Paint
Senior Cook
Hi everyone!
We arrived back from our 3 weeks of vacation in England at 2am this morning. It was wonderful to be able to see all our relatives again - my little niece has grown so much!! LOL!
It's also good to be back in my own kitchen again - I had taken a couple of my favourite recipe books with me so I could do some cooking for ourselves and our families, but hadn't reckoned on our relative's kitchens being so ill-equipped....there were no sharp knives anywhere to be found, and I ended up secretly attacking both my MiL and BiL's knives with my nail file to sharpen them LOL! I hadn't realised how much I took good equipment for granted until I tried to cook with cheap pots & pans and blunt knives - not to mention the total lack of dishwashers and waste disposal units. No-one seemed to have any 'staple' ingredients either - I think my BiL had salt, pepper and garlic powder, and that was it. It became too expensive to cook much ourselves, as I was having to buy all the herbs & spices I needed for every meal. Our relatives are very much 'meat & 2 veg' people, but they did enjoy the 4 meals I did manage to cook for them. My MiL insisted on cooking us Christmas dinner and a couple of sunday dinners, even though she is riddled with arthritis. The dinners were nice - but the washing up afterwards wasn't My DH and I had to brace ourselves as my MiL tends to use every pot and pan in the house when she cooks, then she dunks everything in the sink with cold water, so you have this yukky cold, greasy, scummy mess to try and deal with....It took DH and I over an hour to wash up after each dinner she cooked - I don't think my husband has ever been so 'domesticated' in his life before
Eating out was very, very, expensive - so much of the time we lived on sandwiches and 'fish & chips', with a couple of chinese take-outs thrown in. Both DH and I are really looking forward to some healthy, home-cooked meals now that we are back in our own house
Happy New Year,
Paint.
We arrived back from our 3 weeks of vacation in England at 2am this morning. It was wonderful to be able to see all our relatives again - my little niece has grown so much!! LOL!
It's also good to be back in my own kitchen again - I had taken a couple of my favourite recipe books with me so I could do some cooking for ourselves and our families, but hadn't reckoned on our relative's kitchens being so ill-equipped....there were no sharp knives anywhere to be found, and I ended up secretly attacking both my MiL and BiL's knives with my nail file to sharpen them LOL! I hadn't realised how much I took good equipment for granted until I tried to cook with cheap pots & pans and blunt knives - not to mention the total lack of dishwashers and waste disposal units. No-one seemed to have any 'staple' ingredients either - I think my BiL had salt, pepper and garlic powder, and that was it. It became too expensive to cook much ourselves, as I was having to buy all the herbs & spices I needed for every meal. Our relatives are very much 'meat & 2 veg' people, but they did enjoy the 4 meals I did manage to cook for them. My MiL insisted on cooking us Christmas dinner and a couple of sunday dinners, even though she is riddled with arthritis. The dinners were nice - but the washing up afterwards wasn't My DH and I had to brace ourselves as my MiL tends to use every pot and pan in the house when she cooks, then she dunks everything in the sink with cold water, so you have this yukky cold, greasy, scummy mess to try and deal with....It took DH and I over an hour to wash up after each dinner she cooked - I don't think my husband has ever been so 'domesticated' in his life before
Eating out was very, very, expensive - so much of the time we lived on sandwiches and 'fish & chips', with a couple of chinese take-outs thrown in. Both DH and I are really looking forward to some healthy, home-cooked meals now that we are back in our own house
Happy New Year,
Paint.