Bondbug

Any special oil - it used to be beef dripping! What is the boiled water for? I haven't heard that one before. Where's that pan gone...hey...chef....

Yeah. Same problem, I like any sauce as long as there is a tin of tomatoes in it - same for curries.

I wish now my worm breeder hadn't left France to make his fortune in Florida. Tough life. A Madeira m'dear (wow that is out of date) PS is it waiter service in this bar, or something more interesting?

How do you fry eggs? (dedicated to the Better Breakfasts for Carolyn Campaign). Me, I just hoy 'em in the pan, splash a bit of fat over them and tip them on the plate. :rolleyes: But there must be more to it than that. So in the interests of the perfect fried egg for Carolyn...how do YOU fry your eggs?

What do you do with your stale bread, apart from slinging it in the bin or giving it to the chickens. I saw 'gypsy bread' mentioned somewhere which is, I think, what I call 'eggy bread' and the French call 'pain perdu' - I.e. bread dipped in beaten egg and fried. But we tried an Italian recipe a couple of weeks back which worked quite well. Tomato and Bread Salad: quick to prepare, but needs lots of waiting time! 400g / 14 oz stale bread (any sort) 4 large fresh tomatoes 1 large red onion; or 6 spring onions (whatever they may be called in your part of the world) A few leaves frech basil for garnish for dressing 4 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp white wine vinegar salt and black pepper Cut bread into thick slices. Soak in cold water for 20 minutes. Cut tomatoes into chunks, put in serving bowl, add finely sliced onions Squeeze as much water out of the bread as you can, and add to the vegetables in the serving bowl. Make the dressing, add to the salad, and mix well. Decorate with basil leaves Allow to stand in a cool place for 2 hours before serving

Still on 'cooking' cherries. They are very suitable for soaking in alcohol. Anything from 'eau-de-vie' (France) to rum, brandy, armagnac or your own favourite. The German Rumtopf is typical, but any tallish jar with either a loose lid (Rumtopf) or sealed (French 'bocale' or Kilner jar). The important thing is alcohol of 40% min. You can either add fruit in layers, season by season (cherries, gooseberries, rasps, apricots, peaches, plums, pears, grapes., or use one fruit only. But avoid strawberries. For a single fruit job, put the fruit in the jar, add up to an equal weight of sugar, depending on the sweetness of the fruit, let it sit for an hour, then fill till covered with your chosen alcohol - dark rum for us. For multi-fruit, add fruit, season by season, add an equal weight in sugar and fill with alcohol till the fruit is covered; At the end of the season, seal it (French) and leave it in a dark cool place for 3 months. Check from time to time and top up with alcohol if needed to keep the fruit covered. The German Rumtopf that we have has a loose fitting lid, but otherwise the system is the same. NEVER STIR OR SHAKE the jar. Use only sound, ripe fruit. Normally used, I believe, as a desert, but we tend to use it as a drink !

It's the cherry season here. Eating cherries are no problem. But we also have cooking cherries; not sweet enough to eat straight from the tree. Here they are used for 'Clafoutis' which is a sort of eggy yorkshire pudding with cherries in. 500 gr cooking cherries 20 gr butter 100 gr flour 100 gr sugar + 2 tablespoon fulls sugar for sprinkling on top after it is cooked 3 eggs 1/4 ltr milk salt (pinch) Prepare the cherries, I.e. wash, de-stalk, de-stone (if you prefer - takes time but requires less care in the eating!), and lay them in the bottom of a suitable oven dish. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar and a pinch of salt; add the eggs and mix in well; add the milk slowly, mixing-in till you have a 'fluid' batter. Tip this mixture onto the cherries, cook 40 mins at 200° - thermostat 6/7 (hopefully you know your oven - they all have 'personalities' of their own). When cooked serve as you please! The French tip it out of the mould (oven dish) sprinkle it with sugar and prefer it warm or cold. We serve it in the dish, straight from the oven, and prefer it hot. and this one is an apricot clafoutis:

Where's that Gogo bloke! Hey you owe me a milk shake pal. I couldn't get into your stand-in forum. They said I didn't exist. So I couldn't send erialc a note to ask her to collect me off the Ryanair flight, and I missed her saucy party. I am fwightfully cwoss. Think I'll go and eat worms. Seriously though, I haven't had time to explore yet but on first sight I like your new layout.

and did you listen to the Ovaltinies on Radio Luxembourg/

And then again, there's herb teas, the tissane, the infusion. Herbs suitable for all your problems from too much sex to too little. They still serve 'tissanes' in the bars here. Tilleul (lime, linden) or verveine. Easier than getting a decent cuppa tea. Thought all that went out in the 19th century. Good thing is, if you have a little space or live in the country, most of the herbs are FREE. Little patches under the window. Lemon balm, camomile, mint, thyme, verveine, and a whacking great 'tilleul' tree dominating our small garden. All very healthy. Some even drinkable. (so they tell me)

Big YAY. Cereal, bacon & egg and black pudding, bread & marmelade. YAY. Not that I can take that anymore. Don't you nutters know that it is the most important meal of the day? Next a meal at midday, and as little as poss. in the evening. Specially for you Caroline for that slinky svelt figure. Can't work on a cup of instant. Don't know how half of you survive!

Well Schot, I thought you would enjoy this attempt...no tutorials yet..I haven't quite fathomed them out. Couldn't get rid of the ******* cow, and the wee lad is something of a bighead but the dwarf doesn't sit too badly. Having terrible time with it. I can't keep the mouse on a steady line! Not a serious attempt...just practising

Sounds much superior to cow dung, but I suppose its much the same. Do you have any preferences Huflung ?

Indeed. We once did our annual camping tour of France in it, grossly overloaded with wife, young child beyween her knees, tent, camping table (cos I never could sit comfortably on the ground) and all. Any time we parked in a town to do some shopping we had to fight our way back through a triple circle of staring French. Just standing staring. Don't think they had ever seen a three wheeler, certainly not one like that. I had to learn my little lecture in French...700cc and so on. Oh and, Schot, that was not a suggestion to change the wording. I found your piece of magic just as I was off to bed. What impressed me was that the Bug looked alive, threatening and supportive.

Wish I had it to give you mate! But the body was fibreglass and it was never the same after my ex-wife rolled it over. One nit-picking after thought. That Bond Bug does not look as if it needs protecting. It is a berserker beast bounding into battle behind its buddy. More a 'till death do us part' image! Tech question. Did you use Photoshop for this? I'm in the middle of downloading a trial version. Is this the sort of thing you can produce with it, or did you just wave your magic wand muttering 'a-bond-ca-gandalf' Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

No man, Schot, don't touch a goddam thing. That is truly fantastic. SOLD...to the old gent in the white beard.

Does no one have it black, sweetish, laced with rum and thick cream on top?....except me occasionally when the boss takes her beady eye off the cupboard where the cooking rum is kept.

Love it Don't want him IN the car, but if the background could be smoothed over to make it like countryside, with the car parked away in the distance...t'would be brill. And trimmed down I suppose to get the two swords on the right out?

Odd variations on the meaning of 'salad'. In France salad is the bowl of freshly washed lettuce leaves that they eat in enormous quantities after the main course. Presumably to clean the mouth out before the cheese or desert, though they sometimes take the cheese with it. Unbelievably boring. But there are some 'hors d'oeuvre' salads which are interesting. Will consult the head chef and come back. (later) No luck. Ingredients I wouldn't know the English for. So how about a crab salad. I found a book called 'Salads & Snacks' in the kitchen library!...and it reminded me that I used to take a young lady to a pub near Brighton where this was my favourite. Quantities as required: - cooked crab meat; large crisp lettuce leaves; firm tomatoes skinned and sliced; avocado, peeled, stoned, sliced and gently rubbed with lemon juice; cucumber, thinly sliced; black olives, stoned if preferred. - sauce: half pint mayonnaise; 1tsp anchovy essence; half tsp finely chopped fresh parsley; 1 hard-boiled egg, chopped; 1 clove garlic, crushed; 1tsp finely chopped tarragon. Mix together the ingredients for the sauce Arrange lettuce leaves on serving dish ; put crab meat in centre; arrange tomatoes, avocado, cucumber and olives around the crabmeat. Pour over as much of the sauce as seems appropriate. NB The sauce quantity is for 1lb crab, 4 tomatoes. Brown bread and butter recommended.

When I was a kid in the N-E of England, 'good' coffee was basically flavoured hot milk. Heat the milk, give it a sniff at the coffee, add sugar to taste. Coffee was Camp coffee, in a bottle, lots of chicory. My mother never changed. In France I had to order a cup of hot milk for her, and a black coffee for me, then put a level teaspoonful of my coffee into her milk. Hey presto. So how do you like your coffee? What do you consider to be 'good' coffee? What do you make at home, and what do you choose when you are out?

OK. A recipe. Dead easy. A variation on Plum Brandy. French ideas are mostly for fruit preserved in eau de vie, and are definitely an acquired taste which I am not working on. But I am quite sure that your favourite spirit, brandy, armagnac, calva, dark rum in our case, works equally well. You use a 1 litre 'bocale' (kilner jar) The recipes are all much the same. The following uses plums and dark rum. - plums, usually 1kg per litre - sugar syrup, 250g sugar + 10cl water - dark rum, or whatever - (optional) spices Fruit, just rinsed and wiped; plums pricked thrice. Sugar syrup is standard, boil the sugar in the water a few minutes till it becomes clear If required, spices to taste. Usually cinnamon, but vanilla and zests of orange are mentionned in recipes for some fruits. For plums, no spices. SO...Make your sugar syrup in whatever pan suits; turn off; drop your pricked plums into the hot syrup; swill all about to ensure that the plums have 'bien imbiber' the syrup; transfer fruit to your kilner jar; when cold fill jar with your rum, brandy or whatever; close jar. You may need to top up after 15 days to make sure that the fruit is well covered, before sealing the jars. Leave for 6-8 weeks, but will keep for 12 months. That's the difficult bit. Or there is the German Rumtopf, a big jar with a lid, where you put your fruit, building up with different fruit layers according to season, cover with dark rum, and leave to sit for a month or two. Strawberries are not usually a success in these things, they go funny. Better eaten fresh.

Sorry Gogo. That was just a fatuous way of asking what you thought of metric. I'm interested in Canada. My youngest daughter and (her) husband went out to Calgary for three years. Theoretically to do research at the Uni there, but I suspect more becos he's a ski fanatic (telemark) and they could walk into the Rockies there. Now after three years back in England, during which they took out dual nationality/citizenship or whatever it is called, they are going back. This time to Vancouver, which seems to be as far from Quebec as England is. Another question while I'm on. Do I get the impression that most of the Canadian residents in this and Sacred forum are Quebecois? You got a fan club there? Serious for a bar, but where else can I talk. These are hardly valid 'threads'. Even in a bar there is some serious talk between drinks? Oh well..what's yours. And give Tim another coffee.

Er..while you're not too sober, Gogo, can I ask a dodgy question about your homeland. I gather Canada has gone metric and it has caught on a lot better than in GB. Is that a) to show you are not 'Yanks' ? b) to wave the local French flag ? c) 'cos you can't stand the thought of using 'Imperial' measures ? d) all six of the above ? e) nothing to do with you ? f) nothing to do with me ? Gotta go..wife's calling. Don't think I will come to Quebec after all. Might be risky. Must be my round next time I'm by

You'll find this is a great forum. So welcome from another newb. though you seem to be well known already. Another great sig. Where did you get that magic name? Reminds me there used to be a cow-pat hurling contest up in the north of England. I take it you are not a past winner?

Er...is there a short list Yarasa, for people who haven't done anything since black and white, but who happen to have a freeby gadget that takes reasonable pics. Like to try something creative, mixing images, but what about software? I see some tutorials there. Can you recommend something for a start. I am wary of 'screaming-art' and 'award-winning touch-ups' 'Wasted youth' looked about right, but couldn't be bothered to open