1976_Child

I used Stronghold on the whippets. Worked ok. Holding the darn hounds still while I applied it was next to impossible. Remember those cartoons where the legs keep moving at high speed but the roadrunner doesn't go anywhere? Whippet the Younger nearly scratched a hole to Australia!! Whippet the Older was a bit more chilled.

give it a blast in a frying pan first before adding to the pot. The meat isn't cooked through but the outside is braised so as to keep the juices in. Definitely do it for cooking a good roast beef but imho for stews it is overkill.

5 hours actually. Slow cooking rocks. I've even done a really successful stew in a solar oven. Using nothing but the rays of the wintry sun to cook the food. check it out here: http://solarcookers.org/

you wouldn't be so insulting about my stew if you had tasted it! Feking gorgeous so it was. And some left over for tonight, always even better after a day in the fridge. Might have some pasta with it tonight. Guess you going to get on me case about that too, eh?

nonsense! utter nonsense! Slow cooking is the best way to cook a stew. The longer the better. I forgot the dumplings. Usually do have them. And didn't use spuds this time, swede and snips

she needs her bottom smacked.

she could thicken my stew any time!

one's a midfielder the other is a defender.

No I mean roux! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux

funny you should mention that, but at least I eat every last drop of the food I cook! Did you know that fully one third of all food bought in Britain ends up being wasted and chucked out? One third!!! A combination of the 'best before date' culture promoted by supermarkets and the population's general lack of culinary skills meaning left-overs are just chucked rather than used up in other dishes. I bet you there is enough bread in that pile of rubbish in the photo to feed a family for a year.

...

Well I hate cities too. Give me open fields and small villages every day.

Brum. Is my guess.

to be fair, I just found £8 in my trouser pocket so the ingredients can't have been 20 quid. Did use co-op finest beef - all they had. didn't do dumplings this time round. Forgot. Didn't have any crusty bread either so had extra helping of stew to make up for it. And i didn't eat on Friday so was starving. Still, one can't beat a stew. I'm not too bothered about sealing the meat first. I do mine in a slow cooker and like the beef to really cook through so it just falls apart in the mouth. The key to a great stew is the roux. So many people use granules etc to thicken but nothing beats a proper roux. (although it is rare that I bother to clarify the butter first.)

Fort William itself is a pretty typical tourist hole. The town is not that great. Immediate scenery/landscape is awesome but the town is tired and grotty. I stayed in the biggest hotel in the town a few years ago. Can't remember the name but it was prominent and would have been quite imposing in years gone by. Alas, time had not done it well. Crap food, crap service and a really crap little room which stank of rotten fish. And expensive. This was in the mid-90s so with a bit of luck some one else has taken it over and done a better job, but my lasting impression of Fort William was 'not somewhere I will rush back to'.

Barnard didn't do his (alleged) crime all over the Cenotaph. This little pr!ck did. The disgrace of it alone should see him bashing rocks together for many years.

nice. very funny. 22/7 for effort, or there abouts

That's not even a joke, just some crap to explain a poor pun. 0/10 for effort.

****ing quality! Salt of earth.

And the thing which is terrible is the pay cut? I agree, no one wants a 5% pay cut especially when inflation is running at 5% but just look at that photo. The amount of crap we throw away on a weekly basis should be the real news here. We live in a resource constrained world yet we are devouring the world's resource base as if there was no tomorrow. Just look at all that crap!! It is truly disgusting. And 90+% of that is coming directly from oil, the production of which has peaked. What nob-heads we are. This is just not sustainable.

The fact is there are too many of these third worlders in our country. The sooner they all get on the boat and pess off the better. Then we can populate Pompey with decent folk from Pakistan and Bangladesh who know how to run businesses and look after their families and instill decent morals in their kids.

what the fek does all that mean? we aren't all teenaged addicts of 'social media' - whatever that is. Try communicating in English old chum, not this twitterish nonsense.

The stupid rich-kid lay-about deserves it. Hope he is sent to a real prison, not one of these soft open ones. How dare he - the gilded son of a multi-millionaire - think he can can **** all over the Cenotaph, swing from the flags and cause a riot just because his precious little soft hands will have to work to pay for his non-compulsory education. He's a spoiled little rich kid. I would have no more sympathy for a working class yob so why should I cry about this little ***t. Hope he learns a thing or two in the clink.

Time was, one could nip down to the Co-op with a tenner in one's pocket and purchase all the ingredients necessary to make a good beef stew for two. I've just eaten nearly 20 quids worth of stew in one sitting. 500g of chopped beef, handful of carrots, one parsnip, half a swede, one onion, half a box of shrooms, stock and a nice butter/flour roux. And a half bottle of cheap red. I don't think I am fat, nor a sloppy cook so food inflation must be going through the roof. Would have been cheaper to get a pizza..

steady. Cork has yet to prove himself. Just because he was signed at Chelsea means nothing. He is a youngster, keen no doubt but don't go all doe-eyed on him because of his Chelsea roots. He was not good enough to play for Chelsea, that speaks volumes. Too many times I have witnessed folks heaping praise on a new player as though he were the Messiah, only to have to eat humble pie at a later date. He is one of a unit, one of a team. Let us see what he can do in the team before we start showering him with accolades and praises.