Sian's Profile

I don't think that lunch is an inherently boring meal but I do think the lack of time we have for it (whether making it or even eating it) does often make it boring.

I love classic lunch dishes such as quiche, many soups, substantial salads, cold meats, dips, a well-made sandwich, pork pies, ploughmans lunch...

But usually end up with the same cheese sandwich - nice bread, nice cheese, a piece of lettuce and some homemade chutney - its a good sandwich, but everyday does get rather boring. If I had the spare cash and a nice cafe around the corner I'd love to do lunch that way.

I agree with the people who say it breaks up the day though, that's a nice feeling!

In middle eastern groceries it may well be called 'Mograbiah' - its original Arabic name before Israelis assimilated it into their food culture.

You can also use the very small italian/greek pasta shapes such as orzo if you can't find giant couscous - I really like to mix regular and giant in the same salad for the different textures you get from it and sometimes use orzo if that's all I have in.

Yes kitchen's can definitely be too big. I recently moved from a box kitchen to one three times the size - the extra counter space (and double oven!) is great BUT I do a LOT of cooking (bread, roast and cake can all be on the go some sundays!). And even then I was fairly happy in the minute kitchen most of the time (its not why we moved).

Efficiency and tidiness is key though, I've also stayed in a few houses with huge kitchens that I found really stressful to cook in - they were 'too' big for me, but the stressful bit was that the extra cupboard space just allowed the owner to hoard which mean you just couldn't find any cooking implements in her overstuffed cupboards - I had full cupboards in my box kitchen but they were full of things I truly needed - in my newer kitchen I have the same amount of stuff but neatly and spaciously stored in the cupboards. My aunt's house has cupboards overflowing with 3 broken kitchenaids, 2 dusty blenders etc.

Do dishes with a little bit of meat where the main star is the vegetables to showcase the veg whilst still giving him the umani he probably likes from the meat - like a posh main course salad with high quality ham.

Aubergine dishes always go down well with meat eaters I think - pasta alla norma, or roasted aubergine (with a charmoula marinade?) with a pilaf on the side?

I'm glad this has been tested, I agree with breezyslp. I made my boyfriend (who gets hayfever) try this 2 years in a row (I really wanted it to be true!) and it didn't affect his allergies at all so I wondered whether that was coincidence or common. I know an anecdote doesn't carry as much weight as a study, but just sayin' :oP

I'm going to be boring and say practice. My boyfriend grew up eating sliced bread until he moved in with me, and at first he couldn't slice it thinly and cleanly. Now he can - it came eventually.

I think foodefafa has a good description of how to slice bread well there in the 2nd paragraph.

The only two times I've had it was a hit, once was horseradish ice cream (on the side with some beef), the other was a cone of pea ice cream with a rasher of candied bacon, courtesy of Heston Blumenthal. Pea ice cream works very well because peas are naturally sweet.

I think some places go too far with the concept and it gets a bit gimmicky though.

Its a feather - really cute and not urgh at all!

I second 'dough'. I learnt to cook from Delia Smith's 'How to Cook' series which explain the technical stuff very well - especially the chapter on eggs (she goes through boiling an egg, frying, scrambling, whisking egg whites... with nice recipes to use this skills with).

I agree, its a bit too acidic for me in the morning. It's nice on holiday though (probably because that's usually brunch!).

Not that fussed about the calories but its a shame to miss out on most of the fibre that the whole piece of fruit has - I don't think its as healthy as people think.