One of the better ways to not only save money but also keep to a healthy eating plan is to take a cut lunch with you rather than buying lunch from an office canteen, the school tuck shop, or the takeaway shop or cafe down the road.
Making your own does take a little organisation, as you will need to make the lunch up before you go in the morning or the night before. Or just make a week’s worth of lunches and freeze them ready to go.
If you’re watching what you eat for health reasons, beware of ready-packed lunch foods like muesli bars, mini-packs of chips and the like. These convenience foods are packed with E-numbers (just look on the packet!) and are highly processed, containing a lot of fats, salts and sugars for minimal nutrients. And if you’re even slightly concerned for the environment, just think of what happens to all those wrappers and little dinky spoons that come with some convenience foods.
From the environmental point of view, try to avoid cling film when wrapping sandwiches. Reuse plastic bags and/or use a lunchbox with compartments. Zip lock bags can be re-used again and again – they can be rinsed out and turned inside out to dry on the line or with the dishes. Drink bottles that you fill with your own juice or water, or else a thermos of hot coffee, tea or soup, are another way to cut down on waste, ensure that you’re getting enough fluids and save money.
If you plan on making a large batch of lunches to freeze, it’s better not to freeze fresh fruit and vegetables, as they go a bit funny when thawed out. This isn’t too bad inside a sandwich, but if you want to munch on an apple after your sandwiches, then put it in fresh as you head out the door. Yoghurt can be frozen easily enough – and even if it doesn’t thaw out totally come lunch break, this isn’t a problem, as frozen yoghurt is deliciously refreshing, like ice cream. Don’t freeze hard boiled eggs.
Sandwiches are the basis of many a cut lunch, but you don’t need to get stuck in the rut of plum jam and butter on white bread (or wholemeal) every day… unless you love plum jam. Let’s start with the bread. You can have ordinary sliced bread in all its many varieties from plain white to wholegrain to corn bread to dark European-style loaves. You can also have pitta bread, wraps or buns. And if you buy whole loaves rather than sliced bread (or if you make your own bread), you can try slicing things lengthways to get long oblongs rather than the more usual quasi-squares.
A lot of the good old favourite fillings can’t be beaten. Most people like at least one of the ordinary staple sandwiches like cheese, peanut butter, Marmite, honey or jam, or some combination of more than one of these (yes, including Marmite and honey – this writer’s brother used to eat these). But it can be easy to get stuck in a rut. But how about trying some extras in with the basics? What about sundried tomatoes, basil and olives in with the cheese; avocado and chilli with the peanut butter; lettuce and cold chicken with the Marmite; bananas with the honey; or sunflower seeds and cream cheese with the jam?
The following are some additions that blend well with the staple sandwich fillings:
Cheese: herbs of all sorts, cold meat, most vegetables, sliced apples or pineapples, anything you’d put on a pizza – in fact, most things go with ordinary cheddar cheese except perhaps jam and honey… but you might like cheese with apricot jam.
Peanut butter: either sweet things such as honey, bananas, peanut butter or jam or else savoury things – most vegetables go well with peanut butter, especially the milder ones like lettuce and cucumber. As peanut butter has a dry, sticky texture in the mouth, you will need to consider texture as well as taste when making peanut butter sandwiches – slippery, crunchy or easily soluble items make good peanut butter partners.
Jam: Cream cheese is one of the few savoury items that can combine well with jam (peanut butter is the other). Fruit and nuts are other good possibilities to try. However, a touch of a tart jam can provide a good accent with cold meat (e.g. blackcurrant with lamb).
Honey: As honey is very sweet, it’s best combined with spices, nuts and fruit.
Marmite: Marmite is very salty and savoury, so it goes best with blander flavoured vegetables – most salad vegetables (except radishes) such as sprouts, lettuce, tomato, carrot and celery complement Marmite nicely.
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The bathroom is a real hot spot for making changes to the amount of toxins and artificial chemicals in your environment. In the bathroom, we often expose large amounts of skin to various substances as we wash our bodies. The bathroom is also one of the places that requires regular domestic cleaning London to make sure that germs are kept under control. The following checklist is a starting point for making small changes to improve your immediate environment and living more naturally.
* Shampoo is very harsh – the basic cleansing ingredient is the same as the one used in dishwashing detergent. Instead of washing your hair with shampoo, use soap gel (this writer’s children used to refer to soap gel as “soapoo”). To make soap gel, chop up a bar of regular soap or else save thin slivers of bar soap that are too flimsy to wash with, put them in a sturdy container and pour boiling water over them. Leave this to sit and cool to a transluscent gel. Add a few drops of essential oil to the gel if you like, and decant it into a bottle. This mixture can be used for more than just shampoo – it is also good for cleaning floors, washing cars and as liquid handsoap.
* Don’t use artificial air fresheners to remove toilet pongs. Instead, open the window and let fresh air do its work. Other stink-busters include burning matches, candles or incense (this burns the methane responsible for the stink) or making your own air freshener from essential oil and plain water.
* Fluoride in the toothpaste is rather dubious. Switch to a no-fluoride brand or clean your teeth the old fashioned way using table salt or baking soda (have a glass of water on hand – both of these taste pretty strong). If you need to cut down on your sodium intake (and thus need to avoid salt and soda) and can’t afford no-fluoride toothpaste, use only a tiny amount of regular toothpaste – a blob the size of a pea is ample for an adult; a mere smear for children.
* Bubble baths should be avoided if you have sensitive skin. Other ways to make baths fun and luxurious as well as natural are to add home-made bath salts, bath oils or bath vinegars. Simply mix the oil/salt/vinegar with essential oil and leave it to stand a week or so before using (but you can use it straight away). Or imitate the voluptuous Cleopatra and add milk to your bath.
* You do not need to pour large amounts of disinfectant down the toilet in an attempt to kill germs. All this disinfectant will just flush away down the drain next time someone uses the loo. Use vinegar, salt, tea tree oil or vodka to wipe around the toilet seat and rim, and use elbow grease to remove everything else inside the bowl.
* For women: menstruating is messy, but you should avoid flushing sanitary products down the lavatory. If they don’t block your toilet, they will cause problems further down the line. They also cause a waste problem if you put them in the bin and then send them to a landfill. If you’re squeamish, the best option is to avoid using panty liners on an everyday basis (you can wash your underpants, can’t you?) and to use cotton (preferably unbleached) tampons which are biodegradable. For the less squeamish, try washable, reusable products such as the Mooncup.
* Baking soda is the best thing for cleaning the bath and basin, as it cleans off the dreaded grey ring around the bath, removes soap scum and gets the taps sparkling. It doesn’t scratch and it rinses off easily.
* Vinegar kills mould and is great for cleaning glass, including glass shower doors. As an added bonus, it can also be used diluted as a hair rinse or a skin toner, or even as a deodorant. Add essential oil for extra anti-bacterial properties and a nice smell.
* Conserving water and caring for the environment is part of living naturally. The bath is one of the best sources of “grey water” available and is easy to move around to the garden or wherever else you want it – use a bucket to move it or siphon it out into the garden. Limit the amount of baths you have – a quick shower is all you need for everyday washing. Keep big hot baths as a treat and/or share the water.
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Every once in a while, schools and other groups of people, large and small, seem to suffer infestations of these horrible little parasites. While headlice are usually more commonly seen in children, there’s nothing about adulthood that prevents you getting headlice. It’s just that children tend to put their heads close to each other and share hats, etc. more often than adults do. So if you get the news that headlice are going around your child’s school, remember to check yourself as well as your child – the little ones can spread to you via a kiss goodnight.
It’s very tempting, if you spot one of the little beasts, to run down to the chemist’s shop for a bottle of something strong to kill the pests. It’s a natural response: something is infesting your precious child and sucking their blood. But strong solutions from the chemist aren’t the only way to deal to headlice.
First of all, make sure that your child (or you) actually has headlice before taking action. While itchiness is a classic symptom of having headlice, it is not the only symptom, and not all itching is caused by headlice. Having a dry scalp can bring on the itching – even thinking about itchy scalps and headlice can make you start itching (are you itching reading this yet? I am). Close inspection is the only way. You will either spot the eggs or the lice themselves. The eggs look like little pearly full stops stuck on the hairs about 1 cm from the scalp. The lice are flat-bodied critters with lots of legs – they’ll either be reddish brown (when they’re full of blood after feeding) or whitish. Behind the ears and at the nape of the neck are the places they like best – lots of nice, fresh blood near the surface. The eggs show up easily on darker hair; the adult lice show up well in blonde or white hair.
A louse comb is your best natural weapon for dealing with head lice. In fact, even if you succumb to the lure of proprietary lotions, you will need a louse comb for removing the corpses and any eggs that are still stuck on the hair. When you use a louse comb, you have to go over the whole head thoroughly. A thorough session of combing can take half an hour or more, depending on how long the child’s hair is. You DO NOT need to shave or cut the hair. While this makes it easier to comb, it is not required. In fact, cutting hair short after wearing it long for years can be traumatic and upsetting, and worse than the lice themselves. So if you have a little girl who has long, flowing hair that has never known scissors, she will not have to sacrifice her “crowing glory” if she gets headlice. Patience is required for combing out headlice. There is a reason why “nitpicking” and “going over X with a fine-toothed comb” are synonymous with meticulous thoroughness and attention to tiny details to the point of fussiness. Get comfortable. A video may help distract the combee. Send a child to the toilet before you start, too.
Ordinary conditioner may not be the most natural hair care product in your house, but it may be all the treatment you need to deal with headlice. It is certainly lower in toxins than the majority of proprietary preparations. Slather dry hair generously with conditioner. Then get combing. The conditioner does two things: it makes it hard for the adult lice to wriggle away, and it makes the hair slippery so the nits can be combed out easily. Have a lot of tissues, clean loo paper or dusters handy – you will need these to wipe the comb clean from loose hairs, lice (dead or alive) and eggs.
Another natural method is similar. Before going to bed (or a day when you aren’t going anywhere), cover the head with oil: olive oil, sunflower oil or the like. Then cover the head with a plastic shower cap and go to sleep. The oil will smother the lice and, like the conditioner, make the job of combing easier.
Unfortunately, you probably won’t get all the lice in one go, no matter what method you use. You will need to repeat the process every 3 days or so, and keep up the process of checking. Wash everything that comes in contact with the head and hair.
Some essential oils work to kill or prevent headlice. Tea tree oil has been tried, but is not proven to work. Eucalyptus oil, however, does have some scientific backing. Mix it with the oil or conditioner for best effect.
Boiling water cannot be used on the head, but will kill anything nasty in hairbrushes. Wash pillowcases, elastic bands, etc. as per normal.
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Not that long ago, the headlines trumpeted that many of the over-the-counter medications for coughs and colds were not at all safe to give to young children. And if they’re not good for children, then would you want to take them yourself as an adult?
But then you get a cold. Your head hurts, you feel like you’ve swallowed barbed wire, your nose is pretending to be a leaky tap and your voice sounds like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies. Or else your child gets a cold and is home from school grumbling and uncomfortable and barking like a seal. Now what do you do?
Time to get out the old time-honoured remedies for coughs and colds that our grandmothers knew about and used. Most of these remedies are safe for all the family to use – with a few exceptions. While some of them are a little peculiar to taste and some children don’t like them, others are delicious and worth eating at any time of the year, whether you have a cold or not.
Forget the pricey mentholated drinks and the medicated cough lozenges. The experts say that any hot drink or sucking on any hard sweets will do just as well. However, maybe staying off the sweets is advisable, as too much sugar puts a bit of a drain on your immune system, as well as being no good for your teeth. Keeping up fluid levels also helps to flush out the toxins (where do you think your body gets all the fluids needed for the runny nose?). A comforting cup of hot tea or cocoa works, as does plain hot water. For added immune-boosting benefit, try the traditional blend of hot water, lemon and honey.
For grownups, the addition of whisky or any other strong spirit (15+% proof) in small quantities works as a painkiller (large quantities will just leave you in more pain than you started, as well as giving your immune system more nasties to cope with when its already under stress). Add a tablespoon or so to the hot water, lemon and honey mixture. Or try mulled wine: just heat about two cups of red wine with quarter of a teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. The red wine contains antioxidants and the spices contain natural painkillers (especially the cloves) and anti-bacterial principles. And the warm drink is soothing. Adding freshly squeezed orange juice to the mulled wine does no harm to the taste or the health properties. Don’t operate machinery or drive after using one of these remedies, and it will cause drowsiness. Go to bed with a good book.
Hot chicken soup also contains disease fighting-principles. Use the tinned sort, or just boil up the bones and leftover gravy from roast chicken with a few herbs of choice (bayleaf, oregano, thyme and parsley are a good place to start). Add salt, raw chopped garlic and lemon juice to the finished soup and sip it from a cup.
It’s a desperate measure, but if the pain from a sore throat or sinuses gets unbearable, try eating (or drinking) a generous amount of hot chilli. It will feel as if you’ve swallowed the sun, but the body will then release its natural pain-killing endorphins to deal with not only the heat from the chilli, but also the pain of the cold. Add the chilli to hot soup or a drink, mix it into a sandwich or just bite the bullet and eat a whole dried chilli or a third of a teaspoon straight from the box. Have a glass of milk or some yoghurt on hand.
A home-made cough syrup that comes up again and again in websites and books of home remedies is the honey and garlic (or honey and onion) mixture. Chop either a whole raw onion and/or about ten cloves of raw garlic finely. Stir about two tablespoons of honey in with the chopped mixture, then leave it to sit around for about and hour or so. Strain of the liquid – a surprising amount – and put it in a screw-top jar. Deal out a teaspoon or so to anybody who starts coughing. It tastes a bit odd, but not overly unpleasant – in fact, it would make a good seasoning in a Moroccan-style stew.
Essential oils, especially peppermint, eucalyptus and camphor, can be inhaled, or mixed with a plain carrier oil (e.g. olive or sunflower) and rubbed on the chest or nose. This blend of oils in a carrier oil is what is used in the proprietary decongestant rub Vicks Vaporub™. Put a blend of these oils in an aromatherapy burner and allow the steam to diffuse through the house.
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If someone from the past – for example, from the days of Queen Elizabeth I – visited us for Christmas today, they would probably be astonished at the things we call “traditional”. They would wonder where on earth we got certain ideas from, and would wonder where the things they call “traditional” had gone. Our hypothetical Elizabethan visitor would notice that our Christmas celebrations are rather short. The only vestige of the twelve days of partying up large that was common in those days is the tradition of taking the Christmas tree and decorations down on January the 6th. In Elizabethan days, Christmas day was only the start of the feasts, and the loudest and most boisterous day was the grand finale on the Twelfth Night. Items that would seem strange and unfamiliar to this visitor are Father Christmas (to a certain extent), Christmas cards, Christmas trees, mistletoe, and poinsettias – to say nothing of steam trains, Advent calendars containing chocolate and televised Christmas messages from the Queen. Where did they come from?
Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus) has changed considerably over the years. His origins go back to the Roman Saturnalia – Saturn was portrayed by the Romans as an old man (Father Time) who ushered in a reign of plenty and peace – crossed with the Scandinavian/Viking Lord of Winter. The original Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra in Turkey who was known for his generosity, justice and his strict orthodoxy, would hardly recognise himself. Father Christmas first appeared in Britain as a character in mummers’ yuletide plays, and became merged with the Dutch Santa Claus and the presents-in-the-stocking tradition in the USA and imported into Britain. The origin behind the gifts in stockings derives from the legend that recounts how Bishop Nicholas secretly gave money to the daughters of an impoverished nobleman to supply their dowries, without which, they would have had to turn to prostitution to live. The legend says that he dropped the money down the chimney and it landed in the washing they were hanging up to dry.
Father Christmas did not always dress in red trimmed with white. In previous times, he wore a range of colours, including blue, green and brown as well as red (appropriate for a bishop) – the red and white (and, incidentally, his pot belly) were popularised by a series of paintings drawn as Coca-cola advertisements. Before this, it was quite common for Father Christmas to be drawn with a healthy body weight.
Christmas trees come from Germany. Legend has it that they were first invented by Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, but they date back much earlier than this. They have links with the pagan Germanic Yule log and with a legend that links the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden with the True Cross. Some religious plays/mystery plays used a tree decorated with fake fruit for the Tree of Knowledge and then used the exact same tree for the Cross. As these plays were sometimes performed at Christmastime, the tradition stuck.
Mistletoe is an unabashedly pagan tradition, and it probably doesn’t pay to think too hard about the fertility-rite origins of kissing under the mistletoe.
Christmas cards were first sent in 1843 and was the brainchild of Sir Henry Cole after the introduction of the Penny Post. The depictions of old-fashioned methods of transport such as sleighs, stagecoaches and steam trains (the latter being a modern invention) were popularised by Victorian novelist Charles Dickens. Dickens is also responsible for the invention of Scrooge, who was taught how to be generous and celebrate Christmas properly.
The poinsettia has become an addition to the Christmas decorations mostly because it undergoes a spectacular colour change from being rather drab and ordinary looking to bright red around Christmas time. The flaming red colour (in a star shape!) at just the right time made it an obvious choice for Christmas decorations. The custom originates, like the plant itself, from Mexico. Legend has it that it became part of the Christmas decorations when two poor children, who had nothing to give to the church and thus participate in the Christmas celebrations, were instructed by an angel to take the shabby looking weeds as their offering. The children were mocked, but then the weeds became beautiful red stars at precisely the right moment, vindicating them.
Advent calendars obviously began life as a way of counting down to Christmas. However, Advent was traditionally a time of fasting or partial fasting and deprivation, and it traditionally lasted for forty days, not merely the 24 days of December leading up to Christmas. Original Advent calendars often depicted a Middle Eastern street scene, and as the doors and windows opened, different aspects of the Biblical story of the Nativity were revealed – the wise men studying the stars in their tower behind one window, the angel Gabriel making his announcement to Mary over there and Joseph in his carpenter’s shop in another place.
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Ahhh… that’s better. I’ve just have my second cup of coffee for the day and I’m ready to take on the world.
Coffee is one of the most widely consumed stimulants worldwide and has been for quite a long time – ever since a legendary goat-herd in Ethiopia saw how lively his goats were after consuming the beans of a particular little bush. This bush was Coffea arabica and it is one of the most important commercially grown crops worldwide – some rank the trade in coffee as second to the trade in oil.
How do you make good coffee? Is it OK for your health? And is it possible to grow some at home in a glasshouse? The answer to that last question is “probably not”, as C. arabica (and C. robusta, its close relative) likes warm, tropical conditions with a bit of shade. Besides, exports of coffee are what bring money into several so-called developing countries, especially “Fair Trade” coffee, which ensures that the coffee farmers get paid fairly (sounds paradisiacal – drink fair trade coffee and help fight world poverty).
How to make good coffee? Well, that’s easier and something you can do at home. Rough and ready types will just use a percolator or a plunger, but connoisseurs take more time and trouble over their morning coffee. To do it properly, you will need a grinder (and your regular blender will not do unless it has a proper attachment, as the roasted coffee beans are tough). Electrical coffee grinders work well, but if you poke around in antique or even second-hand shops, you may be able to find hand-turned coffee grinders. You will also need a coffee maker of some kind. An espresso machine is wonderful (especially if it has a steamer for frothing milk to make a cappuccino), but with fresh-ground coffee, a percolator, a plunger or a filter still make excellent coffee. Basically, any device that moves hot water over ground coffee to extract the volatile oils and flavours will do, and all methods have a long and very respectable history.
You will need fresh beans if you are going to use the freshest possible coffee. If you can’t grind your own, the next best thing is to buy from a place where you can have it fresh ground when you buy. But no matter how you buy your coffee – beans, fresh ground or even pre-packed vacuum grounds – you will need to store it properly to get the best flavour. Never keep coffee in a little jar. Air will cause the flavour to deteriorate. Keep coffee in a tightly sealed bag, and roll the top down hard as you use the beans/grounds to keep air out. A spring-loaded clothes peg can help keep the bag tightly sealed.
Is coffee OK for your health? Well, the jury’s still out on this one. Like many enjoyable things, coffee is a double edged sword. While some studies suggest that coffee can reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, gout and cirrhosis of the liver, other studies suggest that the caffeine in coffee can harden the arteries and contribute to cardiovascular disease. Is decaf the answer? Well, maybe not, as the caffeine itself has some of the benefits of coffee. It seems as though moderation is the key here, as it is with other double-edged delights like red wine and dark chocolate.
Coffee is a stimulant and it is mildly addictive. This writer found that her (breast-fed) babies slept better and were more settled after she gave up coffee totally, but experienced withdrawal symptoms of tiredness and bad headaches. Oh, but that first coffee after they were weaned was heaven, though…
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OK, we all know they’re an environmental nightmare if they’re dumped, and they’re even worse if they are left just blowing in the wind. If you’re at all environmentally aware, you have probably switched to the reusable bags… or else a good old-fashioned cardboard box. And if you live in one of the many places where you get charged extra for plastic bags, you have probably made the switch as a penny-pinching method.
However, if you’ve been saddled with a few dozen plastic shopping bags, what are you going to do with them now? Don’t just put them in the landfill. You can put them out for recycling at the very least and your waste management London company will deal with them. But why not make the most of them while you’ve got them. Chances are, you’ve paid for them.
Plastic shopping bags are waterproof. This means that if you need to carry something wet alongside something that needs to stay dry, you can pop the wet stuff inside a plastic shopping bag. Use them to carry your wet swimming costume and/or towel after a session at the local swimming pool complex. Or if you have a baby in nappies and you use cloth nappies, you can stop any nastiness spreading around the rest of the nappy bag by corralling the wet or dirty ones in a plastic shopping bag.
You can also use a plastic shopping bag instead of clingfilm inside the fridge (probably not inside the microwave – use a china plate instead as a cover over the frozen peas or whatever). Plastic bags will stop the smell of strong salami getting everywhere, and stop the end of the dog sausage smearing over the side of the fridge.
Some of these methods do get the bag messy. If you’re really keen to keep reusing the bags, you can wash them (in a cold wash in the washing machine) and hang them out to dry. This may, however, tear the bag. Unfortunately, the good folk who recycle plastic shopping bags don’t accept messy ones – drat! They may have to go into the landfill after all. I hate having to do this, and I guess I’m not alone.
However, there is a use for even messy, ripped plastic shopping bags. If you are starting off a raised garden bed or no-dig garden, you will need a layer of plastic right down the bottom to stop the weeds creeping up through the dirt you are going to dump on top. The traditional thing to do is spread out a sheet of black plastic. However, several dozen dirty, tattered old shopping bags will do the trick just as well, as long as you make sure that they overlap… otherwise, the weeds will come up and get you (OK, weeds will always creep into a good, healthy garden. Any plant thrives in rich soil). You will need quite a lot of them to cover a decent patch of garden. Make sure you choose a day with no wind to lay the bags out, or the bags will blow all over the show. You can, of course, use a few stones to weigh them down before the dirt is ready to go on.
Plastic shopping bags are certainly a pain. But they aren’t completely useless – thank goodness.
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Potatoes are versatile, healthy, easy to grow, satisfying – and they’re not as fattening as Dr Atkins et al. make out. However, not all potatoes are created equal. While you can cook a potato in nearly any way imaginable – the only thing you can’t really do to potatoes is serve them raw – not every variety of potato is suitable for every purpose. If you put a particular variety of potato to the wrong purpose – for example, you bake a salad potato – the result will be edible but the texture and appearance will be somewhat off putting.
The British Potato Council has a scale for rating potatoes on the waxy/floury scale. Waxy potatoes score 1; these are best for salads and hold together well. Floury potatoes score 9; these are the sort that work best for mashing or anywhere you want a fluffy potato texture.
So what varieties of potato are best for what purpose? The varieties in the list below are popular in the UK, with some (e.g. Desiree and Nadine) being easy to find in other countries.
1 Desiree. This variety has pinky-purple skin and an ivory coloured flesh. It’s a good all-rounder with a score of 5. They’re great for wedges, baking, roasting and chips. They look good boiled in their skins and served with a touch of olive oil, salt and herbs
2 Maris Piper. This one is the classic spud with white flesh and yellowy-brown skin. Another all rounder with a rating of 5. This is the variety used most often by your local fish & chip shop.
3 Fianna. This variety has white flesh and a pale shell-pink skin. This one is floury with a rating of 9, so if you try to use it in a salad, it will turn to mush and disintegrate. However, it’s a great masher that also works well as a jacket potato.
4 Nadine. A white potato with skin that is the same shade of some types of foundation or face powder. This one rates 2 on the waxy/floury scale, so it’s a great salad potato.
5 Rocket. This is a pinky potato with white flesh that is usually one of the first varieties to hit the market in summer. It scores 4, so it is best boiled. Serve with butter and mint. Small ones are great boiled whole in their skins and served cold.
6 Golden Wonder: Unsurprisingly, this one has a yellowy-bronze skin, but the flesh is more white than yellow. It’s quite long and it scores 9 (floury), so if you don’t mash it, it makes large and generous-looking roast potatoes.
7 Pink Fir Apple. You guessed it – it’s pink. It’s also very, very long. It has a score of 3 and is considered a specialty salad potato.
8 Charlotte. “Suntan” coloured skin and whitish-cream flesh, plus a score of 4 means that this variety can be used for salads or for roasting. For an attractive salad, try mixing a pink variety of salad potato (e.g. the Pink Fir Apple or the Rocket) with Charlotte – in their skins, of course!
9 King Edward. This old-fashioned variety of potato has white skin with pink splashes and patterns across it, and white flesh. It scores 6 and is a good all-rounder that can be used for all sorts of purposes – but probably not for salads unless you want potato to coat the other items in the salad. This variety is named after King Edward VII.
10 Osprey. A white potato with red eyes. This scores 1 and is a salad potato par excellence.
11 Duke of York. The “Grand Old Duke of York” has a tan skin and white flesh. Another early potato that scores 1. A potato salad classic.
12 Rooster. This has a dark pink (almost purple) skin and very white flesh. It scores 6, making it a good all-rounder that can be used for most purposes.
13 Dundrod. A pale ivory skin and white flesh makes this potato quite pretty. It scores 4, meaning it’s an all-rounder that is more on the firm side, so it’s good for salads but still has a nice texture when mashed.
14 Maris Peer. This variety is white inside and outside (OK, the skin is slightly off-white) and it scores 5 on the waxy/floury scale, making it an excellent all-purpose potato.
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Many of us keep our first aid kits and medicine bottles in the pantry (if we don’t keep them in the bathroom cupboard). However, don’t forget to look at some of the other items in the pantry – and the refrigerator and the garden – as a way of treating common ills instead of reaching for the latest artificial lab-concocted wonder drug in a bottle. Here’s a quick list of natural home remedies.
Beestings: After removing the sting (scrape it out rather than grabbing it – squeezing the sac on the end squirts more venom into the sting site), apply a paste of baking soda and water. If the itching continues to be bad, numb the site by holding an ice cube to the spot.
Candida albicans (thrush): Natural live yoghurt containing acidophilus and bifidus bacteria will help to re-balance the flora within the vagina and replace the unwanted yeasts. Apply about a teaspoon of yoghurt on the spot. Once again, if the itching gets unbearable, an ice cube held on the spot soothes and numbs it. Hint: almost freeze live yoghurt in cubes and apply a cube for soothing and treatment in one.
Urinary tract infections: Drink plenty and don’t hold on when you need to go. This will flush out the bacteria in the system. Cranberry juice is well known for being particularly good for fighting urinary tract infections. However, if the pain starts spreading to your back and kidneys, see your doctor for a treatment of antibiotics.
Acne: Try any of the following applied to the spot: raw garlic, essential oil of tea tree, lavender essential oil, aloe vera gel or an infusion of witch hazel. A steam treatment with essential oils in the water also works wonders (suggested essential oils: lavender, lemon, tea tree, rosemary or cedar).
Burns (including sunburn): Aloe vera gel works wonders for small burns, as does lavender essential oil applied neat to the burn site (after running cold water over the burn for 10 minutes). Ice can also be rubbed on the site. For sunburn, make a batch of very strong black tea, and pour it – bags and all – into a bath of warm to tepid water. Soak in the bath, rubbing teabags over the reddest sites. This writer tried this method after turning lobster-red last summer: the morning after the treatment, not a single bit of redness could be seen.
Warts: The fresh sap from fig leaves or fig fruits dabbed on the spot kills warts. They turn an alarming bruise-black colour but then they vanish.
Constipation: Forget buying laxatives. Instead, try eating prunes or a large amount of liquorice. And make sure that you get plenty of fibre in your diet on a regular basis.
Diarrhoea: Drink plenty of fluids, as you will be losing lots. Again, eat plenty of fibre (prunes again). A tea made from raspberry or blackberry leaves also helps.
Boils: Make a poultice from warm to hot mashed onion or a pulp made from bread and water. Apply this to the boil site. This will draw the pus up, allowing you to drain the pus out. Use a sterilized needle to puncture the boil – you can sterilize a needle by holding it in a candle or gas flame for 20 second (use tweezers), boiling the needle or soaking it in strong alcohol. Have plenty of cotton wool and some disinfectant on hand when puncturing the boil.
Cuts and grazes: They sting, but garlic and/or cayenne pepper act as disinfectants to apply to small cuts and abrasions. Cayenne pepper in particular also helps to stanch small amounts of bleeding.
Bruising: Apply ice wrapped in a tea towel to the site. This works particularly well for bumps on the head to reduce swelling.
Indigestion: A teaspoon of baking soda in a cup of water tastes vile but settles an acid stomach like magic. Other remedies include peppermint tea or cinnamon tea.
Toothache or gumboils: Make a tea from cloves. This is both disinfectant and analgesic (pain killing) as well as tasting pleasant. In days gone by, clove oil was a basic standby for dentists.
Bad breath: To combat the bad breath from eating garlic, chew a sprig of parsley. Other remedies for general bad breath include gargling and/or drinking peppermint or cinnamon tea, and chewing cloves. For chronic bad breath, eating plenty of live yoghurt can help fix the bacteria causing the problem.
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There’s nothing quite like a roast chicken for a special occasion. It’s a main course with a bit of style to it for minimal work. The traditional stuffing for a roast chicken contains sage and onion mixed with breadcrumbs (from white bread), salt and lard. While a stuffed chicken is lovely to eat, preparing the stuffing can be time-consuming if preparation time is an issue, and lard is one item that is definitely off the menu in many households – all that saturated animal fat!
Chicken is such a versatile bird that has so many flavours that complement it that in many ways, your imagination is your only limit in choosing a stuffing for a roast. Stuffings for chicken can be either the traditional sort where the body cavity is stuffed, or you can try an under-skin stuffing where the flavouring is worked between the meat and the skin, allowing the flavour to penetrate into all parts of the meat as well as into the gravy.
Cavity stuffings:
Mashed sweet potato makes an excellent substitute for chestnut stuffing, especially at Christmastime. Boil the sweet potato with its skin on, then mash with olive oil and salt. Add some chopped raw onion and fill the body cavity.
In any traditional herb stuffing, you can replace the lard with cooking oil, the white breadcrumbs with crushed Weetabix for extra fibre and vitamins, and add some egg white to bind the mixture together.
This works for the traditional sage-and-onion stuffing, although the texture will be different. You can also try different combinations, such as rosemary and garlic, or the pest taste of chopped pine-nuts and basil.
Sometimes, you can use a whole vegetable as a quick and easy stuffing. Suitable “stuffings” of this sort include onions (stick whole cloves into the onion for an extra bit of flavour), whole heads of garlic, apricots and lemons (cut the lemon almost in slices but leaving them joined at the bottom to allow the juice out. Remember to rub the inside of the body cavity with a little salt before putting in the whole vegetable.
Under-skin stuffings:
To put in any under-skin stuffing, ease the skin away from the meat, starting at the perimeter of the cavity opening, and loosen as much as you can without tearing the skin – you should be able to get as far as the breast and part way down the thighs. Use a table knife or the handle of a spoon to help you reach further. Then push your chosen stuffing in as far as you can. Massage it along as far as you can from outside the skin as well as pushing it under the skin.
Some ideas:
* Apricot pulp. Mix with a little cayenne pepper for extra zing.
* Pesto.
* Blackcurrants or redcurrants
* Crushed garlic
* Any mix of herbs to taste – including the traditional sage and onion for the taste with out the fat content.
* Fresh chopped chillis – not for the faint hearted!
* Blue vein cheese (make sure that the roast does not dry out – keep it covered while cooking).
Of course, you don’t have to stuff the bird before it’s cooked. In the Middle Ages, poultry had things added to them after roasting for presentation with panache. While most of us can’t quite go as far as carefully placing the skin of a peacock back onto the bird after roasting (which isn’t particularly hygienic, when you think about it), it is possible to use the cavity of a roasted bird as an unusual place to present some of the accompaniments to the chicken. How about filling the cavity with raw grapes, mixed nuts or cranberry jelly – or even, for real luxury, some caviar?
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