General Chat

Hope the sofa doesn't recline at all :-)

As for cooking, I try to cook from scratch whenever possible not saying I'm good but no one has had food poisoning....yet.....
I cringed when I see cooking shows call for a pinch of salt and they throw in as much as I'd use in a year! As others have said use herbs and spices.

I'd be scared to death sitting on that sofa :-D

...by mezzanine floor, I mean the small bit he's done - then a long drop to the lower floor!
It will eventually be a whole upper floor.
The sofa looks lovely, perched on the edge! :-S
Not bad for a codger who, I worked out, will be 70 this year :-S
...and there's me, his youngest sister who is having trouble summoning up the energy to put the flooring in the attic :-(

The transformation of the 'Old Smithy' is quite amazing!

Sounds fantastic!!!

Too small, Sylvia. :-D :-D
Virtually sitting on what will be the open fire ! :-S Chilblain country!

Floorboards - amazing - old scaffold boards rubbed down, rubbed down and rubbed down again, before being waxed - he won't be doing that again! :-D

This is on the mezanine floor he's created - downstairs is studio and currently storage of what he's picked up in architectural junk yards!

what advice ...... too small or too large?????

My dad could cook, too Pat - and sew!
Not too good at DIY, to be honest.
My brother does the cooking in his house - much better than my SiL (or it could have been a good strategy on her part :-D )
Both my sister and I are better at DIY than both the cooking brother and our dad - perhaps we learnt from his mistakes.
The other brother cooks 'proper' meals for himself, and is building a pottery studio and flat in an old Blacksmith's 'shop', mainly using recycled stuff, so his DIY can't be faulted!
...though both sister and I advised him on the size of his rooms when we went to see him last month :-D :-D :-D

A high percentage of people live on fish and chips, or a pizza

or those Subway sandwiches. Any of these shops deliver :-D

My father was a better cook than my mum, he did Sunday dinner. Mum's family weren't into cooking other than the very basics. Mum could do great pastry though. My cousins enjoyed their school dinners better than food at home :-D.

Dad's family were into home cooking and baking. My sister very limited cooking, I cook and bake and have a son who is a chef.

One of my brothers was in the army and was in Borneo and Sarawak.

I'm not sure if he was pulling my leg but he told me that in the jungle

he ate roasted snake off a stick !!

Back i the early days of microwaves, a friend had just bought one and decided to cook a roast of beef in it.

We'd been invited to dinner that night, and she was displaying her new toy with great glee, but said she did not know how the roast would turn out.

It looked awful when she took it out.

It was cooked, but it was a grey-ish colour, not at all appetizing. The taste was just about OK.

There's things you can do with a micro wave, but you're just warming it up.

David, if all you do is open a tin I can see why you thought you mother was a good cook ;-) :-D

I still use beef dripping in a chip pan for chips - it stays in the pan for months and is fine. If I have the odd slice of fried bread I just scrape a bit of beef dripping out of the chip pan to use in the frying pan - please don't anyone tell my doctor !!!

Ask any chef worth their salt how to make good chips and they will tell you Maris Piper potatoes fried in beef dripping.

Kath. x

Don't know about you lot but my Mother used the frying pan a lot and used dripping.

That same dripping would still be in the frying pan next morning and it was not unusual

to fry bread. You could taste the previous meal in the dripping. Very tasty :-D

When I were a lad..... My mum was known to buy and bone a pig's head and roll it to make a sunday joint. It took her hours. I remember when we could only get olive oil from the chemist. And as for garlic...

Island ..............

same here!!!

OH's mother came to stay with us about 2 years after we'd married and moved over here.

In that time we had learnt you didn't have to cook all meat for 30 minutes per lb, boil potatoes or veggies for 30 minutes, or potatoes for 45 minutes if you wanted mash, etc etc etc

Result????

She went home and told everyone "Poor xxxxx, Sylvia can't cook."

18 months after that, she and f-i-l came back at Christmas time, we attended their daughter's wedding and then the parents spent Christmas with us. OH and I cooked the meal jointly, including sprouts. OH had never eaten sprouts willingly when at home, so m-i-l watched in some amazement as he took a spoonful, and ate them. The she said "You really must like them like that."

Two years later, we went to England on holiday ............... m-i-l was cooking vegetables and potatoes as we did, though meat was still very well done :-D

My Mother was a good cook, she could make a money out of what

looked like an empty cupboard.

Sometimes she would buy a large bone at the Grainger Market

and boil it all day, adding split peas, barley and stuff. The bone

would boil to nothing, what was left was delicious :-D <3

As children, mother was the 'only' cook most of us knew.

It wasn't until I started cooking for myself that I realised sprouts and cabbage don't have to be mushy, you don't need to peel mushrooms and there's no need to pour salt into the water when cooking veg!
We ate it all up because we weren't brats.
Mother was a good baker though (not bread :-0 :-D)

I USED to think that ............... but then I realised how limited our diet was.

Now, I still make some of the dishes she used to make, as well as some that OH's mother made when he was young ............... but they are spiced up more than the mothers' versions were.

They never added Lea & Perrins, HP Sauce, bay leaves and other herbs for example to Shepherd's or Cottage Pies, or stews. I think salt and pepper as all they added .......... I discovered how different that was to our tastes when I had to go on a bland diet a couple of years ago, and we made a Shepherd's Pie and a stew a la mother. Just had to add more pepper afterwards!

There is one thing my mother made that I remember with delight but have never made. She used to make it when I went away to university, put it in a tin and post it to me at least once a term until she died in my second year.

It was a spice cake ...... and I have NEVER been able to find the recipe that she used!!!!