OneGuyFromBarlick

Medium oatmeal or Gram flour are good for thickening stews and soups. They also take the edge off if you've slipped up and been overgenerous with the pepper or chillies! Coconut butter does the same thing but can be too fatty for some. If there are a lot of veggies I always increase the level of salt and pepper because as they cook and soften the veggies suck in the seasoning. This is why what seemed OK at the start is insufficient at the end of cooking. If you want to get the best out of herbs or spirits in the cooking they work best if put in at the end so the aromatics aren't boiled away.

I learned something about cooking oils last night. I always use best olive oil and either that or dripping in my frying pan. Olive oil loses it's beneficial constituents at temperatures higher than the boiling point of water so Rape Oil is best for frying. I have taken note and will use it from now on.

It's the extra-virgin olive oil that's most labile because it retains the olive's many antioxidant compounds. That's why it's used for dressing salads and generally adding to food after cooking in the Mediterranean countries and not for frying; they use `virgin olive oil' or plain `olive oil' instead and would consider frying with extra-virgin to be a waste of good oil. Also, the extra-virgin oil contains particulate matter that burns during frying and can give an unpleasant taste to food. The Wikipedia page on olive oil explains the different categories of olive oil and their definitions.

I went in the Cathedral of Choice yesterday and had a look at their oils. The only one labelled Rapeseed Oil was a small and very expensive bottle of fancy English cold-pressed. So I looked at the three litre bottles and read the small print. The Co-op 'Vegetable Oil' is actually Rapeseed oil of European origin at £4 for 3 litres.... Guess which I bought.... It fits in the bottle rack on the fridge door so no problems about keeping it.....
So today's tip is read the small print on the bottles!

Most of the `vegetable oil' on sale in British shops is rapeseed oil. The retailers and manufacturers are simply frightened of the word `rape' whereas they fall over themselves to announce sunflower oil, safflower oil etc (the name comes from the Latin word rapa for turnip). Rape is an ideal crop for British farmers and the more we promote it and use it the better. Of course, it wasn't always so. The old rapeseed varieties yielded oil containing as much as 50% erucic acid which harmed heart muscle, and the meal left after oil extraction contained glucosinolates which were bitter tasting and bad for cattle. Modern-day plant breeders bred out the erucic acid and glucosinolates so that the oil was fit for human consumption and the meal for animal feedstuffs use. The new varieties were known as `double zero'. During this time the big oil processors were busy promoting omega-6 rich sunflower oil (remember the bare-chested man in the margarine ads?) and didn't pay much attention to omega-9 rich rapeseed oil. When we began to realise that too much omega-6 was dangerous whereas omega-9 was neutral it was too late - the big companies had invested so heavily in breeding, growing, manufacturing, promoting and selling sunflower that they fought against a shift to rapeseed oil. It's still a hard, long slog to give rapeseed oil its rightful place among healthy foods.

Thanks for that Tiz.... I have just had a domestic moment and cleaned an empty Il Casolare bottle (they have a good old fashioned sealer cap like old pop bottles) and filled it with a litre of rape oil for ready use ammunition in the cupboard near the frying pan....
That's today's tip. Those heavy glass bottles with the positive closure are good for sauce as well. I buy my tomato ketchup in a 5litre plastic container and fill the bottle for everyday use. Far cheaper than supermarket branded bottles and just as good. Catering packs.....

When you live in a tourist area you get used to shops selling all the stuff needed by caravaners, campers, small hotels, B&B and people letting and renting holiday cottages. For example, you often see those glass vinegar bottles that used to be on all fish & chip shop counters and red plastic dispensers for ketchup. In Somerset we have a great chain of shops called `Proper Job' where you can get all sorts of stuff at low prices and a lot of it not available in places like B&Q or the supermarkets. I buy tools, craft knives, glues and the like but there's much, much more. The company started out in Cornwall but then moved to Somerset and you can by from them online: LINK As one of our friends put it, "I can never find what I want at B&Q but I can always get it at Proper Job". I don't know if it's a coincidence or not but the local B&Q is closing down.

'Proper Job' sounds like a good old fashioned ironmongers. I mentioned Manby's at Skipton the other day, it was one as well. There used to be a good one in Ilkley but I don't know whether it has survived. The glory of the older shops was that they often had old stock hidden away they had been hoarding for years. I remember once asking for High Speed Slocombe Centre Drills in the shop at Ilkley. I was taken upstairs by the old assistant and showed a box of original Slocombe drills. I asked how much and he looked at the outside of the box. "Six shillings" I bought all six at 15p each but he wouldn't let me have the box, he said they would need it for the new stock..... Incredible... They sold engineers measuring tools by Moore and Wright and high speed steel as well. Downstairs you got all the usual kitchen gear and household stuff. They had a showcase of Moore and Wright callipers etc in the shop and I tried to buy it off them many a time.... I loved the old shops especially when they were having a clear out. That's how I got donkey stones and copper posser heads for next to nothing.....
So today's tip is if you find an old shop that has been in business for years, ask for things that you would normally never expect to find in a shop!

This is how bad B&Q has become...
I've been painting the render on our house and use one of those extending poles with a roller on the end. I use a 12 inch double-ended roller frame instead of the 9 inch single ended - the latter are good for indoor use but not when you have acres of external wall to cover in masonry paint. I wanted a new deep pile roller to fit on the end. I had to visit two local towns so tried the B&Q in each and neither could offer me a 12 inch roller for painting textured render - yet they both sell the 12 inch frames! Neither offered to `get one in' for me and neither showed any interest in stocking them. I ended up using the old roller until I get somewhere with a Proper Job shop.

If the muck round the buttons on your household appliances bugs you but you can't reach it with a cloth, use a toothbrush. I know, it's nit-picking but now I can see properly these things offend me. (Give your remote controls a clean at the same time, surprising how quickly they get dirty!)

If you have brass or copper ornaments that have nooks and crannies on them that have collected dried metal polish over the years try washing them in hot water using a fairly stiff brush to get the old polish off. Than polish in the usual way, spray with WD40 or similar and wipe dry with a soft cloth. You'll be surprised by how long they remain bright and shiny.

It struck me that if you haven't got any WD40 about, a good wax polish does the same thing. My favourite cleaner pointed out to me a long time ago that when you have given the lavatory a good deep clean, if you finish off with a coat of good furniture polish you get a top job!

Wax polish was the bane of my life when I was a TV repair man and all telly's were in wooden cabinets. Mr Sheen and Pledge has a lot to answer for. The more fastidious female home keepers would use copious amounts all over the TV's usually polishing in the dust along the way. So much so that I often had to go and clean screens caked in layer upon layer of aerosol spray which over time mixed with household dust, pipe and fag smoke tended to render the front faces of the CRT's with there own special type of diffuser. It was usually a revelation in more ways than one when I showed them the error of their ways.

I was once accused of returning a set other than the customers own to one particularly houseproud woman. She went ballistic with me and would not have it that the set I was returning was her own. Her husband was a Condor man and over the years the teak cabinet of the set had changed to mahogany helped along by hundreds of layers of Pledge. After repairing the set on the bench I gave it a proper clean (Fairy Liquid, warm water and elbow grease), returning the set to showroom condition, worth a few quid on the bill according to my boss, all were given the same treatment before returning to the customers. She would not have it and told me to take it away and bring her own back. We had to dig out the invoice from 4 years before and show her the serial number in the back of the set, she still wasn't happy and never really forgave me. Don't think TV men have that problem anymore, everything is black.

I remember that when the BBC did a project in Waddington to see how people reacted to the new transmission standards they did a de-brief afterwards and found that the most effective improvement to viewing standards had been thoroughly cleaning the face of the CRT screens. I never use polish on electronics, the mist gets everywhere....

Solid fuel stoves are wonderful and I love mine but always remember that they only work well if the flues are kept clean. A small price to pay for the advantages of a living fire instead of an impersonal gas boiler. Or am I hopelessly old fashioned yet again?

Don't worry Stanley, most of us stick to what we know and prefer, especially when it's a comfort thing

Exactly right Cathy and it's nice to be able to have the choice. I've always loved stoves ever since I met Mrs Jotul in the watermill on Eigg in 1988. I could get that old building warm and dry even when it was blowing a gale and snowing....

When Janet and Harry were improving their house in Perth WA in 1998 they did away with the gas heater and installed a Jotul wood-burner. Janet and I went shopping for it together and I was amazed when I found that this stove, imported from Norway, was cheaper in Perth than it was in the UK!
So, today's tips for our Aussie friends is that if you need heating, a wood burner is a viable alternative to gas or electricity.....

I've had that kind of heater before, loved it at the time but these days just prefer to 'flick a switch' instead of all that work involved. Would love to have one of those real gas flame heaters, they create the same ambience, without the buying, carting and chopping of wood, bringing it in, topping it up... Oh! and looking for spiders..
We used to burn Redgum.

I can understand that Cathy. Gas CH is very efficient and easy but as things are here running the stove costs about the same as gas CH but with the bonus that I can save on leccy by cooking on it. Apart from that, the front room is more comfortable as it is warmer with the stove than it would be with the CH as I have it set at a low value. I suppose the exercise of tending to it is good for me as well.....
One more advantage is that I like to buy a good order of coal and have it ready in the yard and paid for. I know I'm old fashioned but when the day comes when we have power cuts I shall be warm, able to cook and independent.

Cathy wrote:I've had that kind of heater before, loved it at the time but these days just prefer to 'flick a switch' instead of all that work involved. Would love to have one of those real gas flame heaters, they create the same ambience, without the buying, carting and chopping of wood, bringing it in, topping it up... Oh! and looking for spiders..
We used to burn Redgum.

Not to mention snakes in the woodpile!!

It's actually cheaper here to pay for gas CH than it is to buy wood. Chopping and carting wood finally led me to a prolapsed disc. Happy to say we now have gas CH after 42 years of marriage.

All good reasons for gas CH. I have no arguments against you all. I can remember the days when the prelude to bath night on the Friday was to stoke the living room fire up and close the chimney damper so all the hot gas went under the back boiler. When the water started to crackle in the pipes you knew you had enough hot water to fill the bath.... Then there was the copper in the wash-house. You got up early to fire that up ready for washing day which was always Monday!

I've always wondered why Monday was always was wash day. Is there any particular reason?

My feeling is that like Friday night baths, they were related to weekend and 'The Lord's day'. In a sense getting ready for weekend but washing and the subsequent operations took longer than having a bath. See the old nursery rhyme "Twas on a Monday morning that I beheld my darling....."

I may not be the best man in the world at overall housework but I find that since my retread of my eyesight I'm getting a touch of OCD about small things like the controls on the washing machine, remote controls and light switches. Amazing how dirt collects on them! I find my best ally is an old toothbrush to get into the nooks and crannies. (I know, it's sad but oddly satisfying!)