Bee1

Oh no Zoonie - like you have not got enough on your mind already. I have heard of Melationin and used to take it few years ago (as per recommendation of my GP friend who was also using it that time to treat insomnia) and I used to order it from US. All that is still way away but thank you for the website - I will check it later

reading back Kijo - fingers crossed on that apartment. BG - I've never really been that far away so thank you for letting me know what I should expect but any good time when away from home (no matter how near or far) is always hard to leave as RL is not as exciting.

Hello BG yes Zoonie - I feel bit refreshed after this weekend. Not as tired as I was last week.

Hello Gill and Kijo my weekend was quiet and uneventfull

No I know exactly where you coming from - I too wish for same but right now I'm not prepared to do anyting about it for several reasons. Hope all goes well for you hun. Have a great weekend xoxoxoxox

I hope it all works out well for you If it was not for the dog I would have moved to a different area of the town but now I'm glad I stayed - things are not so bad with my ex and we get on well plus it's nice area where I live (even though it's pricey). if you were to move to a different town or state where would you like to live?

so you want to move to a different town or just different house?

you don't have boring work then are you thinking of moving?

you'll see - just play it by the ear

I will try to do system re-store and if that doesn't work then I will have to re-format hard drive. It took more than half an hour just to boot up and that's not a good sign. Yeah I can imagine how you felt - I don't know what I would do if mine would break - I depend on it way too much and don't have the cash to replace it. I'm planning lazy weekend (I'm also skint so I can't really do much LOL).

I'm sitting here barely awake. Went out last night after work, got home at 00.15 and then spent an hour trying to fix my laptop. At 5am I gave up trying to sleep and went to search my room for USB stick that had all my elephant photos on it. It's gone But it's friday and that means 2 days off! YAY! How are you? Any plans for the weekend?

Happy Birthday Zoonie have a lovely day x

am I the first one to post? Good morning everyone and to our lovely Zoonie - hope you having fab day hun x

I don't mean ketchup when I say tomato sauce . I don't tend to cook beans from scratch - takes way too long. I tend to get canned ones and then you just mixed different kinds together with some canned chopped tomatoes, chopped onions and season it and cook it for about 20 minutes.

byeee Kijo and yes I love the idea (don't worry never made fish head stew - even I draw a line at that!)

I guess beans are another "cheap" cooking ingredience - you can make strew/casserole with different kind of beans but it's in tomato sauce. Eat it with rice or pasta or just with roll. I could talk food for hours

it was very spongy almost cake like but not sweet and had sweetcorn in it.

I can see that US style of cooking and continental style of cooking is so different. I love tomato based sauces and Spag Bol. is mince with onion, garlic and spices in tomato sauce served on spaghetti with some greated cheese on top of that..yum I don't use cooking sauces a lot but somethimes when you want something quick and different they are good - I like the "chinese ones" like black bean or sweet and sour or schezuan. They work well with all sorts of meat or even veggies. In Czech traditional sunday meal is roast meat with dumplings or boiled potatoes and either saurkraut or salad. We tend to cook lots of different meat in kind of gravy/sauce and that can be tomato based or cream based or just brown.

it was savoury and it had bits of corn in it. She said she east it with her chilli. There should be a pic somethere on my FB. I made it in cake it and baked it on oven.

spaghetti bolognese meatballs in tomato sauce and as for chicken - do you get chicken portions or chicken breast? Surely you can get all sort of cooking sauces in jar - different curries, sweet and sour, black bean, red wine etc that you just pour over seared/cooked chicken meat and boil for 15 minutes.

I will have to look up Paula Dean. I don't have deep fat fryer or even a microvawe (I know!) where I live so I can't really live unhealty I have made cornbread once from Frannie's recipe and it was nice but not something I could eat all the time. I was brought up no variety of food as I was growing up with our gran who cooked every day. Well there were no frozen ready meal available at that time so there was no other option really. There are millions of things you could do with chicken and ground (or as we call it minced) beef. I like chilli con carne for example. Cottage pie. You can use it to make homade burgers. Meat loaf. Because I (technically) live alone I still follow the recipe for 4 people but freeze the extra 3 portions for later time and that saves me lots of cooking (I tend to have my main meal of the day at lunch at work and then just have something light in the evening)

that is so true - I'm suppose to eat lots of read meat because of my aneamia but it's so expensive (well if you want to get the lean one) that I just don't buy it. But being on tight budget doesn't mean you can't eat well. I either don't eat meat and make stuff with veggie or buy chicken as that's much cheaper. I also like offal (liver and heart) and that's quite cheap to buy. What is "southern soul food"?

sorry it was salmon fish cake but it's similar to burgers

ground salmon? I have made salmon burgers out of tinned salmon before and it was flakey so you didn't have to ground it. Lamb meat is generally expensive here too and it can be quite fatty meat but you can get frozen lamb mince for a good price. I tend to cook fair bit but I tend to do same things over and over so I also need to try something new.

I would say veal is quite strong and flavoursome meat so I personally wouldn't waste in for stews - stews are traditionally made with cheaper cuts of meat that need to be cooked for a long time to get it tender. Now come to think of food - I should be able to found out for myself what you americans call gravy and biscuits (for breakfast)