Random Donner Post :)

The wife made us a beef and ale pie last night in the pressure cooker. Beef cubed, sliced up mushrooms, oxo cube, half pint of Abbott ale – the other half wasn’t wasted, honest!! – frozen leeks instead of onions, transferred after cooking into an oven dish, pastry applied on top and  into the oven for 20 minutes. Superb.

The left over stock wasn’t wasted either, put in a couple of frozen steaks, mixed veg, sliced up mushrooms and braised steak for tea tonight!!

I’d like an update on that donner recipe. I do like a good donner.

My missus cooks a lot of stuff in the slow cooker. Steak & kidney casserole is my fave: steak (not just beef, it’s fatty) cubed, ox kidney, red onions, several dollops of Red wine. (cheap Sicilian is best) Creamed tates, Brussels, carrots, maybe a roast parsnip, broccoli. The gravy is fantastic. A chicken roasted in the bag just falls apart. Steak mince is also good, cheap meal but tastes really good if prepared right. Tonight it’s Turkey steaks in white wine sauce. I’m drooling now.😊😋

I am not a “Donner” type, just plain old fashioned English cooking. We have a Rayburn oil fired cooker which is always on, and we use the bottom oven for slow cooking. A piece of beef which would normally be somewhere between bloody and tough as old boots, put in the bottom oven before 10:00am, is beautifully soft and tasty by 6:00pm.

After a recent suggestion from Drs that Tamara’s Cholesterol was getting a bit high, we have now changed breakfast cereal (muesli for me and “Fruit ‘n Fibre” for Tamara) to porridge. It goes in the bottom oven in a casserole last thing at night, having been brought first to the boil with plenty of fruit, until morning.

Very enjoyable. Long live the Rayburn, if the climate gods don’t stop my kerosene supplies.

Les.

Oat starch is certainly sticky and seems to have an affinity with iron (and maybe blood cells). For example the difficulty in cleaning metal porridge spoons and old style saucepans. I can well believe that it coats surfaces in the stomach/oesophagus.

Oat bran is slightly different in that it contains more  soluble fibre which is high in the resistant starch that passes through unharmed to the colon where it ferments and feeds the bacteria that only come out to play in the early hours of the morning. This is an area where my GERD specialist said that research was only just coming to grips with what goes on in the colon and the hundreds of different sorts of bacteria that inhabit it and who are the good/bad guys. He said the opinion was that resistant starch tends to feed and nurture the good guys.

I do not go for all the advance work the evening before. Just oats, raisins, oat bran and wheat bran in the bowl, enough hot water to soak them while I deal with other issues. Then a top up with more hot water since the first lot has been absorbed, perhaps a chopped banana to round it off. Then mugs of tea to wash it down and an apple to complete the feast.

Richard, the first time I made the porridge, I just put the stuff in a pan into bottom oven overnight, then in the morning brought it up to the boil. When I started eating it, I soon realise it was just a bit too hot, and I had burned the roof of my mouth. I am particularly sensitive there. Slightly hot cheese on toast leaves my mouth roof in a right mess.

Next time, the boil at night and cool in the bottom oven had it “Just right” as with Baby Bear.

In fact tonight I shall not boil it, just stir in the morning and try it. As Ed says, I can judge how much it has “dissolved” when I clean the casserole dish. I suspect previous night boil will be better, even if time consuming.

I will look into the additional bran suggestion.

Les.

If the consultancy is good, that’s a good starting point. I’ll be interested in hearing how you get on in the future.

This is just ad I’m starting to cut alot of meat out of my diet. So not the best timing at all. I’m not going veggie, just minimising the meat I eat, almost never eat dark meats no more. I’m down to a bit of chicken (boring chicken) a week, and a full English on Saturdays. Though I’m gonna drop that soon. Trying to go really veg and vitamin heavy.

I’m going just chicken, that was just an example. It’s either chicken breast (which I hate), or a pork steak over done which I do like. But only once a week. Ive gone off beef atm, and that use to be my go to meat.

I’m just going through a strange stage, where I’m just not feeling right withing myself, so I’m overhauling my diet. Not to lose weight, just hopefully to feel better.

Alnost a year into the pub game and my diet turned to compleat garbage. Then to counter act the late night takeaways, I substituted them with nothing. So since december I’ve been living on a bown of musli (sugar free) with ciniman on (it’s devine) as my one meal a day.

So things have to change. Especally as I feel like I’m constantly tired and getting alot of dry skin.

I see these plant based diets are all the rage, so I’m going to loosely try one of them, whoth the od bit of meat 2 days a week thrown in. Hopefully perk me up after a few weeks.

Currently eating 5 chicken nugurts my daughter jus brought on her way home 😒 first thing I’ve eaten today. But I was happy waiting till breakfast muslie! Will power of a, whatever has non,! They was quite nice tbh!