anyway; and the ladle. Only then, wash up the mixing bowl, and ladle.

 Now, dressing the pancakes and eating them: To start with the first-cooked, put a warmed plate on top of the pile of lightly-dusted pancakes, upper face down. Flip the pile, remove the plate that's now on top; with its nearest pancake, if u can.

This, dress before eating. How? So many ways, with a knife and a spoon:

A sprinkling of sugar, a dribble of lemon juice, roll up and carve with cutlery before eating daintily. Or,  Add some creamed  mushrooms (with fried bacon), roll up, carve, eat; daintily. Or, With a knife, apply jam/marmalade/ Bovril before the roll, carve and eat; daintily. Or, Do it with salad and/or grated cheese with mustard. Or, Put one back in the pan, lay on some cheese, pop it under the hottish grill and liquify the cheese before u add a little mango chutney paste, roll it, carve and eat; with a massive grin, daintily. U can do this in an mwave, too; using a big glass plate, so easily found. Or, Have the pancake on its own, folded into a quarter or eighth and picked up by some of yr kgloved fingers.                                                       Pancakes are very nice indeed.

14 q) Semolina pudding. Put a pint of milk into an all-metal pan with a lid/a liddable mwave bowl, with a bay-leaf (& a crushed clove or 2). Bring to the boil/High it for 45 seconds. Stir in a soup-spoon and a half of semolina-powder. Stir gently for 10 minutes on the low-heat hob/return it to the mwave for 3 minutes on High. Add a teaspoon or so of sugar u like, which'll dissolve easily in the hot fluid as u break an egg into a little mug or glass and lift out its yolk which u drop into the mix. U will have to stir this in. Then, be vigorous, and whip the egg-white into a stiff froth in its mug, then add it to the mix.  Put all this, lidded, in a hot oven on 5 for 25 minutes/return it, lidded, to the mwave on High for about 5 minutes, stirring it once or twice if u like.

  Variations: Only use 3/4 of a pint of milk or the coking, so it's a bit too solid so u stir in the last 1/4 pint cold to thin the item and cool it to an eay-eat heat.  And/or Add mdf at the end to cool it; or @ the start, to bulk it out in the cooking. Add tinned fruit pieces, the same. Maybe Add thin slices of apple at the start, to cook with the semolina. Add really ripe plantain, after, for the fun of it; if u like. Add jam, for more fun of it. If u fancy it crunchy, add salted peanuts, after the cooking.

Tap on a little cinnamon powder, if u like.  Help it cool to a comfy heat,     & eat.

14 r) Banoffee pie. [according to the guys who invented it, it's now spelt banoffi; done @ The Hungry Monk restaurant in east Sussex, England, in 1972. Wikipedia also gives 'banoffy' as a variant spelling]. I like the "ban" 'cos it's made with banana, and I like the "offee" 'cos it's made with toffee. This version is not a straight copy of the Hungry Monk now-version [findable on "hungrymonk.co.uk/banoffi_pie/"]; but it is based on it and a few others taken from the web: the BBC, Steve Lee, Nestlé Carnation, Phil Vickery, Banoffi pie recipés. U'll need too a pie-dish [for the mwave] or a saucepan [for a hob] to make it in, about 20cms/8" across.

Made of?: The pie-base is either finely-crushed biscuits [digestives and/or ginger nuts/hobnobs, about 250gms of] solidified with mixed-in melted butter.  Or, it's a ready-bought pastry-mix, or it's made-by-u pastry. These last two are too much fuss to be worth it, but are basic to the original recipe.

 For the biscuit version, about 100gms of butter should be enough. Into this pie-base goes either caramelised condensed milk, which takes hours to make, or about 400gms of tinned caramel. [Carnation makes it]. This is where the "offee" part of the item's name comes from; from the toffee-ish caramel.

 Different recipes have different numbers of bananas, but an average seems to be 3:- 2 of them quite ripe to mix into the toffee and the cream, 1 slightly firmer to slice and lay across the top &/or across the caramel. Coolness and ease suggest that 1 or 2 is quite enough. About 300gms of cream; either the whipping sort or double-cream. {This IS a high-calorie dish.} U can enliven the cream by mixing in instant coffee &/or drinking chocolate powder &/or mdf &/or peanuts, &/or sugar. But, if u add too many extras, the cream will collapse instead of being whipped; it can't take the weight. [So, put the extras on top].  U can sprinkle on top of the finished pie some sugar of the sort u like with/or some grated (dark) chocolate or drinking chocolate powder. A Very little, or u'll collapse the cream.

What to do?....Tiny the biscuits: either in an electric blender, or by hand with the help of a rolling pin over the biscuits in a stout placcy bag, or in the saucepan with the back of a spoon or by hand-crunching them then knuckling them [wearing kgloves, of course]. When they're as tinied as tiny can be, we gotta add glue to stick it together so it can be the the base and sides of the pie: butter will do it....

  For mwaving, put the butter in slices into the dish, cover with a lid/cfilm, put the dish in the mwave and heat on High for about a minute. Remove from the mwave. On a hob, Clear a space in the middle of the saucepan,  put the butter there, put the pan on a hob that's on a very low heat and stir the whole item as the butter melts. Once the butter's melted and thoroughly stirred-in, off the hob-heat and cool the pan's bottom by sitting it on something cold and inflammable like a draining board.

   Either way,  mix the butter into the biscuit-crumbs until u have a smooth fine paste. Press this paste into the floor and sides of the dish/pan; and put the item in the fridge for about half-an-hour to an hour, to re-solidify the butter.

  While that's happening, whip the cream: either in a blender, adding the banana (and sugar) as u go, and any instant coffee/drinking chocolate powder. Or, pour the cream into the mixing-bowl and whip it by hand, with a whisk. Add a banana, tinying it in, and the spice; as with the blender-method. Whipping cream into a froth is NOT easy when there's extras such as a banana or drinking-chocolate powder.

  Next, when the base has set, pour the caramel into the base and spread it around . Add a ripe banana, tinied before into half or quarter circles; or, perhaps, mashed. 

   Lay the whipped cream on top of the caramel, and decorate its top with some sliced banana &/or (dark) chocolate gratings or drinking chocolate powder. This is easier than trying to mix them into the whipped cream. 

   The pie is now made. Cut it into convenient sizes and serve. The dish/pan easily can be the storing-vessel for the pie, so we needn't try to remove the pie as a unit; 'cos it might crumble if its base isn't quite solid-enough, 'cos the day's warmth melts the butter. 

Chapter 16 Marmalade & Jam.

16 a) Marmalade.                                                                                                           I) Eating marmalade. This delicious excuse to eat fruit-flavored sugar mixes well with many foods :-))). Traditionally, it’s eaten on buttered toast. The toast should be broken beforehand to prevent it from cracking up in yr hand as bits fly everywhere and decorate yr clothing or hurt yr gums and u drop the marmalade. So, have in one hand a toast-bit; held on the plate. Knife onto that toast a little butter and a little or more of the marmalade. The butter acts as a sealant on the bread. Eat. Or, use no butter, for the marmalade to dissolve the toast. Goose fat fits here, over butter. Inside a warmed pitta-bread is even nicer and lots easier. Or, Have a marmalade toast sandwich by toasting both sides of two slices of bread. Put butter and marmalade on the inside of one side and on the inside of the other piece put something sharp and different like mustard or Marmite with lettuce or Spanish onions in between. Put together the two, and let all settle by pressing down firmly yet gently on the plate. Then, cut the sandwich diagonally both ways and eat!. Or, u can eat marmalade and jam straight from the jar with a spoon, with bread in yr other hand; Only if u’reSure that the jar will not be shared, or u Don't eat from the serving spoon: to not spread spit-carried diseases .

Add marmalade to porridge, stirred in at the end as a coolant food; instead of the sugar. Marmalade is interesting with smoked mackeral, and kippers;. As the garnish, giving u the sweet and sour together. It’s a sweet chutney, sort of.

16 a II) Making marmalade. Ingredients in metric: citrus fruit, 1kilo ; sugar, of yr sort(s), 1 1/2kgs; water 1/2 liter; a fairly ordinary extra is cloves, a few little buds of, lightly crushed; and sliced root ginger. Traditionally, Seville oranges are the thing, because they’re bitter if eaten raw....try it!. Mix with or use grapefruit, lemons, more ordinary oranges. All are nice. It takes a while on a hob, unless we use a Pressure cooker! as in 30mins+ on a hob boil, but only 10 minutes on High in the pressure cooker. Pressure-cooking on a hob lets u make an easy 2.5 kilos of marmalade. It’s worth having a pressure cooker for the marmalade alone. And it’s worth spending that much time watching that it doesn’t explode on u. They don’ Wanna explode ! Ease their heat so that it’s just above Medium. It’ll take a little longer, but be safer. How to do it? Wash the oranges while two finger-widths of water come to the boil in the pressure cooker, with its lid on, but the p-valve isn’t on its hole which will shoot out water vapor. Put in the fruit, add the rest of the water to cover the fruit, refit the lid, put on its valve, bring to Medium-High, curb the heat and keep an eye on all for about 10 minutes. Off the heat and let it coool in its own time. If everything went ok, we now chop up the citrus fruit rind into easy-eat sizes, wearing kgloves against the heat and stickiness. Keep the pips, by putting them in a small square of best cotton [a bunched rag tied with string in a semi-bow], to tie up and boil in the mix for 5 minutes; ‘cos the pips have setting agent in them. This is the next thing to do. Take out the pips and Only then add the fruit, all neatly tinied. Start to stir and continue stirring as the mix simmers away and very easily boils over at setting point. What with the pan being by now nearly full, we’ve gotta keep On our toes OK! for at least half an hour. How to tell, in case we missed the setting point or we’re impatient and want to Know, if it’s Ready Yet?!!! Put a cold spoon into the mixture to remove some, and let the mix-in-the-spoon cool. If a film forms on it, it’s ready for putting in jars. Cooking’s over, heat Off. If u left it to go cold because there wasn’t time, and if that spoon stands up in the cold mix, we’re Sorted. Else, it’s back to the heat and stirring.                                                                                                                                                                       Mwaving  Remove any rosettes as u wash the fruit, then Mwave it on High for 5-ish minutes without much water; not even half way up, a thumbwidth or two. If it's soft to the prod, it's cooked. Else, do it for longer.  Tiny it as above. Do the pips-boil only 1 minute on High, then cool it to add the fruit, and add only an equal amount of sugar. On High for 20-ish minutes, and u should be ok. Add setting agent if it refuses to set.

16 b) Jam. Boil-times of less than an hour are ordinary with fruit. Different fruits go together: apples & blackberries, plum & ginger & apple; just about anything with apple, or on its own when u can spice it with cinnamon, cloves, tarragon; preserve it with brown sugar, and fun it with mdf and lemon rind. Sliced root ginger is another nice extra.  Hob-heat  jam-making. How to? Amounts: equal weights of fruit and sugar: Half a kilo of each will make about four or five jars of. A scoop of butter, enough water to cover the fruit. Often with a squeeze of lemon and/or its rind. What to do: Let a little water come to the boil in a deep pan as u clean and tiny the fruit and put it in. Adding more water as needed. Stir it as it simmers away, lidded. Add extras such as mdf, spices, lemon(juice). When the fruit is simmered to a puree, add pectin powder, or other (homeopathic) setting agent in the amounts that it specifies. Carry on simmering. How to tell if thesetting-compound's set the jam?. Put a dab of it on an ice-cold plate. When/If it sets, prod it lightly with a finger-end. If the dab wrinkles, it's set. Off the heat, add the jam to jars, securely put a lid on each jam-jar and store all in the cool and dry, where the heat that's left will continue to set the item.     Mwaving:  Only small amounts, 'cos the mwave is small, but it works! . On High for 5-ish minutes to puree the fruit(s).  Add equal weight of sugar u like, and the setting-agent like it says. On High for 20-ish minutes. How to tell if  the setting-compound's set the jam?. Put a blob of it on an ice-cold plate. When/If this blob sets, prod it lightly with a finger-end. If its skin wrinkles, it's set. Off the heat, let it cool a little for yr ease, put the jam in its jars, securely screw a lid onto each jam-jar and store all in the cool, dark and dry, where their warmth will continue to set the item; nicely.

Chapter 18. Spices, relishes, chutneys and sweeteners.                          a) Spices and herbs.  Allspice is the name of a West Indian tree's spicy fruit; eaten either whole or ground up with fruit, meat, cottage cheese. It isn't lots of spices mixed together.  So it's often called pimento. Angelica, grows wild and is cultivated. Up to 3 meters tall, green, with a spray of green flowers from a stem end. The roots of many of its varieties are poisonous raw. Yet, if dried thoroughly and then rewettened, they're entirely edible, as is the rest of the plant. Its seeds and roots being the strongest-flavored: liquorish-like, like juniper.  Often used to flavor vermouth, chartreuse, gin, Benedictine brandy instead of.as well as juniper. Also used as a flavor for sparkling and soft drinks. **  Its bad-vibe is that, according to botanical.com, drinking it when pregnant can cause abortion. Plus, it's quite sweetly sugary, so heavies diabetics***. Apart from that, it cures bottom-wind, is a laxative, sorts stomach cancer; eases cramps in all muscles, especially the stomach and uterus; and so cures insomnia. It destroys indigestion, eases circulation, and improves yr blood. A dilute tincture of it, lightly dropped once or twice onto an inflamed eye, will heal the badness. It helps the liver combat bacteria, fungi and virusses; including bronchitis and colds. That's what the web says. If even half of the above are true, it's little wonder that it called "Angel"-ica. How to get its goodness inside u?. Dried root, wetten in a fish/meat/lentil stew, in a boiled tea, in porridge; tiny further and eat ! . Fresh stem, stalk, flower: tiny into salad to eat raw...only the tenderest parts, such as leaf-ends, flowers; tiny into stews, as per the root; same with tea-making. Plus, u can chew it raw for totally green/cheap/idle/instant eating. Or, have candied stem, frequently found as decoration on cakes. Or, drink vermouth, gin, chartreuse, Benedictine brandy after u've checked that their flavor is of angelica; and it often is. This last is not really recommended since the alcohol involved will get u drunk; which might be nice, but impairs consciousness.                  Aniseed: Sucked aniseed balls take away the taste of alcohol from yr mouth. Tastes ok. Helps the digestion and thus yr sleep; so they invented aniseed-flavored spirits such as anise, to drink at the end of supper; to help yr digestion of fats.   Basil, a mint. Best fresh. Very fragrant; the main herb in pesto, which also has pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, olive oil and garlic; started in Italy.  Basil's ok.     Bay leaf: It looks like a small laurel leaf [ but laurel Alas!, is poisonous]. Chewed raw; Or, made into tea when u also might chew its leaf. In a stew, sucked clean and maybe chewed. A light-tasting herb, lifts barley. Or u just go with its smell and taste in the stew; don't chew it at all.   Camomile:  It's a type of daisy. The flower is the power part. Very nice taste and smell.  It Soothes all the body cramps, including the menstrual ones, if stewed, brewed in tea, or eaten raw; easy, nice.  Capers, like small green pitted olives. OK.       Caraway seeds, they  help to clear a stuffy nose, as well as tasting nice. In bread in its dilutest form; at strongest, u can chew it for the nose-clearing.  Often, 10 or so in a lidded stew is quite sufficient and nice; uncrushed. Caraway cheese also ok.    Cardamom. Best kept in its pod to hold in its goodness. Chewed raw, baked in bread, added to stews, curries. Spicy, aromatic; ok. Brown is more common, green is more pricey.       Cayenne pepper:  a middling-strong chili having 30-50,000 Scoville units of hotnesss.  Chili: a central American veg and spice, with varying degrees of hotness. From zero hotness in a capsicum thru cayenne as above, habanero and Scotch bonnet with 150-300,00 Scoville units; to Naga/bhut jolokia with a million + units of Scoville hotness. Details in http://www.chiliwonders.com/chili.scoville.table.htm.  Added to all sorts of foods.  A success if not overdone too often. They'll cook into sweetness, in time.  Milk is an antidote, along with yogurt and cheese.  If u’re thinking of chilis in a milk pudding , Don’t ! , the milk will win .  And yr chilies will whimper and hide and try to pretend that they’re not there. But they Are, being sweet; and they’ll still be almost a little bit hot .   Chives: Easily grown outside or inside. U eat its spikey dark green leaves. Plucked from and chewed, or added to cold food, or cooked before eating. Sharply tasty, onion-ish. They die back in the cold and regrow in the spring; a perennial.  Cinnamon: Very nice, light, aromatic. Usually powdered . Unpowdered, it's a stick about 10cms long or longer.   Cloves: Brown, aromatic. They are dried flower buds with a  coronet around. Very nice, brewed in hot water for sniffing the smell of. This'll help to clear a blocked nose. 'Specially if there's honey in there too for u to sniff the goodness of. And then drink, as heavenly smiles of total joy burst forth from yr lips to beam across yr happy face, so that yr body's wreathed in grins; or something like. Plus, u can add cloves (crushed before, or scissored half-cooked; or tapped from a packet of  ready-ground) to stews, jams, puddings, and hot drinks !.  Nicely!.     Cumin seeds are Rich in iron, so a tea of it helps to cure a cold and tummy upsets. It's a bit antiseptic so a mash-up put on wounds and boils helps the healing.  A tonic herb. U can chew the seeds, too. They're ok.    Curry, From hottest vindaloo thru madras to the quiet birianis and kormas.  Outasight tastes ! And it delays decay in the food by frightening off the microbes [It's a hot-country invention , right? ]. I've never felt the need to make any, buying mine ready-made in powder or paste: in jars packets  tins and tubes.  Deelicioso! !! .  Too-ot curries may be subdued with dairy products.  Dill smells/tastes like caraway. A tea of it helps the digestion (after a heavy meal), so it is also medicinal.  Nice, added to stews, teas, soups, fish.     Garlic grows in a bulb. All of it is edible, except for the crinkly skin of each clove.  Not just the underground bulb of cloves of garlic, but also its pretty starry flowers and their stems, its bursting-out shoots if u’ve left it in the warm, and its leaves.  If u’re growing it and u only crop the above-ground stuff, it’ll keep on giving it to u for  years!, books say  [check the web/reality]. The bulb is separated into separate parts, over a dozen is usual, each called a clove.  Garlic keeps well in the dry and cool, in bulb and clove. U use garlic, maybe; for sure. How?  Garlic-crusher? Never:  It always still has stuck on/in it some garlic after even the most tediously careful proddings and scrapings, so that u seldom get everything to eat; and they need lots of complicated washing-up with a long-bristled brush to remove the very last of its bits; Baaad. So, How to tiny garlic?:  Finely slice the garlic between the tines of a holding fork; or squeeze, twist, and crush each piece in kgloved fingers; or pop the piece in whole and bite it once it's cooked. Add some crushed bits of garlic to a bottle of vinegar; This spiced vinegar goes on yr hot french fries, in Perfect world. The lovely aroma is amazing ! but it might make yr eyes water, so watch out. Show-offs who don’t do housework, HotFry the garlic at the start on a Bit of a Heat to Feel Groovy, and mess up Everything so it’s like So much like hard work, that it’s best to always slowfry/boil garlic in a lidded pan. To Crush garlic, if u must, use a thimble in a mug. If u want garlic to do u good, people say, then u gotta eat it nearly raw or raw....such as: To chill a head-cold, twist-break a clove of it beneath yr nose to deep-sniff garlic-juice as it sprays free; wearing kgloves against sniffy fingers. Or, No kgloves?....Sniff it up yr nose from a mug, sliced in and with hot tap-water poured on. Or, Add a crushed clove of garlic as a tea-item.  When u cook it, garlic responds sweetly. Very sweetly indeed, sometimes :-))) .  Garlic has these two styles of raw sharp medicinally powerful; and cooked subtle sweetly delicious also medicinally powerful which is as greenly good for u as is raw, and differently. Garlic is also a nice heavy if its juice is rubbed onto warts and such. Eating parsley takes any garlic smell from yr breath, throat, tummy: an antidote.       Ginger! A pick-me-up taste and smell. Fresh root: sliced coin-shaped and into salad, porridge. The dried root of ginger, pull length-wise the piece that u're eating. Its center might still have some softness  [which is nice to nibble]. Let the strips soak quite a while. Then snip them small with scissors. If it's "only" Powdered ginger-root, from a cute little container, it's still ok; tap on. Goes well in marmalade.    Horseradish is a root, much like ginger; with a similarly sharp taste. Eaten raw; grated and mayoed or in vinegar.  Or, cook it in Christmas pud, or a mushroom stew.    Jerk as in jerk chicken is the Caribbean way to keep germs at bay by hotting-up the food.  A digest of 5 websites suggests that it's jerk seasoning that you buy in a jar or tube. Or, it's mixing together spices either before adding protein; or added as u cook these.  As a basic u use allspice, chili, black pepper [corns or ground], soy sauce, thyme [fresh or dried], vinegar [white wine, red wine, malt].  To these u can add cinnamon [powder or stick], garlic [whole or sliced or crushed], ginger [root or powdered], lime juice, powdered nutmeg, orange juice, dark rum, sage, salt. U can, it's said, preserve raw meat & fish by rubbing it with jerk mix, but it's probably better to let it lie in vinegar infused with the herbs and juices, in the sun; so it's slo-cooked and then hung out to dry and keep.   Juniper: Dark little berries: fruit and kernel are different browns. Eaten, juniper eases digestion, soothes joints, and stimulates the uterus. Tastes bitterish raw, thru to sweetness when cooked. How to eat? Crushed, in coffee/tea; added to porridge, curry, stew, marmalade-making. Drunk in gin. **The web says that pregnant women should not use juniper because what they need down there is relaxation, not stimulation. Juniper berries, sadly, badvibe kidneys; so if yrs are weak, omit juniper berries ***.   Lemon balm tea, drunk for depression, headaches and anxiety; helps longevity. Its crushed leaves give a fresh smell to a room. Added to stews, it's a nice lemony taste.   Marjoram is  the same as Oregano, from a fragile perennial plant. Tastes minty. So is popular with lamb and shellfish; or twisted under yr nose and sniffed. The web says that its oil is a sedative if drunk in a tea; and is antiseptic if brushed over a wound, or its leaves are bound over the wound freshly every day. Its leaves do keep, but are best fresh. Mastic has many uses: as a chewing gum, as part of frankincense, in liqueurs. As the base of sweets, as the flavor of Turkish Delight, in breads and ice creams. Mixed with sugar and orange blossom water as a dessert flavoring. Strong.    Mint, fresh or dried. stalk, leaf or root. All aromatic to the nose, breathed off its leaf, or u crushed it between 2 finger-ends so that u may smell/taste the item's inner juices. Which turn u hungry, with a smile. Nice.   Mustard seeds, added to stew to give it lift.  Add them at the start, or whenever.  No need to crush mustard seeds unless u want to;  u'll get a little explosion of taste each time that u bite onto one. Made mustard is in different types: There’s rough strong yellow English mustard which is a total when u’re like meeting a hangover. The French do softer cooler dark yellow mustards, from Dijon and Lyon and places. Everywhere makes and sells it. But for truly hot mustard, English mustard is It; right?.    Nutmeg and mace, from the same plant, are sweetly nutty, and help the digestion; usually freshly ground.    Paprika powder looks like chili powder, but smells and tastes much more sweetly; though it still has a bit of a bite. Basic to goulash. Very nice indeed.      Softly fragrant herbs such as Parsley are bung full of goodness in vitamins and minerals, which is why parsley has such a strong taste. Its frothy green leaves are as edible as their stalks and twigs but often need rinsing clean because their frothiness holds dirt, cobwebs, and spider-nests. If u chew some leaf or twig, it will Really be a hit. Chill this hit by mixing it tinied into mayo, or other dressing. Or add (tinied) bits to a tea. Sage is a PickMeUp. Their leaves are long, usually a dull light green thru white. U can chew some leaf or twig, or brew it in hot water/tea/coffee, or add it to a stir-fry of food. Rosemary: A sweetly aromatic herb which improves with keeping and helps memory. Add the leaves, stalk, to yr mouth, a tea, a stew to chew or brew. Or, u prod some into a bottle of vodka/vinegar and leave them for a while, occasionally shaken and stirred. Thyme, very nicely aromatic, leaves, twigs, flowers. Said to bring courage if u eat/drink/wear it, 'cos it's a calming restorative. Bees like it.    Peppercorns chewed fresh will taste explosively hot on the gums; and earthily rich all around; Like eating fire in the nicest sort of a way.  A much broader taste than chili. Countered with lettuce. More usually, we cook them before eating and probably tiny them before cooking. Still cool, as in seriously hot!.  Poppy seeds are Popular on rolls, in bread, in stews. Its tea is a narcotic, much weaker than opium; needs lemon juice to bring out its flavor. Bitter, so add sugar if u like.       Salt is Very popular. We all need it, and get it from foods, or add it neat. Of whatever sort u like. There's loads, all cool.    Sesame seeds make a cool cooking oil. Used as  herb, they've a nutty flavor, put into salads. Ground up they make tahini. You can make wine from them [dunno how].    Sumac, has a tart sour lemony taste. Rubbed onto kebab meat, popular in Arabic cooking; relieves stomach upsets.     Turmeric, aromatic, bright yellow, usually ground into a powder; downsizes fishy smells so is popular with fish. Also in curries, where it minimizes ~~wind~~.            Vanilla: Popular with milky foods, a light airy taste; nice. In sticks or powdered.

18 b)  Pickles, chutneys.  Eaten as a relish to give zest to food, or on their own in a sandwich or from a spoon. Mango chutney, Branston pickle® are majorly delicious. Marmite® is an item on its own:  Stuffed with vitamin B12, very salty, and totally vegetarian; ok. As it's made from the leftovers of beer-making, there's relish in that. Eaten spread on bread, or as a spice in cooked foods; or dissolved in water as a brothy drink to clear colds.  [in Oz it's Vegemite®. In Switzerland, Cenovis®. The German version is called Vitam-R® which has less salt and is less tasty; it's ok.] There's a beef extract called Bovril® which looks and tastes a bit similar, but is a bit runnier, so won't sit on bread as easily; it's ok. Makes beef tea once dissolved in hot water.

Chutney, to make: Basicly, it's preserved fruit and/or veg; with extras as appropriate. It works for all fruits and veggies; so u could mix in pears with the apples; or plums or  mangoes.  If u're not that keen on mdf, use sultanas, raisins, prunes, apricots, what u like.     Apple chutney, as a typical fruit: This is a fairly hot Indian chutney.      Made of? 1/2 a kilo of de-pipped tinied (sour) apples,  <  1/2 a liter of vinegar, a thumb-width of water in a boiling/mwave pan, 1/4 kilo tinied onions, about 400gms of sugar of yr sort,  1/4 kilo mdf, 100-ish gms of salt, 100 gms ground ginger or a 7cm length of tinied ginger root, 50gms mustard powder or 2 tbspoons of mustard seeds, 100 gms chili powder or a tbspoon of tinied dried chilis, 4 tinied cloves of garlic; mebbe a ground clove or two.   What to do?  Simmer the spices in the thumbwidth of water on a hob: mustard seeds, ginger root, tinied chilis, for an easy 1/4 hour to get all of their goodness/in an mwave on simmer for 10-15 minutes....checking it @ 10 minutes. Or, With powdered spices u can omit the previous action, and have no need for the thumb-width of water; so just add the powders to a full 1/2 liter of vinegar in the cooking vessel.  Next, both ways:  Add the apples and onion, sugar, mdf and salt, and simmer away till all is soft/mwave on Warm for mebbe an hour, perhaps longer. Sieve it if u like, once it's cool-enough to do so;  to smoothify the item. U're probably not going to eat it all now, so pour this delight into clean containers such as re-used jam-jars; seal their lids, name them with writing on sticky tape, and tuck them away in the cool and dark until their eating-time arrives.

18 c) Sweeteners. Honey tends to curdle milk so it isn’t that cool as the sweetener of milky drinks. Honey is amazing stuff: Only very small amounts of honey are needed compared with sugar to get the same sweetness. White sugar’s mild taste matches better with that of milk puddings, than brown. The sugar that dissolves the fastest is the sugar that’s in the almost smallest of pieces. That’s generally superfine white sugar; smaller than granulated, ok.  Not quite as easily found as is granulated, the coarser one; which is everywhere. Confectioner's icing sugar is even finer than superfine, but it has in it starch to stop it from clumping. So it's not as pure and the starch clouds any liquid; which is no big deal if u're adding thickener. Not easy to find, nor worth it, confectioner’s sugar.  Brown sugar adds style, quality, taste, to puddings, coffee. The darker, the better. It’s not often put in tea; Some say that their tastes clash. Maple syrup, treacle, runny honey, molasses: fork-lifted on a twirl to hold all, and dropped into the drink/porridge for fastest multi-tined dissolving.

All the artificial sweeteners in tablets...Follow the instructions and u'll be ok.

18 d) If there's any doubt in yr mind about the edibility of the food, the general rule is, If in doubt, Don't. There are lots of poisonous plants in Britain, many of them very common. Don't eat them, don't touch them, nor smell them; for safety's sake. Wash yr hands after touching them: Hold them in gloves. Vomit it up, if eaten, instead of digesting it. Then, drink water or mustard&water or salt&water, to clean yr stomach; and then sick up that, too; to get rid of all of the poisons until u feel relaxed; and there could be quite a few retchings. And out the other end, too in liquid form; if u're unlucky. Drink a couple of shots of strong spirits to medicinally kill the poison.  Don't chew bracken, it's a poison to horses as well as to humans. Most plant bulbs are poisonous; onion and garlic are the exceptions, not the rule. Don't eat the cute-looking buttercup flower, stem, or leaf: it has a nasty taste and is poisonous [to horses, too]. The pretty convolvulus or bindweed with its white trumpet-shaped flowers is poisonous to humans, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits and pigs not only when eating its foliage, but its roots foul the ground. The daffodil's delightful flowers are as poisonous as its bulb...very. The bark & leaves of elderberries are poisonous at times. Leave them; although their flowers and berries are delicious. Foxgloves can be seriously ill-making, all parts of them. The bay leaf is edible, but it looks like laurel which is poisonous in its sap, its leaves and its berries, which look a little like cherries. The lovely laburnum, or golden-rain tree, has very poisonous seeds and bark; with its flowers, flesh and roots. Many mushrooms and toadstools are poisonous, even ones that look so like the ones u buy in food-stores. Most of a potato, excepting its ripe tubers, is poisonous to us. Privet makes u only sick, and tastes horrid. Yew is poisonous all year round; luckily, it's nasty-tasting.  This is, sadly, Not an exhaustive list.  

Chapter 20. The hardware that goes with cookery

20 a) Work surfaces. U can scissor-slice salad in the bag that it came in, after u've removed any mayo-packet already in there.

An upturned enamel pan lid has the edge of the lid as a little wall all around to stop food from falling off as u tiny away at it. This is neat. U can park the sliced food up against the wall, as u tiny away; which is double-neat. Aand, u can sluice clean the lid into the food-pan for even less waste; which might be triple-neat, if u like .

U can use an old newspaper as a bread-board, if the ink isn't lead; and it rarely is, these days. Check yr cut quality by the depth of cut into the paper. Shake its crumbs into the food pan, ?.                                                                                                                             **Timber chopping boards are hi-maintenance, get deeply dirty easily, and are Big to store away, so no***.  Formica boards are cheap and easily discardable when too scratched to keep on using.

20 b). Cutlery and other kitchen tools. {these items are not alphabetical, but by importance .}                                                                                                                                               Tin-openers, as in 4a above. A spoon, a pudding-sized one and a tea/coffee-sized one seem to be enough for singletons, but serving spoons are needed when serving others. When lifting a spoon, be sure that there's not too much food on the spoon to get it all inside of yr mouth, in one go; 'cos Grazing off a spoon is not considered manners, 'cos it'll attract the flies, and some could drop off before u get to eat it. If the spoon's contents are liquid, a drop of the liquid could form on the underside of the spoon and drip onto u on its way to yr mouth. So, look at the spoon's underside and if it is adrip, wipe yr spoon's bottom by dipping it back in the soup, or pulling it over a lump of food.    A knife. Without a hilt, so it's Not a weapon. Dull-looking yet sharp of cut. Sharpen its blade with a proprietary knife-sharpener, or do it on any convenient stone-hard edge....of a brick or a step. Cutting with a knife: if u tuck the handle-end into the palm of yr hand, u get most force. If u hold the knife like a pen, halfway down, u get foody fingers but a more accurate cut if needed.     To make a very thin slice, put the knife between the fork's tines instead of only across the front: outside both, then next in, then central. But beware of yr elbows flying around when u try to hold and cut at that angle.      A fork. To carry food to mouth, using it as a spoon. U can get lots in quickly but will be easily upstaged at parties by being then coaxed in dulcet tones to talk in detail about yr most-gricerish hobby; oh sad!. In company, put elegant portions of food on the back of yr fork and raise it gently to yr couldn't-be-bothered mouth. Forks are also for holding the food immobile while u do stuff to it.                                            Chopsticks. **They often have sharp-ish ends, and an over-zealous police-person might arrest u for carrying assault weapons, even if the chopsticks are telescopic; so it is seldom cool to bring yr own to a restaurant; nor to take away the restaurant's as a happy memento of a delicious meal***.  Nor can u cut with them, neither; nor use them much for holding food in place.  Generally, They are Really designed as shovels to move tinied food speedily into yr mouth from a bowl placed directly below, in front; in a kind of paddle-action. U get lots in, fast.                                                                                   At formal functions, u hafta use  them as a fork, and do a grip-action with their ends on tiny pieces of food. U'll eat even less than from an upside-down fork; so Definitely snack up beforehand.                                                                                           How to handle chopsticks? U hold both in the one hand: u curl yr thumb around one, with yr first finger to help, and hold the other stick between two or more of yr other fingers. This needs practice. Each food morsel carried to yr mouth is tiny.  Slicers. The powered ones have far too many corners for easy cleaning. The metal or placcy panels with slicing and grating surfaces and edges that u slide the food on, put one end in the pan to be filled and settle the pan securely. Hold the other end of the slicer securely with one hand, as u move the food (in a holder) with the other .

Scissors of all shapes and sizes are excellent for tinying food.On a board, or in(to) the pan as the main stirrer during cooking. This allows u continuous tinying throughout the cooking.

Spice grinders, also too much cleaning effort, they're too big and too costly. I use a thimble in a mug or egg-cup. Or a biro-end in the thimble. It all works ok. Or, I buy my spices already-ground.

U can seal a packet, of coffee or sugar for instance, by venting it of air then folding over its opened hole a couple of times and sealing it with a spring-clip or two. Very easy, effective, and cheap.

Bottle tops. Screw-top or fliptop or little pull-off corks are the only ones to notice.    Corks are so last century. If u Must use a cork-screw, hold it steady as u turn the bottle; it's easier to do. 

20 c) When dealing with food, wearing kgloves keeps yr hands and the food clean and they mask the heat and cold of the food and juices and water; which eases food-preparation. Spoons get food out of jars neatly.    This is emphasized because cooks on the television Never wear gloves and seldom carry foods in spoons or prod them with a fork....they use their bare hands . This dirties their hands so there's lots of hand-washing and drying to be done; which we don't see.  Doing the washing in smooth gloves is Very much easier and quicker than doing it to creased palms, hairy knuckles, and getting food under finger-nails.  Same as using cutlery to lift and carry food; Very much easier safer and less painful than using hands on hot food, for instance.    We may also prepare our meals in less-than-perfectly-clean-hands, and no-one need ever know ! .                                                                                                             Oven gloves that last: two 12cm lengths, about, of scrap motorcycle inner-tube. Or, a bicycle's for the smaller hand, a quad bike's for the larger. They are the best. Easy to clean, as in u hardly have to, ever; and cheap. They don't scorch at ordinary cooking heats, but they Do get hot.So hold each with a damp cloth, then; to retain their perfection....Except for visually where they are the pits. To hide them: put one inside another and tuck them away. They're called hotgloves.