Esther77's Profile

Store cupboard stuff, and less than 10 minutes to get on the plate:

Mini pasta shapes (you could use big ones of course...) cooked in a minimal amount of chicken stock, add some veggies (you can use frozen mixed veg if there isnt any fresh in the house) in so it all finishes cooking together, and most of the stock has been absorbed/boiled down. Add in a couple of eggs in a gap in the pan, and et them cook (it'll be a bt of nearly poaching in the remaining liquid...) give it all a mix, and then grate some strong cheese in, and let it all melt.

It sounds gross, and quite frankly it Proably could look prettier, but it tases delicious, and I'm always secretly very happy if my toddler can't manage to eat all hers!

I second the freezing aspect- I make a triple batch of stuff, and 2 go in the freezer - so no one gets bored of the same stuff several days in a row - that or it'll be bolognese/Italian flavoured one night, and then it'll be chilli/ Mexican flavoured another!

I'm sorry, but as far as I understood, a "Sanger" is an Australian term for a sausage! My 18 month old asks for a "sammo" when she wants a sandwich, and I fully expect that given time, her language will evolve and it'll become "sammich" and then progress onto sandwich. I don't mind the word sammich, it sounds like the actual word, just spoken quickly.

I don't understand the point of making a new word for something, unless it involves less syllables than the original word... Sandwich isn't exactly difficult to say, unless of course, you're about 18 months old, and still getting to grips with it all!

I'm sorry, but picture 5 - storage by the door... If there's enough space in your pantry to have your mixing bowls side by side on a shelf of their own, rather than stacked inside each other (they're nesting ones... It's kind of in the name) then you have lots of space in your kitchen!

I live in a city in the UK, and I pay £1.00 for a half dozen from a lady down the road. Local free range eggs in the supermarket cost about £1.75... $7 for a dozen sounds like a lot! $6 a dozen doesn't sound half as bad!

@davidalex: Our landlord had the whole house fitted with shades similar to this: http://www.johnlewis.com/149191/Product.aspx
When we moved in. They were fine for a while, but I got fed up of them- they cut out a lot of the light (I recognise that this is some of the purpose, but...) and it felt quite dingy in some of the rooms. They also *really* collect the dust (and the odd dead moth...) which isn't something I twigged for a while! We still have them in the bedrooms, but in the living area, we switched to normal lampshades.

I'm going to agree with the cherry pitter! Mine is a thing of Swiss beauty... I use it for cherries and wild plums (theyre a bit bigger than a cherry, but still fit) - its not a long season for either fruit, but well worth it.

As for strawberries, I just pull the green tops off... Are the hulls really that bad?

@jmorris: you weren't the only one! And no one really ever made an effort to correct the misconception either!

I wouldn't call welsh rarebit "pub food" though... Fish and chips, a good pie, or a ploughmans, yes, but not a rarebit - that's more home food than pub!

And I agree with evening shift's first comment - pubs ave been doing food for ages

We can't get it here in the UK. My brother in law loves Lotus biscuits, and when I found out about this stuff we ordered some from Belgium (the company delivers internationally, it wasn't cheap...) we ordered some for ourselves to make it worth the postage.

It's nice, and goes very quickly! However, I've also used it to make a cheesecake with.

Using Lotus biscuits for the base, a thin layer of apple purée with raisins, then a vanilla cheesecake with lotus spread swirled in (I warmed it up first to make it easier to get in, but probably shouldn't have, as it was too runny). It tasted great, and I was glad I put the apple in, but the apple kind of split the cheesecake with the excess moisture, so it needs work...

This isn't surprising to me... Those dolls from the dolls houses have to go out somewhere! Also, the dolls houses where often impressive replicas of the owners actual house. I seem to remember playing with a small grocers stand when I was little - probably at a family friends house.

I should also mention that while normally hundreds and thousands equate to sprinkles, in sweet shop terms hundreds and thousands are tiny sweets (candies) also sometimes known as sherbet pips. Tiny (about a quarter inch) balls in pastels colours of fruit flavoured candy. They were (and still are every now and then!) my favourite- so many sweeties in a quarter!

I'm going to echo the ploughmans, or Cornish pasty suggestions.
However, When I was at school, I would make a weeks worth of sandwiches on a Sunday night, and they'd all go in the freezer- grated cheese and pickle, mainly. I'd take a pack out in the morning, and by lunch they'd be defrosted. I think that actually you could do this with lots of things, as small eat in the hand sized things will defrost fairly quickly.