The Chat book

Something amazing happened. A book arrived through the door the other day. A book of Chat! I didn’t even know they had a book!

Doesn’t it look amazing?! I opened it, super excited, and found the contents page, which hinted at the brilliance to follow – The Hands That Caress, Our Furry Friends Have Some Spooky Senses, Autistic Love, Did Rape Save My Life, Bloater, Fatgirl Slim, Our Ghost Turns The Coke Flat…. And that’s just a brief overview!

So in I went, in to world of Chat and hilarity and found this, in paragraph 3 of the first story.

Have you found the bit I mean? About the nipples? And there we are. We’re straight into the nonsense. It gets steadily more mental as you get further into it.

For example, one story was called I Feel Like Chicken Tonight. I’d like you to guess first what this was about. I thought it was a foodie story, maybe someone gets food poisoning. Maybe they thought it was chicken but it was disease-ridden mountain goat or something.

Want me to tell you what it actually is? Brace yourselves.

It starts with a couple. The guy is a cross dresser but she doesn’t approve, he’s trying to get help, etc. They get married.

As soon as you read stuff like this, you suddenly remember Chat’s main audience. The “I’ll-just-get-married-in-my-tracksuit” type of person. You know.

This story is also fabulous because ‘Clive’ is also referred to as ‘Ian’ 30% of the time. Good editing and proofreading skills, Chat. Hats off to you. Here’s a fine example of it.

So yeh, that’s also what the story’s about. Not really chicken at all. More cross dressing and bestiality. Is it bestiality if the chicken’s frozen?

Anyway, that was a direction I hadn’t seen Chat go in before. I was on a bus so bursting out laughing at the above part of the story was quite awkward.

Another story I read, called Bloater, was about a fat guy who met a girl, had a family, got skinny, loved it, then got fat again, his wife left and now he’s trying to diet. Interesting.

There’s SO much to get stuck into with this book. I will undoubtedly be reporting back again.

Laughing dormice and sock monkeys

Chat magazine was amazing this week. It really excelled itself. I hardly know where to start.

The first page has a picture of a dormouse…

And says ‘Perhaps someone just told him the joke about the chicken crossing the road!’ I mean, really now. That’s clutching at straws a bit, isn’t it? What would a chicken have to do with a dormouse?

I imagine this was written late at night and the editor was like, “Guys, what does this mean? Why would a dormouse laugh at a chicken joke?” And the others just went, “O, just let it go. We’re all knackered and dying to go home. Just put it in. Stop going on about it. Who cares if it makes no sense?” The editor, convinced by this persuasive argument, shrugged and let it pass, but not before adding “If you like our laughing dormouse, check out this video of a llama who also can’t stop chuckling…” and a website address. O, stop fussing. No, not of it makes sense. We know that. But it’s all animally so just, shh, just let it go.

Next up, the photos page and this…

Yeh. A ‘sock monkey.’ Who doesn’t love a good sock monkey, I ask you. Despite, the fact that none of this makes sense (maybe I should have read the issue they’re talking about), it’s just stuffed in there, amongst the other photos. Someone made someone else a sock monkey and they love it. Here’s a photo of it. Well, thank you Chat. Thank you indeed. Where would we be with these little essential titbits of information, hey?

Next up, a dog pulling tongues….

That’s it. It’s a dog. It’s pulling tongues. Fab.

I’m not going to dwell to much on the next story, suffice to say, it’s a couple who met on, wait for it, the Ian Beale Facebook page. For non-UK residents, Ian Beale is a character on a soap called Eastenders. Mandy knew Kieron was her soulmate, she says, because she could see he “was as obsessed by the Eastenders star as I was!”

It turns out he has gender dysphoria and is a virgin while she is a 30 year old living at home with her parents. When they decide to meet, her parents drive her to meet him.

Draw your own conclusions.

And then check out this photo.

I’ll say no more.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this advert for a Tweety necklace.

Let me know if you want one and I’ll send you the details. They’re only £90. Bargain.

Things I learned at Waltham Place (Part 2)

1. The way to cut an onion without all the tears is to first half it, then peel each half, then slice it, leaving you with the two ends. The chemicals that make you cry are released when you cut the end off which has the roots so if you cut that off first, all the chemicals will be released, hence all the sobbing while chopping.

2. Sorrel is way tasty!

3. Nettle soup is surprisingly bright green.

4. Cows will let you know if they like you or not. If you put your hand out low, they will come over and smell it, rather like a dog. If they lick, then you’re in there. If they lick your face, then you’ve really pulled. If, however, they shake their horns at you, it means they definitely do not like you.

5. Chickens have a self programmed ‘bedtime’. Without any prompting, at the bedtime, all the chickens, on cue, will run to the coop together and go inside to bed.

6. Commercially produced bread is full of additives, one of which is put in to delay the arrival of mould when it is getting old. Yet it will start to grow mould after just a few days. Homemade bread, however, has no additives and, so far, I have had it for five days and there isn’t even a suggestion of mould.

7. Adrian, the chef at Waltham Place, spent six months working at the Savoy. There were 65 chefs working in the kitchen there and all the cooking terms were in French. You either picked up French very quickly or you got bollocked for doing everything wrong!

P.S. Part 1 can be found here.

How to prepare a 17th century feast

I have been doing lots of research about 17th century cooking and ingredients, for my volunteer work at Ham House and I have come up with some real gems. A recipe book from 1664 called The Accomplisht Cookor by Thomas May contains the following fantastic recipe for bisque. It’s so brilliant, it doesn’t even need comment. Just check it out.

“To make a Bisk divers ways.

Take a wrack of Mutton and a Knuckle of Veal, put them a boiling in a Pipkin of a Gallon, with some fair water, and when it boils, scum it, and put to it some salt, two or three blades of large Mace, and a Clove or two; boil it to three pints, and strain the meat, save the broth for your use and take off the fat clean.

Then boil twelve Pigeon-Peepers, and eight Chicken Peepers, in a Pipkin with fair water, salt, and a piece of interlarded Bacon, scum them clean, and boil them fine, white and quick.

Then have a rost Capon minced, and put to it some Gravy, Nutmegs, and Salt, and stew it together; then put to it the juyce of two or three Oranges, and beaten Butter, &c.

Then have ten sweet breads, and ten pallets fried, and the same number of lips and noses being first tender boil’d and blanched, cut them like lard, and fry them, put away the butter, and put to them gravy, a little anchove, nutmeg, and a little garlick, or none, the juyce of two or three Oranges, and Marrow fried in Butter with Sage-leaves, and some beaten Butter.

Then again have some boil’d Marrow and twelve Artichocks, Suckers, and Peeches finely boil’d and put into beaten Butter, some Pistaches boiled also in some wine and Gravy, eight Sheeps tongues larded and boiled, and one hundred Sparagus boiled, and put into beaten Butter, or Skirrets.

Then have Lemons carved, and some cut like little dice.

Again fry some Spinage and Parsley, &c.

These forefaid materials being ready, have some French bread in the bottom of your dish.

Then dish on it your Chickens, and Pidgeons, broth it; next your Quaile, then Sweet breads, then your Pullets, then your Artichocks or Sparagus, and Pistaches, then your Lemon, Poungarnet, or Grapes, Spinage, and fryed Marrow; and if yellow Saffron or fried Sage, then round the center of your boiled meat put your minced Capon, then run all over with beaten butter, &c.

1. For variety, Clary fryed with yolks of Eggs.
2. Knots of Eggs.
3. Cocks Stones.
4. Cocks Combs.
5. If white, strained Almonds, with some of the broth.
6. Goosberries or Barberries.
7. Minced meat in Balls.
8. If green, Juyce of Spinage stamped with manchet, and strained with some of the broth, and give it a warm.
9. Garnish with boiled Spinage.
10. If yellow, yolks of hard Eggs strained with some Broth and Saffron.”

Ok, now off you go to the kitchen and get going on your bisque! I think I’m going to try my lips and noses with cocks stones… Mmmm…

A little catch up

Do not fear, readers, I have not forgotten about my Trying To Be Useful project. It’s just that sometimes the things I am instructed to do are not enough to carry a whole post. So after I was asked in one book to go and de-litter my local park, my other book instructed me to pick up one peice of litter every day so I have been doing that for the past week. I then deposit the litter into a recycling bin, if it is recyclable.

Simon Gear, in Going Greener, also told me to “Support my bald-headed hungry friend” and to be generous when people I know are doing crazy stuff to raise money for a worthy cause. As luck would have it, my friend, Peter, is running the London Marathon in April for the Stroke Association. Easy peasy. I logged on, donated some money and had another day’s good deeds done.

Other things I have been advised to do are more long term goals as they require more money and a trip to get them. I’m aiming to get either an owl box or a bat box for the garden, or both. I’m pretty sure I can get them in the Kew Gardens gift shop and I’ve been meaning to join the National Trust for ages, cause I love the idea of being able to swan into lovely places by just showing a card, like I live there, almost, kind of. So when the weather is nice enough, I will join the National Trust, spend my days off in lovely parks and buy a good owl or bat box, or both.

An instruction I received on another day was to take 5 minutes at the beginning of each day to drink my morning tea in the garden and appreciate the plants and animals there. I did it two days in a row. It was chilly but I donned a big jumper, hugged my mug of tea and admired the lavender lining the lawn. This morning, however, it is snowing. We haven’t got it very badly, compared to other places, but I still didn’t fancy standing in it shivering. So I stood in the kitchen and looked out of the window at the garden.

So all in all, it’s going quite well. I’m still taking my own shopping bags with me to get groceries. I don’t put my vegetables in plastic bags before I weigh them. I buy Ecover products. I’m getting there, little by little.

I had a total brainwave the other day and was like. “Danda! Let’s get a chicken! It would be so amazing. We’d have eggs whenever we want them!”

A withering look from Danda answered that one. I’m still working on it….

P.S. Happy birthday Dad!

Omygoodness, you HAVE to see this

Readers, prepare yourselves. Prepare yourselves for a post filled with horror and awfulness. For we are going to take journey into the world of….

1970S COOKBOOKS!

I came across this in a box of old cookbooks a friend was giving away and boy, was I glad I picked this one up! It is called Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook. And let me tell you this, it is all colour. It is proud and gregarious in it’s all-colour horror. It would have done better to leave the photographs off, for I shall show you the pictures of what the 1970s considered haute cuisine. Are you ready?!

Mmm, I just love a mysterious lumpy white mass for my dinner.

Wowzers. More lumpy white nonsense, this time surrounded by green leafy stuff. Can we have that for dinner today, Mum? Can we?!

Ah, some white nonsense on top of salmon steaks, again the obligatory green leafy nonsense. This is actually a jellified mayonnaise layer, in case you were wondering.

And again, jellified mayonnaise, this time on top of chicken. LOVING the decorative anchovies… Kind of.

Talking of things being jellied, check out this turkey-slices-set-in-jelly type of thing.

Next up, a small roasted chicken, sitting on a bed of jelly stuff squares. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US? Why, Britain, why did we do this to ourselves? Mary Berry has a lot to answer for.

More chicken related nonsense. A cake type thing, made of chicken. Vomit. And the asparagus on the top. That’s quite fresh and lovely, you think, at least that bit’s ok. Well, no, no it isn’t. Because it is FROM A CAN! In fact, I am instructed to use many things from cans.

This ‘peach tart’ requires 1 can of creamed rice for the filling. Ridiculous. On another recipe I am actually told to get frozen chips! Honestly now, frozen chips. If I have frozen chips at home and I choose to eat them, that is different. But to actually include it as an ingredient for a meal in a cookbook?! Has the world gone crazy?! I think probably the worst sentence I have ever seen written down in a book anywhere is the line, ‘Fry the frozen chips in the lard.’ What. On. Earth.

Fry.

The frozen chips.

In the lard.

Honestly. I’m not making it up. Look.

This book has a continental section though. We’re aware of the fine cuisine offered in other countries. Let’s get fancy in our kitchens. Ok, check out the next recipe. I’m sure it will be delicious. Mmm, continental food. Italian pasta… French fancies… There’s bound to be something good here.

Frankfurter salad. I have no words.

This one’s good. It’s cheesy buttered noodles. The ingredients? Cheese, butter and noodles. Brilliant.

Last up, some lovely desserts. Don’t let me down here. The British have contributed some well-loved cakes to the world of food. Come on. What will it be? A Christmas pudding? An eccles cake? An apple crumble? A rhubarb crumble? Something cakey and warm. A hearty cake to heat one up on a cold winter’s evening.

That’s right. We’ve gone with a dish of pasta shells in chocolate sauce with lines of cream for ‘decoration.’

And now, the award for the most attractive sounding dish in the history of the world ever, goes to….

Woop woop! Can I get a round of applause for the LARDY CAKE! Mm mm. Don’t you think? Yes, a peice of lardy cake for me please! Am I allowed seconds? Oo, hold me back, hold me back! I can’t get enough of good lardy cake, me.

Well, after that romp through the annals of British food history, I feel thoroughly disheartened and can only apologise in earnest to the world for our below-par cuisine ramblings. We have failed ourselves as a nation.

I understand if you would like to un-follow me, fellow bloggers.

Danda and the Masterchef challenge

Danda has been ill lately. It’s this cold that has been going around which is accompanied by persistent all-consuming coughing fits. The doctor says you just have to stick it out and it should be gone in about a week.

I had started buying a few Christmas presents but when he was all sad and ill, yep, you guessed it, I gave him the presents to cheer him up. One was a balloon powered helicopter which I played with for hours.

So anyway, we were watching my favourite yesterday, Masterchef. Danda was watching too but was very distracted by his constant coughing. He was also quite tired from not sleeping that well because of his cold. He had opted for a small nap on the sofa before Masterchef started. I think he was perhaps still a little sleepy.

So there was a challenge on Masterchef where they were given seven ingredients and had to create a dish in an hour. The ingredients were chicken thighs, bacon, tarragon, brandy, chocolate, grapes and something else, I’ve forgotten now. My mind got working. What would I make? Chocolate mousse? Some kind of roasted chicken thing? Most of the chefs started making chicken ballotines with tarragon mousse etc. They created some lovely food out of such limited ingredients. As I marvelled at their skill and tried to pick up tips from them, I asked Danda who was still coughing and spluttering at regular intervals, what he would have done for that challenge.

His answer?

“I’d drink the brandy, eat the chocolate and throw the chicken at the other chefs.”

Kiwis, curries and rats with style

It’s that time again. Time to see what Chat has to offer this week. Once again, I am blown away by their fabulous witticisms, sprinkled throughout. For example, I open the magazine and the first thing which greets me is a photo of a pig in a picnic basket, with the caption ‘designer ham bag?’

Brilliant. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the massive photo of the pig is there, just a little sentence about how the pig looks so comfy, “there’s no way we could ‘rasher’ to go anywhere.”

And on we go, to the photos page and there are a few good ones this week. The first is a here-are-some-cupcakes-I-made photo. The second is a here’s-me-with-a-huge-plastic-ape picture. And no, I’m not kidding. Someone really thought that the world would be interested in a picture of her with a huge plastic ape. Check it out.

There are some others of dogs and cows, which aren’t even worth mentioning in any greater detail.

So onward we go, past a story about a girl who had a maggot living in her back and a story of scandal with a 9.9 shock factor (!), to the Blimey, That’s Clever page.

And what have we here today? I think my favourite might be the kiwi fruit tip. Put it in an egg cup, we’re told. And that’s it. That’s the tip. Eat a kiwi out of an egg cup. £25 they got for that.  

Maybe I’ll make up some top tips and try to get £25 from Chat. Watch this space. I’ll think some up for tomorrow.

Another of the top tips is to use toothpaste to clean your mugs if they have tea stains. While I can’t see anything initially wrong with this, it just sounds a bit dodgy, cleaning a mug with toothpaste. You’re bound to have toothpaste-tasting tea for the next few days, I reckon.

Another tip seems to be, my granddaughter chewed the straw bit off her favourite beaker, so I put a new straw in. I don’t know whether that really warrants a place on the Blimey, That’s Clever page, do you? It’s not as though, previously, people have been throwing away their children’s beakers every day with no clue how to fix it and then they open Chat, see this tip and go ‘Wow! I’ll just stick a new straw down the hole where the old straw was. That’s genius.’

Next we have some more scandal, a murder, some letters, some weight loss stories and then the baby photos page. Ahhhh, the baby photos page. Photos of babies. Doing nothing at all. Just being babies. A whole page. One is a baby on a slide, one is a baby swimming, another is a baby and a cat, one is two children smiling a bit. A whole page.

To the side of this page, we have the recipe section. Now previously, I have seen some amazing gourmet recipes that opened my eyes to a whole new world. The week they had a recipe for mushrooms on toast was a week that changed my life. This week’s recipe? Onion and potato curry.

Mmmm. Doesn’t that sound great? Onion and potatoes. In a curry. Like when you look in the fridge and you don’t have anything in so you bung together some nonsense and fill up on ice cream afterward. Mmm. Nothing-in-the-fridge curry. The ingredients? Olive oil, 4 potatoes, 2 onions, spices and mustard seeds. And the attraction in making this meal? It’s only 54p per head.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s not 54p because Chat are so great at providing good meals on a budget. It’s because there’s NOTHING IN IT.

If you want great meals on a budget, I can give you far better, go-to ingredients – squid is really cheap, people. Fry it with fennel. Re-use old bread by chopping tomatoes, adding red wine vinegar and basil and ripping your old bread up and mixing it in for a panzanella salad. If you want a curry, spend your money on some chicken and chuck it in a pan with tomatoes (tinned or fresh) and add whatever combination of spices you find in the cupboard, depending on what country’s cuisine you are chanelling.

See? All those will probably be about £1 per person but don’t resemble student food or invoke severe depression in the person who is eating it.

Anyway, back to Chat, the finale is the ‘Ratwalk models’ story on page 46. Yes, RATwalk models. You know what’s coming. It’s a story about a lady who designs and makes clothes for rats. Yes. Rats. It started with making ‘couture creations’ for her pet chihuahua, inspired by a dress worn by Penelope Cruz to the Oscars.

A few years later, business was booming, she went full time into her pet clothing designing and her friend asked her to help “raise the profile of her annual rat convention.”

Honestly, this is not a joke. It’s all true. Her friend runs a yearly rat convention.

So she designed and made the dresses. There was a fashion show with 12 of the ‘models’. Post-show, fame and fortune came her way, she got calls from everyone, even David Letterman.

The article finishes with the touching line, “After all, every single pet should feel like a star.”

That’s something we should all remember as we go on with our days today.

I hope you have learned something here.

The pesto incident

At work, we do a sandwich which has pesto on it, instead of mayonnaise. Well, actually, it’s pesto mixed with mayonnaise. We only use it on one sandwich, a chicken and avocado combo which is quite popular. If, for whatever reason, we don’t do any of the chicken avocado sandwiches, the pesto mayo doesn’t get used.

I think that is what must have happened the day before The Pesto Incident. The pesto mayo had, I think, developed a little skin on it’s surface inside the bottle.

I was starting work at 11am that day. I wandered in, all casual from my long lie in and the lovely weather. I was wearing a white summery dress, embracing the sunshine. As soon as I entered, though, I could feel there was a bit of a rush on. The person in the kitchen was evidently having a rubbish time of it and they asked me to take over.

I grabbed an apron and got stuck in. The first sandwich was something fairly straight forward, a pastrami and mustard, or something like that. Next up, the chicken avocado number. Great, I love making this sandwich.

Chicken in pan to warm. Grab bread. On chopping board. Put pesto mayo on bread… I squeezed the bottle but no blob of pesto mayo came out. What was wrong? (Remember that little skin it has got from not being used the day before?) I shook it slightly and squeezed again. It felt like there was something hard pushing back against me. I’d show that pesto mayo. Squeeeeeeeeze! Nothing. What is WRONG with it? Both hands this time. Squeeeeee….

PESTO EXPLOSION!

I looked up in shock, still holding the pesto bomb in my hands.

It. Was. Everywhere. It had hit both walls either side of the kitchen and found it’s way, miraculously, into the toaster. The bread on the chopping board was barely visible underneath the pesto mountain which covered it. It had gone on the underside of the shelves which held the crockery and even over to the sink (a fair distance away) and on the wall and taps and drying rack over there.

Then I looked down. It was covering the top half of my apron, my lovely white summer dress and my hair. I had gone for a girly down-do that day, a long plait which had been hanging forward over my shoulder at the time of the explosion. It was now covered in pesto mayo. From the elbows up, my dress was covered with large splats.

Ever the pragmatist, I ignored it all and finished up the sandwich. As I put it on a plate and turned around to take it out, my manager walked into the kitchen and looked at me in shock. Then laughed. Then told me to go home and change.

My hair still smelled like pesto all day.

The bucket of fat

The other day I was in work. It was quite busy. Not rushed-off-your-feet busy. Just I-need-a-cup-of-tea-now busy. We got the food delivery in and, as usual, we started to unpack some stuff into the display fridge, put some stuff away, etc.

There was a huge bucket and when we opened it to look inside, we saw the slightly cloudy water that the poached chicken has been cooked in. Great, put that in the kitchen and I’ll unpack the chicken into tubs, when I get a chance.

Cakes went on stands, cheese went in fridges and salads went in bowls. It was all looking fab and under control. I went to the kitchen and that’s when we got loads of orders. There I was, heating, pouring, chopping, plating, and the bucket of chicken stood on the side, in my way, while I struggled to find time to deal with it. On and on it went, every time my hands went to the bucket to unpack the chicken, an order came in.

It was big and in my way but I didn’t want to move it out of the way, for fear I’d forget to deal with it.

Finally, I got the lid off. Then about four orders came in. I dealt with them and sent them out and then there I was again, alone with the bucket of chicken, finally. I was going to do this! Nothing could stop me.

Now, I don’t know how many of you are frequent poachers of chicken but it’s a fabulous way to cook it. It’s a lot more moist than roasting or frying. But as the chicken takes on the moisture from the water, so it releases some of its fat. So what you end up with is a pan of beautifully cooked chicken, floating in a sea of slightly discoloured water with fatty blobby bits on the surface. Should this water then cool down a little, the fatty blobby bits merge together to form misshapen white islands bobbing about on the top of the water. It’s not pretty, as you can imagine.

So this bucket of chicken had the inevitable floating blobby fat islands on its surface and the water itself was quite cloudy, so that I couldn’t even see the chicken in the bottom. It was a huge bucket, which was wierd because they never usually sent this much chicken. They usually sent a far smaller bucket.

Anyway, I got out two tubs to transfer the chicken into. I wrote the date on them, so we’d know when it came in.

I rolled up my sleeve… And plunged my hand into the fatty watery pit, to seek out the chicken from the depths below.

I swished my hand around. And around. I felt right to the bottom, around the edges. I swirled around in the fat-water. Around and around. And I didn’t happen upon a single peice of chicken. Not one. Puzzled, I kept swishing my hand around.

And then it dawned on me. They’d obviously made a mistake at the other deli, where they cook the food. They’d sent us this instead of chicken. They’d got mixed up, kept the chicken and sent us the bucket of water they cooked it in, clearly meant for throwing away.

So now, here I am, elbow deep in a bucket of fat, for no reason. A chickenless bucket of fat. With my sleeve up around my arm. The floating fat islands gently colliding with my forearm as I plunge around desperately, looking for poached chicken. Poached chicken which is not in this bucket. This massive bucket of fat.

It was not my finest hour.