WHAT DID WE HAVE FOR TEA?

[Stanley]

Liz. I think it's closely related to a problem you can hit with industrial steam boilers. If you have undissolved solids in the water, regardless of the fact that it is under high pressure it can froth up and get carried over. You get a similar thing with soup but in the case of a pressure cooker there is no flow and the solids build up in the entrance to the safety valve and cause a slight but significant blockage. When the valve lifts this enters the valve and restricts the flow to atmosphere. This in turn means that the pressure can build in the cooker until it is slightly above the designed pressure and at that point the valve, instead of lifting, is physically blown off the lid and the explosive decompression encourages more foaming and the result is a soup covered ceiling. The nearest thing to this in ordinary life is popping the cork off a warm bottle of champagne that has been agitated. The safeguard when cooking soup in a pressure cooker is to bring it up to full pressure very slowly to minimise foaming.
Despite this, my pea soup is good. I had the remainder of my ham hock with tomato on a butty for dinner and for tea another helping of Carrots, cauliflower and the pea soup as a sauce.

[Stanley]

The pea soup is keeping me going. I had it with the remains of the cauli and carrots for dinner and as a filling in a butty for tea. Must be the cheapest grub ever! (And very tasty!)

[Stanley]

Last of the pea soup for dinner and a butty made with two small rashers of bacon and two fried tomatoes for tea. Bacon and well-fried tomatoes..... food for the Gods!

[Stanley]

Butchers is closed this week for September Holiday. No meat in my newly cleared out freezer so I started the day yesterday by frying onions in olive oil until they were slightly brown, then tipped in a can of chopped tomatoes and some vinegar. While this was arguing with itself I grilled eight sausages and cut them into bite sized chunks, the whole lot transferred to a pan, Oxo cubes and a good portion of curry spices dropped in and then onto the stove in the front room to simmer slowly until dinnertime. Slow cooking encourages the magic to happen! Dinner was a very small helping of the straight result. Tea was chips with the mixture used as a sauce, lovely stuff.....

[Stanley]

Dinner was a butty made with the sausage and onion sauce. I had the remainder for tea with chips. It had improved in keeping!

[PanBiker]

I'm making our Jack Kangaroo meatballs and pasta,he's bulking up on his carbs and protein this week before he and Carla take part in the Great North Run on Sunday.

I'm having curried sausage and bean stir from a previous batch out of the freezer.

[Stanley]

Mashed potatoes and kipper fillets cooked in butter sauce for dinner. Grilled sausages and mash for tea....

[LizG]

A friends son went fishing off Portland in Victoria and caught a 132kg blue fin tuna, and he doesn't eat fish!! he just likes fishing. He gave it all to his Mum to hand out to her friends. I am now the proud owner of 3 very large pieces of this tuna. Tonight we are having tuna coated in sesame seeds and cooked on the BBQ, with salad - can't wait.

[Stanley]

A very expensive fish Liz! Hope you enjoyed it.
I had sausage and mash with a tin of mackerel fillets in tomato sauce mashed in with the spuds for dinner. For tea I had the last of the mash, three small sausages and baked beans.

[Marilyn]

Salmon patties, mash, baby peas and the rest of last night's Broccoli/Cauliflower Cheese Bake.

[Stanley]

Nice to see I have company!



I decided to cook a batch of dried peas up yesterday. I put them on the stove in the front room with salt and bicarb in the water and here they are at 7 in the evening after sitting there all day without ever coming to a boil. I am not having a repeat of the last one!



I changed the water and popped a bunch of mint and some curry spices in and at 9Pm I fished out the soggy leaves and whizzed them up as they were soft. Here's what it looks like this morning, it tastes good!
Yesterday I had a bacon, tomato and egg butty on toast to finish the loaf off and had cauli steamed over boiling carrots for tea with a few of the soft peas on top. Caulis are still 49p....

[Marilyn]

I'm glad it tastes good, but it lacks a bit visually....

Price of Cauliflower here has stayed high all Winter, as has the price of Potatoes. Broccoli prices go up and down ( quality varies too) but those darn Spuds and Cauliflowers have caused a few groans every week. Butternut Pumpkin also ridiculously priced all Winter so certainly don't buy it every week like I used to. We've had a lot less Soup this Winter because of the veg prices...someone in the chain has become greedy and I doubt it is the farmers.

[Stanley]

I agree about the way it looks Maz. (Anything with black pudding in is even worse!)
We've had a good year for veg. Caulis and carrots have been lovely and cheap, that's why I have been eating them so often. I like the way you can steam the cauli over a pan of carrots so it's easy and efficient to cook them. I have some left over from yesterday and can see exactly what I will be having to eat today.... Very nutritious, low fat and dead easy. What more could a bloke cooking for himself want! (And cheap.... ) By the way, I have just checked and my 28lb bag of dried peas was packed in July 2011 and marked best before December 2012. Kept in the right conditions they last forever!

[LizG]

Tonight we're having chicken pot stickers. I'd never heard of them until we went to Canada and a friend ordered them at the pub one night. Hope they taste OK, they were really fiddly to make.

The tuna we cooked the other night was beautiful. Hopefully my friend son will pass on more in the future.

[Stanley]

I'm Glad the Tuna was good Liz. You had the advantage of it being fresh as well. Have you seen the enormous prices sushi chefs pay for the fish in Japan?
Healthy eating yesterday.... I had enough cauli and carrots for both dinner and tea and topped them with pease pudding as a sauce. Totally fat and meat free and quite lovely! Butcher's day today. They have had a week off for September holidays so steak pudding is on the horizon! I'm ready for a refill of the freezer as well. I shall get mutton or two shear.... My favourite meat!

[Marilyn]

Chicken Pot Stickers...they are a sort of dumpling/wanton aren't they?
How did they go?
What's in them? Are they like a Dim Sim type filling? ( or possibly I am confusing them with Chinese Dumplings).

[LizG]

You've got it in one. They are made with Gow Chee pastry, bought in packs of 30 from the supermarket. They tasted delicious and even though they were less than perfect looking they cooked up really well.

They've got the standard things in them - minced chicken, garlic (sorry, you could leave it out), ginger, oyster sauce, sesame seeds and wombok cabbage. The interesting thing was how they were cooked. You put half a tablespoon of oil and 1/2 cup of water in a fry pan, turned it on and put the pot stickers in. Cooked 5 minutes with the lid and 5 minutes without the lid and they came out steamed on the top with a fried crunchy bottom.

A definite repeat. Happy to provide the recipe if you would like.

[Marilyn]

Ah...I knew I had heard of them, though have never tried them.
Liz, I shall look up to see if I have a recipe and will be most grateful of yours if I don't. There will be no garlic of course, but I can add chilli/ginger for a bit of kick.
I love trying dishes like that, as I usually like them.

[Marilyn]

Shopping tomorrow. Ghow Gee wrappers...will keep my eye out. I am sure I have spotted them before ( eeee...think I may have bought them before actually but can't remember what I made with them).

[Stanley]

You lot are far more adventurous than I am! However, if I saw them in a restaurant I would try them.
I had meat pie with pease pudding for dinner and for tea I made a small teacake butty with pease pudding, boiled ham and a thick slice of raw onion.
I like raw onion in butties and onion rings in vinegar even better but being a cheapskate and always trying to cut down on waste I tried a new idea.



I hate using a lot of vinegar and ending up throwing it away. So yesterday I put some salt and vinegar in a small dish and have left the large onion in it. When I slice it for my butties today I think I'll have perfect onions in vinegar!
Every time I make p[ease pudding an old rhyming game goes through my head that we learned at school....


Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

[Marilyn]

I think your onion plan will work...I think it is very clever.

Didn't get the wrappers this week after all. Was shopping for the family BBQ tomorrow and was slightly pre-occupied with my list. I realised I had forgotten the wrappers as we were going through the checkout, but I wasn't going back for anything.
Next week is looking a bit calmer...so I shall look for them then. I had the feeling they were fresh/refrigerated and not frozen or shelf item?

[LizG]

The wrappers are in the refrigerated section of our supermarket.

[Stanley]

It worked like a charm Maz. I cut a slice off and put it back in the dish. I am old fashioned enough to think that raw onion is very good for us.... I wrote a reminder down for my shopping which says a lot about my cooking, it reads Oregano, Cumin and Garlic....
Had a boiled ham, pease pudding and onion teacake for dinner and tea. Kath gave me a past sell by date Jersey single cream on Friday so I had strawberries and cream for pudding at teatime.

[Marilyn]

Cold Pasta Salad this evening, with crumbed Chicken Breast fillets. I've made the salad and boiled a couple of eggs to cool as well...and I have crumbed the Chicken...so just have to cook that later. So all organised.
Just having a sneaky lay on the couch after cleaning through in the aftermath of having the "tin lids" here yesterday.
The beautiful sunny warmth of yesterday is declining rapidly as a storm moves in. Another hour or two and I think we will be back to Winter. I'm sure I've heard the first rumblings of thunder...( I am pretty sure it wasn't my tummy rumbling)

[Stanley]

Nice to watch you moving into summer grub Maz just as I am getting ready for the stew season! I've ordered half an old sheep from Stewart....
I had the last of the ham on a butty with pease pudding for dinner and steak pie, pease pudding and chips for tea. Don't worry David, it was only a small helping..... I have my eye on a marinade for some home cured bacon ribs.....