***V2 looking in her food cupboard before her weekly shopping trip and thinking.....
"I'm tired of shopping......tired of consuming.....tired of being told I need Brand "X" to be healthy, attractive, happy, nice.....whatever! Just tired, tired, tired!"

Unfortunately, I'm not too tired to eat, but I've decided not to make my usual Monday-night pilgrimage to the supermarket palace tonight.

The challenge beckons: Can I make it through the week on less without stepping into a grocery store/restaurant/take-out place and maintain some degree of sustainable nourishment? I'm going to try. I've done my inventory:

Fridge:
1 litre of skim milk
1/2 roast chicken
1/4 lb. butter
2 slices of bread
six eggs
a few apples and an orange
small assortment of vegetables (2 carrots, 3 potatoes, 1 cooking onion, 1/2 head lettuce, 1/2 tomato, 1/2 head celery, lemon and garlic)
1/2 carton probiotic yogurt (strawberry/kiwi flavour)
small carton ricotta cheese
some cheese (not much)
large variety of condiments (ketchup, different mustards, mayo etc.)

Freezer:
unopened bag of frozen assorted vegetables
carton low-salt chicken stock
leftover bag frozen shrimp (about 1 cup)
big bag of breadcrumbs
bag of skim-milk powder
1/2 bag frozen mixed fruit
1 loaf bread

Cupboard:
5 tins assorted soup
box of stoned-wheat thins
unopened box of taco shells
2 tins salmon
1 tin garbanzo beans
lots of dog food (hope I don't have to resort to that!)
macaroni shells/spaghetti
small bag of brown rice
lots of spices, Splenda, oil, soy sauce etc.

And that's it.

I've already had my breakfast and that will have to last until dinner time. Breakfast was a smoothie: I threw some frozen fruit, skim milk powder, a few scoops of yogurt and some water into the blender. Delicious and healthy.

See you at dinner.......

The objective has to be to consume everything that you have in stock before you buy more in (having said that I've just bought five boxes of cornflakes) then only buy what you lack - not what you see and fancy.

The major thing is to watch carefully what you throw out - and try and reduce this to zero.

One package couscous... that's what you need. Chicken, carrots, and other root veggies, various spices, that'll do it for ya... use the chicken stock as the base for the couscous.

Or, failing that... do more or less the same thing, but without the couscous, serve over brown rice. You'll get a couple meals out of it.

If you have any flour, make pancake-like crepes using the ricotta for part of the liquid. bills restaurant in Sydney does 'em... spectacular with fruit. If I were at home and had my cookbook, I'd share the recipe, but I ain't, and I can't.

You might fall a bit short on protein, but I think you'll be OK.

Years ago, The Miami Herald did a weekly experiment. They'd take a chef from one of the restaurants downtown and go to a random supermarket and choose a random shopper and once they were in the checkout line propose that the chef accompany them home and cook dinner from whatever was in the shopping cart + what was in the house, and the food writer would write about it. It was fascinating to read about. Learned how to combine things in dishes one would not normally consider. One family were Orthodox and kept a kosher kitchen. Another family were moving house the next day and had almost nothing in the house and 2-3 things in the cart.

Ready Steady Cook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Steady_Cook)

Take cans of soup, boil until reduced, pour over pasta.

Add some of the salmon and/or frozen veggies if you like.

Take garlic, crunch chop, a bit of the olive oil in the condiments with the spaghetti. Tasty.

Take chuck, marinade half in sweet soy sauce and some ginger also sitting on yer condiments shelf. Chuck in some of the veggies and stir fry. Eat with the rice.

Good God woman. You have enough there for a week no problem. I haven't even thought about what you can do with the eggs.

More than enough protein: chuck, salmon, eggs. How much protein does one need for a week?

Not sure why you would have milk powder/breadcrumbs in the freezer though.

The important thing is do you have a decent chablis to wash it down with?

Whatever you do, don't eat the dog food.

I tried it and ended up in hospital!

G&T ice n slice.... why?:confused:

You could make a passable macaroni cheese, pasta shells, 1/2 onion, breadcrumbs, combine ricotta and your other bits of cheese, don't forget to season.
Chicken salad, 1/2 your chicken, lettuce, tomato, condiments.
Omlette or frittata, using some of your cheese, 1/2 onion, potato.
Poached eggs on toast.
Easy pudding of fruit and yoghurt, if you boil some of your fruit with a little bit of sugar you could make an easy fruit sauce. Use 2 of your egg whites to make meringue ot have with said fruit and sauce. Use one of your egg yolks in the macaroni cheese.
Rice salad, using your frozen veggies and salmon, again use your condiments to dress it.
If you had some flour you could easily make yourself a chicken and vegetable pie.

How many days have we covered now?

yummmmm .... the makings of dog food curry :ok: And yes, I have; with no ill-effects.

Seriously V2, you shouldn't keep eggs in the fridge nor half those veg.

Cheers

Whirls

I wrote:
Whatever you do, don't eat the dog food.
I tried it and ended up in hospital!

and Pugilistic came back with :
G&T ice n slice.... why?

I was crossing the road and a truck clipped me wehn I stopped to lick censored censored

If, for some reason, you do decide to keep eggs in the fridge, they should be in a sealed container as their shells are permeable and will absorb all the smells and flavours of their surrounds otherwise. Eggs will keep a long time outside the fridge, they look quite good in a large glass brandy goblet shaped container left on the kitchen surface where smells and flavours are (should be!) less concentrated.

I did not know that; my grandma would have me shot on the spot for leaving the eggs out of the fridge:}

Eggs and the Fridge...PPrune learned me summat today!

Holy FiretrUCK!.....I was late getting home and was famished! (One smoothie all day is not enough for a growing girl...ha!)

Out came the 1/2 roast chicken and some of it (thinking of the week ahead - I could have devoured it all) was consumed standing up.....Henry the VIIIth style, but I somehow resisted throwing the bones on the floor. Now, to make this a "balanced meal," I should have cooked some rice or one of the potatoes with some of the frozen veggies or lettuce, but I was too tired.
So....had a slice or bread with a smear of butter and an apple, and that was it. The rest of the chicken went back into he fridge (thinking of making soup with the bones and leftover chicken).

I've perused your replies - Thank-you for your suggestions! I am going to try some of them.

****I have to tell you though, I've just taken a food safety course (one of my job duties is the supervision of catering) and we did cover the storage and handling of eggs. I'm afraid the non-refrigeration of eggs is contrary to what we were taught.

There is potential danger in any protein. Eggs are a protein, and contain salmonella. The danger zone for any protein is room temperature (4 degrees C - 60 degrees C or 40 degrees F - 140 degrees F). If a protein is left in the danger zone for more than two hours, harmful bacteria can multiply.

The outer shells can also harbour e-coli. Our instructor recommended washing the eggs in diluted bleach (l oz/gallon of water) then rinsing. (done quickly, the shells will not be permeated). He also said eggs should be kept in the carton and placed on the top shelf of the fridge where it is coldest. Egg should never be placed on those open egg trays on the door, because of inconsistencies in temperature due to the opening and closing of the door.

Some of you have been keeping your eggs non-refrigerated, and have obviously suffered no ill effects (although food poisoning is one of the most non/mis-diagnosed ailments, most people think they've had a touch of the flu) but I think I would still want to be on the side of caution. :)

Good God woman. You have enough there for a week no problem.

lass, hmmmmmmmm, maybe I'll try to stretch it out for two weeks.

the top shelf of the fridge where it is coldest

Have to disagree with you there, when I went to school (many years ago) we learnt that hot air will rise and cold air will fall. Seem to recall hearing something similar in lessons for the met exam as well.

Cheers
UFO

OH, and by the way, a study carried out in 2004 by the UK food standards agency found "the overall UK finding was that nine samples (0.34%) were contaminated with salmonella, which is equivalent to approximately one in every 290 “boxes” of six eggs" - probably less now, so the "eggs on the worktop" brigade don't need to worry too much.

UFO... if I may....

I learned recently, while having the relay switch replaced in my fridge, that most receive their cooled air from the freezer and it tends to arrive in the top most section. (it may not apply if the freezer section is located at the lower section of fridge.)

In any case, I found it to be true in mine (a side by side), because when I had it loaded with food for a party, I put the beer on the upper shelf, dropped my fridge temp just a notch below normal and the beer froze and the diet Pepsi in my lower shelf did not. The section for my eggs is located in the top shelf of my door, with a closing lid. This seems to support the mention of permeable shells.

Interesting that we feel everything needs cooling, when so many nations, not just the UK, have been leaving eggs and butchered meat in the open air for ages without death by numbers. Tis a cultural thing I suppose.:)

Uni, our food-safety course was geared towards those in the hospitality industry where walk-in coolers are utlilized. In that case, yes, it is coldest at the bottom. One of the first things that was drilled into our head was this: always store proteins at bottom, especially thawing meats/poultry/fish so the thawing juices will not drip onto any other foodstuffs. (He cited the case of a local restaurant which infected its customers with salmonella due to thawing chicken dripping onto the fruit and salad vegetables below).

However, in the case of home refrigerators, Cof is correct. It is coldest at the top. Have you ever left a cucumber on the top shelf instead of the produce section at the bottom? If the fridge is turned past the mid level of coldness, the cuke will freeze at the top, but not when left in the produce bins at the bottom.

My home refrigerator is less than two-years old; the meat bin is also at the top with a solid bottom (to catch thawing juices).

CoF,
It would certainly seem so, intuitively, however the EUFIC (http://www.eufic.org/article/en/food-safety-quality/safe-food-handling/artid/food-storage-refrigerator/) seem to agree with me. My fridge doesn't have a freezer compartment, which might make a difference, of course.

I would expect that beer and cola have different freezing temperatures anyway, so I wouldn't put too much reliance on that.

Cheers
UFO

Uni, thanks for posting that interesting link. I notice it was written in 2001, though.

It would appear....like just about everything else....home-refrigeration technology has changed in nine years (at least in North America). :)

I am very surprised that a Food Safety Course would advocate keeping eggs in a fridge.

One of the problems with chilled/cold eggs is the greater and temperature change in order to cook them. In order to get the egg to the correct temperature to kill bacteria, it has to be cooked for longer if it's come fom the fridge. Often the egg is not cooked for longer, therefore, as you say, danger zone. If the egg is cooked for longer, it'll tastes pretty 'orrible.

You can put eggs in the freezer but they'll be like old shoe leather when you cook them.

So, not only do flavours permeate, you are ruining the eggs flavour and texture.

Eggs (and most veg) will last plenty long enough in a temperate climate at room temperature. If you're not going to eat an egg within two weeks of buying it, why did you buy it?

Cheers

Whirls

Whatever you do, don't eat the dog food.



A few years back, a friend of mine was sharing a house with two other people who were always nicking his food.

So, he made really nice steak and kidney pie, using pedigree chum for the meat filling.

when he gets back, don't ya know it. two whopping creat slices out of it.

he spent the next week telling them how lovely their coat looked.

i dont recall if ever told them about the pie.



(another friend who had a flat mate, once, woke up in the early hours to find is new flat mate sitting on chair in his bedroom watching him)

Don't snack in the garden it might kill you.

Male bravado and the inevitable eating of a slug - Yahoo! News UK (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/mark_watson/male-bravado-and-the-inevitable-eating-of-a-slug-p3854.html)

Bruce Wayne, I wonder if the pie eaters also developed an urge to piddle on fire hydrants and chase cars?

Whirls, now I'm totally confused. If I weren't on the brink of starvation, I would take the eggs outside and smash them on the cement wall. :uhoh:

How about a compromise? Keep the eggs in fridge, but remove one hour before prep time?

I've never worried over eggs like this before.....
not even my own! :E

(another friend who had a flat mate, once, woke up in the early hours to find is new flat mate sitting on chair in his bedroom watching him)

Majorly creeped out. I woulda bashed him with something heavy!!!

(another friend who had a flat mate, once, woke up in the early hours to find is new flat mate sitting on chair in his bedroom watching him)

Correction.....should he get off that chair and into my bed......I would be a bit worried about my egg(s)! :O

Can you freeze eggs (and recover them by thawing)?

Nigella the Goddess of Voluptuoussnessness freezes egg yolks and egg whites left over from making pavlova or hollandaise. Egg whites go in a ziplock bag, yolks in a container with the membrane burst and a little salt or sugar added depending what they'll be used for later.

Can you freeze eggs (and recover them by thawing)?As I said earlier, you can but they go a bit rubbery. Why would you want to?

Cheers

Whirls

Dunno, really.
I have kept butter (and 'spread') in the freezer, and I usually keep a small amount of milk frozen to deal with emergencies (such as unexpected visitors) all with no adverse effects (AFAICT).

For a while my next door neighbour was an egg-farmer with tens of thousands of chickens under lay (both battery and free-range). He had (to me at the time) surprising attitudes towards the freshness of eggs (he reckoned that an egg could be 'too' fresh and that the shelf life of eggs was much longer than most people imagined).

He could also tell the age of a boiled egg according to the way the yolk formed at the edges (though I forget the details now).

Which brings us to the question - why do most of the world's retailers keep their eggs in a chiller, while those in the UK do not?

Because they shouldn't be chilled.

Nor should fresh fruit and vegetables. For example, buy some tomatoes and put half in the fridge and leave half out. Couple of days later taste each sample and you will appreciate the difference.

Which brings us to the question - why do most of the world's retailers keep their eggs in a chiller, while those in the UK do not?

Because it is so cold and miserable there you don't need a chiller. I remember defrosting a fridge and throwing the large ice pieces into the back garden, it took three days for them to melt away.

According to Harold McGee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_McGee), eggs should be kept in the carton in the refrigerator. Not because of bacterial contamination, but because eggs start to deteriorate as soon as they are laid, and some of these changes have "deleterious" consequences for the cook.

Because the yolk "breathes", or expires carbon dioxide (which is a weak acid when dissolved in the internal liquids), both the yolk and white get more alkaline over time. This means that the white gets thinner (the albumen proteins repel each other more strongly at a higher pH so tend not to form clusters) and the yolk membrane gets weaker as water passes from albumen to yolk. So the white will be runnier and the yolk is more likely to break.

Probably doesn't make much difference if you're boiling, scrambling or making custard. But if you want to make a meringue, soufflé or cake, or you like your poached/fried eggs neat and compact, buy the highest-grade eggs and use them as soon as possible.

One could always bury them in the ground for a hundred years before eating of course.:rolleyes:

Not because of bacterial contamination, but because eggs start to deteriorate as soon as they are laid, and some of these changes have "deleterious" consequences for the cook.True; of course all eggs "go off" but keeping eggs in the refrigerator also impairs their taste and texture.

Moral of the story? Acquire eggs ( no-one 'round here buys them!!), keep in cupboard and use within 7-10 days.

Cheers

Whirls

One could always bury them in the ground for a hundred years before eating of course.

The Chinese are masters of the art when it comes to preserving food. Not a skill that's much in demand in the Draper household, as we know. :rolleyes:

The first recorded use of an ice house was in a Chinese poem in 1100BC.

That'll be where they get those Chinese 1000 yr old eggs then? :}

Actually, Mr Pharter, it's 3,000 years, if you include the time they've been buried in the ground. :rolleyes:

Buy good quality duck eggs. Use 'em wherever you'd use hens' eggs. They taste better, the high fat content makes for superb hollandaise and they cost no more than large free-range hens' eggs.

Get poncey and make kedgeree with quails' eggs. Fiddly but nice.

Gull eggs are nice, but gull meat is vile. :yuk:

Penguin eggs taste of fish.

Moral of the story? Acquire eggs ( no-one 'round here buys them!!), keep in cupboard and use within 7-10 days.


Try that on a polar icebreaker on a six-month trip. Will they be poached right out from under the hen? No, but after a time, any egg is a good egg, except a rotten egg.
Try it in the tropics.
It works in certain latitudes, but it don't work everywhere. No less a luminary than Jacques Pepin suggests bringing them to room temperature before cooking, which would make one draw the inference that he chills them.

One has a large lump of Aberdeen Angus int freezer,it wont be around long enough to go orf.
:rolleyes:

No less a luminary than Jacques Pepin suggests bringing them to room temperature before cooking, which would make one draw the inference that he chills them.

umm-lifting, bravo! I think you have just answered the $64,000 question. When it comes to the handling of eggs, I guess it's best not to put all your eggs in one basket. :p

The trouble with bringing them to room temp. before cooking though, is this: on a workday, who has the time to let them sit outside the fridge for an hour? :uhoh:

Anyway, as much as I would have liked an egg this morning, I couldn't bear it. lol! Just toast and coffee. Lunch will be the rest of the chicken on the salad greens. Now that the chicken's gone, I'll have to get creative with those other protein choices.

Dinner? Don't know yet.

,,,didya hear the one about the folk dance team from the San Sebastian area that got jammed in the revolving door of the small hotel they were staying in, in Paris. No?

The moral of the tale is..... wait for it.



Don't put all your Basques in one exit!


Eyethangu.

The Ancient Mariner

One point so far missed about 100/1000/3000 year old eggs is that, in reality, they are placed in a bottomless bucket,sunk in a hole in the ground, filled with wood ash and charcoal and the men of the household then pee over them! This is the 'aging' process!

Bon appetit!:E

Ancient Greek fertility ritual, eh?

V2-OMG, i could'nt see any BEER on your list.

GOOD LUCK:{

Trouble with keeping eggs in the fridge is if they are placed straight into boiling water the shells often crack. I put them in warm water for a few minutes first and add a few drops of vinegar to the sauce pan.

I've seen people boiling eggs together with vegetables in the same pan.:yuk:

Well, I managed to walk by my favourite sushi place at noon....and kept on going, as hard as it was. What a trooper! lol!

I was craving pasta for dinner; had the spaghetti but no pasta sauce or ingredients for making my own. Anyway, I came across this recipe in an old cookbook - spaghetti sauce made with tomato soup! (I had soup in the cupboard and lots of spices and condiments.)

The ingredients seemed a bit bizarre; I would put cinnamon and cloves in an apple pie, but in spaghetti sauce?

But I have to tell you, it was delicious! This living with less isn't bad at all.

Try this sometime!

Tomato Soup Spaghetti Sauce

1 medium onion cut up
1 can tomato soup
3/4 cup water
3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. cloves

Combine all ingredients in blender. Pour into saucepan and simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.

Trouble with keeping eggs in the fridge is if they are placed straight into boiling water the shells often crack.
Delia Smith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Smith#Chef.2C_author_and_TV_personality)
Soft-boiled eggs
Place the eggs in the saucepan, cover them with cold water by about 1/2 inch (1cm), place them on a high heat and, as soon as they reach boiling point, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and give the following timings:
3 minutes if you like a really soft-boiled egg
4 minutes for a white that is just set and a yolk that is creamy.
5 minutes for a white and yolk perfectly set, with only a little bit of squidgy in the centre.

Hard-boiled eggs
Some people hate soft-boiled eggs and like to eat them straight from the shell, hard-boiled. All well and good, but if you want to use hard-boiled eggs in a recipe and have to peel them, this can be extremely tricky if the eggs are too fresh. The number one rule, therefore, is to use eggs that are at least five days old from their packing date. The method is as follows: place the eggs in a saucepan and add enough cold water to cover them by about 1/2 inch (1cm). Bring the water up to simmering point, put a timer on for 6 minutes if you like a bit of squidgy in the centre, 7 minutes if you like them cooked through. Then, the most important part is to cool them rapidly under cold running water. Let the cold tap run over them for about 1 minute, then leave them in cold water till they're cool enough to handle - about 2 minutes. Once you've mastered the art of boiling eggs you can serve them in a variety of ways, and one of my favourites is in a curry.

Peeling hard-boiled eggs
The best way to do this is to first tap the eggs all over to crack the shells, then hold each egg under a slow trickle of running water as you peel the shell off, starting at the wide end. The water will flush off any bits of shell that cling on. Then back they go into cold water until completely cold. If you don't cool the eggs rapidly they will go on cooking and become overcooked, then you get the black-ring problem.

If the eggs are very fresh (less than four days old), allow an extra 30 seconds on each timing.

She seems to have missed out the instructions aimed at grannies who like to suck eggs Mr G-C.:rolleyes:

Dippy eggs in a Cornishware egg cup with well-done buttered soldiers.

Not picky me.

http://www.lambs-stamford.co.uk/images/ww/cw_strt_egg_cups.jpg

Yer Mr T,a china egg cup has to be blue and white,other colours just do not work for some reason, one's egg and soldiers just do not taste the same.
:)

1/2 head lettuce

Hmm, got this vision of John Wayne telling a bunch of blokes he's got 3,000 head of lettuce to drive to some railhead...


Sorry V2, back to your normal programming...:)

Hmm, got this vision of John Wayne telling a bunch of blokes he's got 3,000 head of lettuce to drive to some railhead...

Gainey, LOL! "Home, home on the range".....pardon me....."romaine, where the greens and the lettuce play..."

North Americans always refer to a head of lettuce or head of cabbage, celery etc. What do UKers call it?

Today I am working from home, so the egg is sitting at room temp. for an hour before boiling.....unless parabellum would like to come and p!ss on them first. :ooh:

refer to a head of lettuce or head of cabbage, celery etc. Same . . .

G-CPTN, thanks.

I'm going to try blinkin' vegetarian meatballs tonight using breadcrumbs, ground frozen veggies and egg.

It will either be :yuk: or :ok:.

I'll let y'all know; I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath! lol!

Anyway, I came across this recipe in an old cookbook - spaghetti sauce made with tomato soup! (I had soup in the cupboard and lots of spices and condiments.)

As suggested in my earlier post! :rolleyes:

What do UKers call it?A lettuce, a cabbage, celery ...

Once got confused between a head of garlic and a clove ... but it was a cracking curry.

Cheers

Whirls

How come every time I discuss head I get slapped?

:}

Lack of any further description, perhaps? :p

actually, CoF I think too much description:}

:ouch:

Well, there you have it, PA... it's all in the marketing! :p ;)

I was late getting home because some guy was impaled by a fallen tree on the freeway. (I did get called to work later after that properly-cooked egg!)

The same tree must have taken out the power because when I came home, the place was colder than a witch's t!t. No electricity. No gas.
No stove or range top.

Do I eat my vegetarian meatballs raw?

Now, I can live without nukee/nookie (sp?) for a bit, but I think it is cruel and unusual punishment to live without nukee/nookie (sp?) and a hot meal on a cold spring evening. (For those in the UK who do not know what nukee/nookie (sp?) is, in your neck of the woods you call it "A bit of crumpet.")

And why be a martyr?

So, off to the Vietnamese place I go for a steaming bowl of Pho.

It was delicious.

When I got home, the power was back on and I had all the ingredients for the vegetarian meatballs at hand, so I decided to fry them up for the dog.
BTW, they weren't bad at all.

I might continue this experiment (another time, though).

Thanks for your suggestions and interest.

BTW, lassnow, I did appreciate your idea about reducing soup for a sauce, but that depends on the type of soup and what you plan to do with it. The tomato soup pasta sauce would have been a bit dull w/o those spices I added.

Oh....I don't think I'll ever look at an egg the same way again either. lol!

Happy cooking all!

V - instead of calling it 'nookie' a tried and trusted expression in the UK is ' shag', (a shag, had a shag, having a shag, fancying a shag, shagging etc. etc.).
Have to check my schedule and see if I can come and sort your eggs out!:E

For those in the UK who do not know what nukee/nookie (sp?)Nookie and we use the word as well .... it's derived from Dutch.

Cheers

Whirls

Have to check my schedule and see if I can come and sort your eggs out.
parabellum, sounds eggciting. Would you like it over easy or sunny-side up?

Whirls, I finally found my Concise Oxford Dictionary. They spell it as
nooky.

Oh well. Seems nukee/nookie/nooky is an "international" term (and activity).

BTW, lassnow, I did appreciate your idea about reducing soup for a sauce, but that depends on the type of soup and what you plan to do with it. The tomato soup pasta sauce would have been a bit dull w/o those spices I added.


If I need to get some calories inside me in a hurry:

1. Put pan on; boil water. Add salt OO to taste. Throw in pasta.
2. Second pan. Open tin of clam chowder soup. Heat.
3. Drain pasta.
4. Chuck contents of second pan on top.
5. Consume.

or

1. Put pan on; boil water. Add salt OO to taste. Throw in pasta.
2. 1. Put pan on; boil water. Add salt OO to taste. Throw in pasta.
3. Bung pasta back in pan
4. Throw contents of can of salmon on tap. Packet of smoked salmon would be nice.
5. Add cream. Canned is good but if you ain't got none some of that fresh stuff works.
6. Pepper and lime juice and any other spare condominiums.
7. Consume.

Hate pasta in all its forms,quite like noodles though,same stuff,very strange.:rolleyes:

In smaller Mexican towns, if you shop where the mamacitas shop for food, you will often find warm eggs.

Of a temperature only slightly lower than the chicken which just donated them.

I know they'll keep fine for a few days, never pushed it much past a long weekend.

Far more tasty than the chilled and sometimes quite old eggs here in the states.:ok:

When eggs are laid they are covered in a natural bloom which goes a long way towards keeping foreign smells and flavours out, but all the eggs you buy in a shop have been washed and the bloom is gone.

Nookie and we use the word as well .... it's derived from Dutch.
But then there's the village of Urlay Nook (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=urlay+nook&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=18.61907,38.496094&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Urlay+Nook,+Stockton-on-Tees,+United+Kingdom&ll=54.525067,-1.384234&spn=0.017808,0.037594&t=h&z=15) hard by Stockton, and we all know what they get up to in the mornings. ;)


Seriously though, have the contents of the original fridge been reduced to a few packs of dog food yet?

Lars: major recipe malfunction there. Add the drained pasta to the soup, not the other way round. That way you only have one soupy pot to wash, instead of two. :ok:

Hmm, got this vision of John Wayne telling a bunch of blokes he's got 3,000 head of lettuce to drive to some railhead...


Reminds me ........ many moons ago used to like taking Iceburg lettuce home to UK from the US. a bit of a delicacy to the UK folks in those days.

Then UK Customs got all snotty and decreed that such produce could only be imported if accompanied by some psychophyso - can't spell the rest of it - certificate stating that said lettuce was devoid of all sorts of nasty diseases, and obviously the US Supermarkets, Vons, Publix, whatever, couldn't provide that, so one attempted - sometimes successfully - to smuggle them home, all that happened if one was caught was that said lettuce was confiscated and obviously enjoyed by the Customs hofficers family that night. ( pls. don't try to tell me otherwise )

One day, in Seattle, was walking down the street back to the hotel with the illegal head of lettuce to pack in my suitcase, disguised as a dirty shirt - or worse - when I espied an office of the US Dept of Agriculture, so went in and asked the hofficer if it was possible to get a psychophyso - certificate to export / import lettuce to the UK ?

Of course, was the answer, the very dept. - whereupon he inserted about 10 sheaves of paper and carbon paper ( IBM hadn't invented photo-copiers then ) into a large Remington typewriter and proceeded to bash away with questions and answers for about 10 minutes, then asked how many containers, and how many gross of lettuce I intended to export ?

Just the one head, I replied.

You can fill in the blanks for yourself for a few minutes, but he eventually saw the funny side, and having written up most of the document decided to complete it !

I emerged with two copies of the doc. the remainder winging their way to Washington I guess, and triumphantly declared one head of Iceberg lettuce on my Crew Customs form on arrival at London.

The UK guy immediately declared that he must impound the illegal lettuce, as I had to have the required psycho - form, which I proudly produced.

Collapse of stout party, one hungry Customs family that night and one smug feeling ExS. !!

Won one.

( True story )

That way you only have one soupy pot to wash, instead of two.

No pots at all for me to wash. The yayah does 'em!

We have an arrangement. The one who does the cooking puts their feet up at the end of the meal. The one who didn't cook washes the pots and pans. Metro-Man and Metro-Woman, me and the misssus. :ok:

Of course, when we were expats, Missus supervised the cooking and Rosalina washed the pots and pans on a CAYGo basis, while one sat on the verandah with the dog and one's sundowner until the gong called one in for dinner. No punkah-wallah though. One just can't get the staff these days and the electric fan just isn't the same. :rolleyes: