Cheaper food

I tend to treat food with the following thought.

The more an ingredient is going to be "mucked about with", the cheaper it can be.

Roast chicken a little butter and "Free Range",
just remove the wish bone.
Chicken "Curry" / "KFC" cheap chicken but fresh spices.
The delicate advantages of free range would be overwhelmed by the spices.

Grill Fillet steak, I like my with the moo left in.
Or fry and de-glaze with double cream and a little "French Mustard" for a sauce.
Stewed beef / Steak and Kidney I use shin, even available in the super market but labelled as "Stewing Beef", but not pre diced.

I normally buy and joint my chickens but you can get the occasional bargain with frozen chicken breasts.
I also buy whole pieces of meat then trim and dice myself.

If you want rump steak for a group,
buy a joint and slice it yourself.

The savings on home butchery are amazing.

Here is a link for a master class of 12 mins for jointing a chicken.
It takes me less than 5 mins.

How to butcher a Chicken Video


Seezya Les

Petrol Prices

We are being warned that petrol prices are rising.
Ah not news but speculation.

I believe they will continue to rise in the UK.
Until once again a "government tax rise" will take it over a major milestone.

Then the poor poor oil companies will lament;
" Its not our fault we didn't take the price over, it was taxation".

Wait and see £5.50 a UK Gallon.
Oh that's 121.14 p a litre.


Les

Food for thought

Until 1800, cookery was so dangerous that it was the second commonest cause of death among women (after childbirth).

Their skirts caught on the open fires of the hearth.

Deaths were dramatically reduced by the invention of the closed range by

George Bodley in 1802.

But this was not the AGA

Dr. Gustaf Dalen, a Swedish man, and also a Nobel Prize Winner, was the great mind behind the aga.

AGA actually stands for Aktiebolaget Gas Accumulator, the name of the company. It was the year 1922 when the design was complete,

and it was the aga cooker.

A kitchen appliance that could handle every culinary technique,

heat the house with it’s constant heat and also aid with the washing,

drying and pressing of clothes.

The hotplate and the rails on the front of the aga enabled the quick drying of clothes, and it could also allow for the clothes to pressed.

It was on constantly, heating the house during the cold months and could also be used to heat water for washing, not just dishes and laundry, but for personal washing as well.

Les

A Roast Chicken

The other evening I fancied Roast Chicken, for one!

So here is a full step by step.

Remember this is for ONE



Potatoes

Peel and steam a two or three potatoes until fully cooked, they don’t break up when steamed, and steam times are one and a half boil time.

So that’s 20 mins + 10 mins = 30mins from water boiling.

Note boil water while peeling cutting and rinsing.

Keep cooking water.

Remove potatoes, in the steamer insert, cover with tea towel until dry.

Find just right size tin, a “Frey Bentos pie” (must ask Shirley which pastry they use?) tin does just for me for this quantity, try to find the tin after peeling and cutting and before any cooking then you can always add an extra to fit.

Add one cm to half inch fat I use dripping but it’s only once a month.



Chicken

Put

half a lemon (wax free)

Half an onion

Pinch dried sage

Inside 1 Kg chicken, Brought to room temperature.

Note roasting time 75 mins at 180C so 15mins each breast up, left side, right side, back up, finally breast up again. Plus 15 mins extra to rest.



Veggies are frozen, I prefer frozen as then have I have zero wastage.

I keep cauliflower, broccoli, sprouts, peas, special mixed, in the main.

Steam and keep water again.



Yorkshire pud for one

one egg, quarter cup each plain flour and semi skimmed milk.

I have found the standard egg is one quarter cup in volume. So 2 eggs = half cup, 4 eggs = full cup.

Sometimes I use part milk and part, beer / stock/ water, up to the total liquid volume.

A sprinkle of cheese as the Yorkshires go into the oven are often appreciated, try when doing individuals half and half, and gauge response.

Whisk milk and egg together, sieve and whisk flour in stages too much at once goes lumpy. whisk until frothy.

Or sieve flour into bowl and add egg/s and beat well then add rest of liquid in steps.

Leave as long as possible, overnight is not too long, in the, refrigerator, re whisk from time to time i.e. leave the whisk in to save washing up.

Another FB tin needed no fat yet.

When adding batter to fat do on the stove top to keep fat very hot.



Right that’s the prep and notes done:



Times for a 5:00 sit down



2:30 oven on, peel and leave cut pots under water.

Make up Yorkshire batter.



3:00 boil kettle put pots in steamer, add boiling water bring back to boil cover and start 30min timer.



3:15 chicken in, potato tin in, yorky tin in.



3:30 turn chicken check pots.



3:40 or Ping dry off pots



3:45 Shake to roughen the edges. Add to hot fat baste. Turn chicken.



4:00 turn chicken, baste pots,



4:15 last turn chicken, strain 3mm to eighth inch fat into yorky tin on stove top,remove all possible fat from pots replace pots in oven, heat yorky fat very hot pour yorky batter into tin and straight into oven.



START 15 MINUTE TIMER

Why? Because if you open the door earlier the puddings will collapse.



Ping quickly remove chicken, close do not slam oven.



Cover chicken and rest.



Panic is now over restart timer



Reheat veg water add veggies of desire, leave to steam



Ping turn off oven and crack open door. Too allow slow cool down, that darn yorky again.



Remove steamer insert drain chicken juices into veggie water. Bring to hard fast boil taste think about seasoning but do not add, yet a splash of alcohol something is okay.



Cut chicken in half with shears, plate one half, plate veggies, plate pots, plate yorky.



Taste gravy again, pour into a gravy separator (I use this one), pour over or round, according to your foible, the meal and add a twist of sea/rock salt, twist of pepper, twist of chilli flakes for a little kick, enjoy.

Thoughts etc

Please try without adding anything else to the gravy you will be surprised how fresh it tastes.

I told you to taste again and again to understand this isn’t just “Gravy”.

I do not use salt in cooking; I find that the twists gives sudden bursts of flavour intermittently throughout the meal, rather than a overall background.

If you add granules you have wasted the stock, boil a kettle and use a jug if you must.

And I find Bisto, tastes like Oxo, like Supermarket own, false.

Other times the veggie water will always help these pretenders.

What ever I cook I keep the real and pretend apart.

Use slaked corn flour to thicken, gravy browning to darken, if you must, as these add no taste.

When steaming use your eagle eye and use as little water as you can.

Bones simmered, after removing the lemon, for a little stock, if you didn’t interfere with the gravy yesterday add this as well.

Boiled bones go cloudy, boil to reduce after straining, don’t be greedy try and recover too much from the bones as the result is horrid.

To prove to yourself keep just the juices from the roast and compare to an over cooked carcase.

Definitely a case of less is more.

Then a nice soup for another day or a booster for something else.





The Next Day?

Fresh rolls needed for roast chicken rolls, must use butter.

With a little side salad, don’t hide the chicken.

Definitely a cure for back to work Monday!

Although I have done lunch and supper on a piggy day. Pass the wine Hic, oops.

This will be posted on both Shirley and my blogs, as it fits a common theme.

And knowing Shirley she will tell me how I could have fed the five thousand for a fortnight on these quantities.

Les

Editing a blog in word.

When a cut and paste from word to blogger is attempted.

What happens is not the desired result.

If you paste into “Blogger HTML” all formatting is lost.

If you paste into “Blogger Compose” Blogger has a hissy fit and by repeatedly forcing after while may publish. Sometimes not.

There is a way around this but so long as you can cut and paste it is relatively easy.

The cause of the problem is that blogger does not recognise all the “Hidden Tags” that word adds to describe the formatting of the document.

So these need to be removed.

How do we do this?

Compose and edit your post in word when you are happy Save if wanted.

Copy and paste into “Blogger Compose”.

Click on “HTML” there will be errors, do not worry

Copy the error riddled code.

Open wordoff web page

(http://wordoff.org/)

Paste the dodgy code and click clean up.

Now copy the clean code

Paste back into “Blogger HTML”

Click preview to check.

Publish

If you need to edit a blog.

Click”Compose”

Copy and paste into word

Then repeat above.

So in conclusion,

You need to move to and from word via “Blogger Compose”

You need to move to and from wordoff via “Blogger HTML”

Compose is the pretty way we understand the text

HTML is the way web sites know how to put the pretty onto a web page.

Les

Bogus iPad Offer on Facebook

Bogus iPad Offer on Facebook

A fake offer regarding the upcoming gadget from Apple, the iPad.

The team behind the spam sets up a Facebook page where it encourages a user to become a fan of its page. Then, it encourage the user’s friends to become fans of the page by letting the user invite them via a handy button. When a user do this process, it would supposedly increase his or her chances of being accepted for the iPad’s “Research Team”.

After all of those things occur, the next step shows a page that looks like an official Apple webpage. However, a pop-up survey would show up right after.

The pop-up survey includes a form to fill in a user’s contact information and it is trying to sign up the user for a premium rate cellphone service that charge approximately $10 a week.


Scams like these also happen on other social media sites such as Twitter. Five screenshots are included in the article. They show the Facebook page, a user’s invite form, the survey, the twitter post, and the webpage that users would see after clicking on the twitter post.

Different methods of cooking :

Bake : Cook in an oven

Bake in a bag - also called baking 'en papillote', to place something( normally fish) in a sealed foil or paper bag with seasonings and a little liquid and baking it in the oven until cooked.

Baste - to spoon hot fat or stock from the roasting tray over whatever you're roasting to moisten it and to encourage caramelisation

Bat out - to bash a piece of meat with a wooden mallet or a metal meat baton even a saucepan to make it thinner, before cooking.

Blacken - to coat a piece of fish or meat in a mixture of seasonings and cook in a hot pan without oil so the surface burns and turns black giving a charred flavour.

Blanch - to immerse briefly in boiling water either to cook (for vegetables) or to remove fat or salt (for meat)

Boil - to cover with cold water, bring to a rolling boil and cook until tender.

Braise - to cook meat or veg slowly, in a pot with a little liquid and a lid on until tender, either in the oven or on the stove

Broil - To grill

Brown - to fry or roast something in fat until it caramelises on the outside

Caramelise - to get the sugar on the surface of something to turn into caramel by frying, roasting, grilling or even blow torching in the case of tarts, poached fruit, meringues or crème brulees.

Ceviche - thinly sliced fish marinated in lemon or lime juice to partially cook it before eating. A method of cooking without heat.

Char - to burn part or all of the surface of whatever you are cooking until it turns into carbon

Chargrill - to cook something on heavy iron bars above a charcoal or gash eat. The surface of the food touching the bars chars and gives a smoky barbecue flavour

Cook down - to cook an ingredient or mixture of ingredients in a pan with the lid off until it reduces in volume

Deep fry - to immerse in hot oil and cook until crisp

Emulsify - to combine fat or oil and other liquids to make a stable suspension, often using egg yolks (mayonnaise)

Fry - to cook by placing in hot shallow pan with a little fat. Whatever you are cooking should end up slightly crisp and caramelised.

Grill - to cook by placing under a hot electric or gas element

Infuse - to immerse aromatic things like lemon zest, cinnamon sticks, vanilla pods or bunches of herbs, in hot liquids so that the liquid will take on their flavours.

Marinate - to immerse meat or fish in a seasoned liquid (a marinade), possibly containing oil, lemon juice or vinegar, spices, herbs and sometimes wine to tenderise and flavour it before cooking.

Par boil - to cover ingredients (normally vegetables) with cold water, bring to the boil and drain, to part cook them, often before roasting.

Poach - to immerse in hot liquid and simmer gently until cooked and/or tender

Pot roast - to roast in a pot with the lid on or off, with a little liquid added to baste the roast, keeping it moist and helping it caramelise.

Puree - a very smooth vegetable mash usually passed through a sieve to remove any lumps.

Reduce - to boil a liquid in a saucepan without a lid so that it evaporates, reduces in volume and concentrates in flavour.

Refresh - to immerse in ice cold water after blanching to preserve colour( in vegetables), and stop the cooking process.

Render - to cook a piece of fat, or meat with fat around it by a frying, steaming, boiling or roasting so that the fat melts and can be either discarded or kept for cooking purposes.

Rest - to take a piece of meat out of the oven once it's finished cooking and keep it warm for 10 minutes or so before serving. The fibres of the meat which are tensed up by the heat of the oven relax and the meat becomes more tender.

Roast - to cook in the oven with fat to help whatever you're cooking caramelise and crisp.


Roux - a mixture of butter and flour fried together to thicken a sauce (like Bechamel), stew or soup.

Rub - mixture of herbs and spices which is rubbed on food before cooking to give it a tasty crust.

Sear - to fry in very little oil, briefly on a fierce heat.

Season - to flavour with salt and pepper before or after cooking.

Simmer - to boil very gently so only a few bubbles appear on the surface of the liquid .

Slowcook - to roast, simmer, braise or stew very gently for a long time.

Soak - to immerse dried things like beans, lentils, salt cod or mushrooms in water until they're ready to be cooked.

Steam - to place ingredients in a pot or basket with small holes in the bottom over a pan of boiling water so they cook in the steam.

Stew - to cook meat or veg slowly, covered with liquid, in a pot either in the oven or on the stove.

Sweat - to cook vegetables, gently, in a pot until they are soft and squashy without any colour. A lid and a cartouche help this process by keeping any steam generated inside the pot.


Tray bake - a method of cooking where the meat or fish and the accompanying vegetables are all cooked in the one tray in the oven.

Les

Food again

Names do not matter

Don't get confused with names. They are diabolical inventions to ensure you remain puzzled. Do you honestly believe a half a foot long French name has any function but offer an excuse to rip you off ?


Let's look at a salad and a sandwich. Salad conjures up a certain image and Sandwich conjures up a different image right? Now remove the crusts of bread from the sandwich. Has it become more like a salad? Or take any salad and place it between bread. Do you see the metamorphosis of a salad becoming a sandwich ?

Let us continue on the salad theme for a while. A soup is nothing but a liquid salad or risotto is nothing but a salad where rice dominates. Or if you think in-terms of sandwiches, risotto is a sandwich where rice takes the place of bread as a major ingredient.

The basics can be learnt in a few minutes

Eat them raw.

If you are hungry, you can snack on many veggies, fruit, even raw boiled pasta or raw cooked rice, cold tinned beans. All tinned food has been cooked.

Now as most of us aren't exactly starving when we sit for a meal, we need stuff slightly fancy to make it more edible. We learnt to heat foods to improve their tastes. Now this heating can be done in many ways like baking, stir-frying, microwaving, frying, steaming etc etc. But the basic principle of heating ( or cooling ) food to improve its taste hasn't changes in a million years.

So if you cant eat the raw, you cook them.

The less hungry we are, the more fancy the meal we demand. Maybe that explains why Cleopatra drank pearls dissolved in vinegar. As we prospered, we grew less hungry and went beyond raw food to cooked food. Now the next step was flavour.

If you cant eat them cooked either, try flavouring them

A ton of spices have been discovered and cultivated with the sole aim of making foods palatable.

If you cant eat them still, try mixing a few stuff together.

If they remain inedible, probably mixing them with better tasting stuff will make them edible.

So I guess we went through four phases, each phase becoming shorter and shorter

Phase 1 : Eat them Raw
Phase 2 : Eat them cooked
Phase 3 : Flavour them
Phase 4 : Mix stuff together.

Foodstuffs and way of cooking the evolved in different countries , in different ways, leading to the 'cuisines' we have today.

Les

I

We have all said

"I must"


I am Able.
I Can.
I Do.
I Endevour.
I Have.
I Love.
I Must.
I Never.
I Quit.
I Rarely.
I Shall.
I Trust.
I Will.

Are these the same?

Seezya Les

Help

Be Smart

• Be very careful when clicking on any advertisements, many are fake and will take you to a virus download
• Be very careful when “googling” anything, just because it’s at the top of your Google search, doesn’t mean it’s “virus free”
• If you see any type of “scan” started when you go to a website, do not touch anything! These are definitely fake and will download a virus if you touch any part of the screen. Right now, it’s “fake” (appearing to be real)
• Change all of your email passwords, make sure they are unique and are not the same as your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn accounts
• Many email accounts are getting hacked into, so be very careful when getting emails from friends with “just a link” in it. The hackers are getting lazy and not even sending out text anymore. Just a link, be careful!

If you happen to see an attack/infection going on, your best bet to stop it:
• Press the “Alt and F4” at the same time on your keyboard.
• This shuts down the active window.
• Repeat until back to desktop.
• OR
• Press the “control, alt and delete” buttons” at the same time on your keyboard or…put your mouse down on the bottom of your screen (the task bar) and right click
• Press the “Alt and F4”
• Start “Task manager”.
• Go to the “applications tab” and then you will see what you have going on with your computer.
• Click on the Internet E or Firefox and then hit “end process”. Do it for all of them.
• You will see the scan windows go away.
• Update your antivirus software and do a scan
Now, you may or may not be infected still. If you do all of the above and see symptoms of a new program on your computer or it acting very slow, then you probably have a virus.

You can do the following:
• Ignore it and it will get worse, no question
• Fix it yourself, some of you can do a good job with that
• Get a kid to fix it, not a good idea
• Send me the details for more help
Les

The Quack

I have been put under a new regime of tests and drug changes.

Some of which require me to stay indoors.


If you think I am ignoring you.

You are correct.

Don't take it personally.
I am ignoring all but,friends and family.

I will deal as and when.

Sorry chaps and chapesses.


Seezya
Les

COO

I watched Horizon on BBC2 tonight.
It was about food and cooking.

A couple of the experiments stood out.
Firstly a human could not eat enough raw food to be able to extract sufficient day to day energy.
Secondly if mice were given cooked yams to the same weight as raw, they could trundle the exercise wheel far further and put on weight.

This tends to suggest, logically to me, that cooking is a pre digestion activity.

So the act of cooking, along with processing, makes the food more digestible, taste better and make many toxins safe.
As we throw so much food away it could also explain the dramatic rise in the urban fox population.

To calculate the amount of calories in food, it is burnt and the energy released is measured.
Cooking food does not add calories to food.

So could it be that it is not the amount of calories contained in a sample of food that is the problem.
But the quantity of energy derived by the body from food, that causes you to get fat??

Also as we have been cooking food for such a long time it may well explain why our gut is too short to be vegetarian and too long to be carnivore?

Les

Hospital Food?

The NHS has come under fire for undermining the fight against obesity by allowing Burger King restaurants inside hospitals.

Fat's not right: Campaigners say NHS should be leading by example.

Out of 170 NHS Trusts, 40 rent space to chains including Burger King, Starbucks, Subway and Upper Crust. More are expected to open.

Is this to supplement to poor food served by the Hospital?
Or is it a money making exercise?


Department of Health said in a statement

Obesity is on the up
"Our obesity strategy says that we expect the public sector to lead by example. The NHS has a responsibility to provide healthy and nutritious food for staff, patients and visitors.
"The NHS locally can choose to have shops and catering outlets in their hospitals. These outlets provide important services for patients, visitors and staff as well as generating income for the NHS."
Profits must go back to local health services it, added.
"It is for the local NHS to decide which outlets are given space and to enter into appropriate contracts, but goods or services should not conflict with the ethos and objectives of health and well-being," the statement said.
"Hospitals need to honour historic contracts that they have already entered into, but given the importance of the obesity strategy today it would be hard for any NHS organisation to justify entering into a new contract with a fast food restaurant."
Mayday hospital Croydon confirmed it had a Burger King outlet but said its own restaurant offered low-fat foods.
"Mayday's main entrance is leased to a private company which rents retail space to a variety of food and non-food outlets providing choice for visitors, staff and any patients who may be well enough to leave the ward," a spokeswoman said.
Last year, 8,085 people were admitted to hospital in England for obesity related conditions, according to NHS figures.
The health service's website advises people to "cut down on high fat snacks, junk food and ready meals, as they are often packed with fat, high levels of sugar and salt".

Les