Roast Post

In the absence of anything interesting to blog about, I am going to present you with a helpful guide on how to roast a chicken. If you already know how to roast a chicken or don't care to learn right now, this post may not be for you.

Roasting a chicken seems like such a big difficult deal, especially because while the recipes say something like "stick it in the oven for this long, then take it out again" they don't answer the important questions, like "what do I put it in the oven in" and "what if I want vegetables" and "do I put the chicken in butt first or head first?"

So I am setting out to answer these questions, and more, in this, the Absolute Idiot's Beginner's Guide to Chicken and Vegetable Roasting. (If you want to roast something else, this is not the place for you. My target market for this is shrinking rapidly.)

And as I walk you through this, it may get daunting, but please remember that we are essentially heating up a dead bird, not terraforming the Moon.*

*post on this next week.

Ingredients

A Chicken (the sort you buy in a bag, from the supermarket - if you're doing this from scratch then you're on your own with the plucking.)

Roasting Bag (you need an Oven Bag - you might be tempted to think a Freezer Bag will do but trust me, the chicken will not fit in.)
Vegetables (potatoes, pumpkin, parsnips, onion and yams are all good)

Water and/or cooking oil, depending on how healthy you feel like being

Flour

First, take the chicken out of the bag. Unless it's frozen, in which case thaw it then take it out of the bag. With me so far? Good. Preheat the oven to 180 or 200 degrees C (I can't remember which one and it doesn't really seem to matter a whole lot.)

Spread the chicken's legs. Heh heh heh. If you want to make the chicken do a little dance, now is the time. Hold the chicken under the tap, butt-up, and fill it with water. Empty the chicken and repeat. Now reach inside the chicken's bum and feel around for a big lump of fat. It's pretty near the butthole. Grab this and pull it free - the chicken is dead, it won't mind - then throw it out. We do not need that buttfat. Put the chicken down now. Ok, make it dance one more time, then put it down.

Put a dessertspoon of flour into the oven bag and shake it all about (holding the top of the bag closed while you're doing this.) Tip the flour out. The inside of the bag should be a bit floury now. Good Job!

Insert the chicken headfirst into the bag - you can guide it in from a height and pretend it's in a diving competition if you like, I usually do - and close the top of the bag with a twist tie. (They should have come in the packet with the oven bags and if they didn't you should complain.)

Put the bag down on a roasting dish, so the chicken is lying on its stomach, breasts pointing skywards. Make a couple of small holes in the bag - on the top half of the bag, otherwise the fat will all run out, and we will need that fat later. Doesn't really matter how big the holes are, they just need to be there so that the bag doesn't explode during cooking.

Put this in the oven and make a note of the time - the meal will be done in an hour and a half.

Chop up your veges now, while the chicken is getting started. Peel potatoes, and pumpkin if you can be bothered. Chop the onion into slices, like you'd slice an apple - you want it to make a little fan of onion, um, leaves when it's cooked. Don't peel the yams. I have no idea what to do with the parsnip because I think parsnip's kind of revolting. Everything wants to be about the same size. Incidentally, this is the easy part - you've already performed cosmetic surgery on a chicken's butt. Good Job!

After the chicken's been in for half an hour, take it out and place the veges around it in a nice little pattern of your own devising. Pour water into the roasting pan so that the veges look like they're lying in the bath - it's better to have too much water in there than too little. If you're not being healthy, you can also squirt cooking oil all over them. Yum Yum.

Whack it all back in the oven then mix yourself a drink - don't get too drunk because you still have to turn over the veges. Take roasting pan out after 30 minutes has passed and turn the veges over. Some of them will have stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan. Relax! This is normal. Just pour in some more water until they are bathing again (but not floating) and squirt on some more oil. Just imagine that it is baby oil. These vegetables are lying in the spa, soaking up the sun, covered in baby oil. Soon they will be crispy and delicious. Yum Yum.

Back in the oven with it.

Another 30 minutes passes. Remove the whole lot from the oven, and stick a fork into one of the bigger bits of vege to see if it's done. Ha ha ha, whatever. We both know you're just going to eat it and see. Do that. If everything's done, take it out. If it's not done, chuck it back in and check every 15 mins until it is done.

Take the veges out of the roasting dish and stick them on a serving platter or whatever. Lift up the chicken by the top of the bag, then cut the bottom corner of the bag off and let all of the fat run out into the roasting pan. Put the chicken on a plate.

Stop. Gravy time!

The secret to making gravy is to not worry if it has lumps. That is what sieves are for. Leave the fat-filled roasting pan on top of the stove, and turn the element on to low. Chuck a couple of spoonfuls of flour into the fat, and squidge them about with the back of the spoon, trying to eliminate as many lumps as possible. If there are bits of roast vege stuck to the bottom of the pan, feel free to incorporate these. Add water and flour and squidge it all about until you have enough gravy.

If it's too light in colour, drip in some dark soy sauce - you don't need much, it won't affect the flavour, and it'll colour the gravy up nicely. When you've got the right amount, if you're Jamie Oliver then there will be no lumps. Sadly, you are not Jamie Oliver. A sieve is good, buta tea strainer will do just as well because then a) you can decant it straight into the gravy boat and b) tea strainers are nowhere near as fiddly to clean as sieves are.

Turn off the element. Carve up the chicken as best you know how. Serve.

Food. It's exciting.

I have made tiramisu again! Last time I made it, my cousin said it was possibly the best thing she had ever eaten. However, last time I used coffee, boysenberries and brandy. This time I have used white hot chocolate, cherries, and merlot. I think sometimes I have too much faith in my flavour-matching abilities. (Next time: white chocolate/blueberries/vodka; coffee/apricots/brandy; dark chocolate/mandarins/cointreau.) We shall see how it turns out. I've put the recipe for the original tiramisu - my own personal recipe, I should add - at the bottom of the post, in case you'd like to try this at home - I have a sneaking feeling I may have posted this before but oh well.


Thank you, Brooke, for Naming the Ensquiggle - the word 'tilde' was in my brain, but not in the right part of it for easy accessibility.

How do you guys imagine your brains? I tend to see mine as being a towering, asymmetric chest of drawers, with some cupboards closed and locked, some constantly left half-open, and some which have been shoved closed-ish but still have a couple of socks hanging out. All of the cupboards are of varying size, and labelled, but some ('cooking') are much more organised than others ('what I did last weekend after drinking all that wine.') Luckily there is some guy in there who opens up all the cupboards from time to time and dusts off the thoughts and organises them neatly.

Also, some of the cupboards - like the one marked 'childhood,' for example - open up to reveal a filing cabinet that stretches back further than you can see, and it is in one of those filing cabinets ('punctuation & the English language'), about 2/3rds of the way back, that tildes were. (Between 'what a gerund is' and 'when to use square brackets.') So next time that I'm talking to you and I can't remember the word 'heresy', please try to remember that I'm standing on a little stepladder in my mind, frantically rifling through a drawer and flinging irrelevant thoughts all over the floor.


Tiramisu

about 1c sugar
4 eggs
normal-sized tin of boysenberries (or other fruit)
packet of mascarpone (200-250g)
about 1/2 c of brandy (or other alcohol; if using wine, use more)
two small sponges
1/2 c really strong coffee (or other hot drink)

Drain the boysenberries til about 2/3rds of the liquid in the tin is no longer in the tin. Don't drain them down the sink! We will use that liquid later to make a pretentious coulis. It's like a sauce, but more pretentious. Tip the boysenberries into a bowl, add 1/3 c sugar and about the same of brandy. Leave this to, um, fester while you do the other stuff.

Separate the eggs - whites in one bowl, yolks in another. I specify this not because I think you are an idiot, but because the first time I made this I threw out the yolks. Whoops. Add the packet of mascarpone to the yolks. Also add the rest of the brandy. Beat until smooth - it'll get a bit thicker as well. Put that aside.

Add half a cup of sugar to the egg whites, and beat until they form stiff peaks. Ha fucking ha. If you are a normal person, like me, you will have no idea how to separate eggs properly, get bits of yolk in the white, and they will not form stiff peaks; in fact, they will not form peaks at all. Here is a secret: this is perfectly OK. Just whip the fuckers until they have made it obvious that they're not going to get any more whipped, then sigh in disgust and turn to the sponge.

Put the sponge in the bottom of the bowl you're going to serve the tiramisu in. Easy. Drizzle the coffee (not all of it) over the sponge. Worry that you have not drizzled on enough coffee. Splosh some more on. Worry that you have added too much coffee. Put the coffee down. Drink some of the brandy.

Get the boysenberries and spoon a layer of these on top of the drizzly sponge. Mmm mmm. Maybe you could taste them. Delicious! You are doing well. Don't eat all the boysenberries.

Tip the egg whites into the mascarpone mixture. Beat until smooth & thick, about the consistency of whipped cream just before it starts going into floppy peaks. Spoon some of this (don't worry if it's a bit runny, it'll set) onto the boysenberries until they're all covered. This should use about half the mascarpone mixture.

Grate some chocolate - did I mention you needed a little bit of chocolate? - on top of that. (If you're making a variation, use white chocolate/hot chocolate powder/cinnamon or whatever.) Then put the other sponge on and repeat the coffee-berries-mascarpone-chocolate thing but this time use everything up.

Chuck that in the fridge for a good 6 hours - gives it time to set, and also gives the juice & so on time to drip through the sponge and make it amazingly fucking delicious.

For bonus points, get the boysenberry juice you set aside right at the start and tip it into a little saucepan. Any leftover boysenberry/brandy mix can also go in. Add sugar - I have no idea how much I used. Maybe half a cup? Probably more. Bring this to the boil, then simmer it for about maybe 5, 10 minutes, or until you get bored. Don't taste it, it's really hot and will kind of caramelise on your tongue, and stir it pretty regularly so it doesn't do the same thing on the bottom of the pot. Add a few drops of lemon essence (or lemon juice, if you have it). When this has simmered for a while, strain it (through a sieve/tea strainer/coffee filter/proper straining device) and whack it in the fridge. This is an appropriate time to chant my personal cooking motto, "always use a strainer to prevent a misdemeanour." Congratulations! You have made a coulis, sort of. This can be served with the tiramisu - the best thing about it is that it allows you to say things like '...the tartness of the boysenberry and lemon coulis really sets off the sweetness of the tiramisu.'

Yeah, I know. I should have a cooking show. Like Nigella, but with swears.

Nap-inducing

Yo! Either this is really boring or I am tired, because I read back over what I'd written just before and almost fell asleep.

We are having Italian-themed dinner tonight at my cousins' house to celebrate my sister's birthday and my aunt's birthday, which are on consecutive days or something. Anyway they were both this week and I get to spend the day shopping and cooking! Is like being on a very very slow episode of Top Chef.

I have made: 2 tiramisu/tiramisus/tiramisen; a yet-to-be-decorated chocolate cake, and antipasto platter. Am not sure how the tiramisen will taste because I haven't used the recipe before & the quantities seem a bit weird & I fucked up the egg whites. Hmm. Am also slightly worried about decorating the cake - I asked Kate what she'd like on it, being as it's her cake, and she said, "A dog! No, wait! I want you and me and Mum and Charlie!" She overestimates my cake-decorating skills something fierce, but let's see how it goes.

Charlie is currently outside barking like stink because I won't let him in - delicious warm chocolate cake is cooling on the bench, and I don't trust him not to leap up and grab it in his toothy jaws. I do not want to be part of a scene where I am trying to remove an entire cake from his gullet and he is gulping frantically in the other direction. Also he will be sick and I will have to make another cake. Bark bark bark bark.

I will take photos of cooking efforts and post them tomorrow.

This was originally going to be an instructive post with cleaning tips & tricks but then I realised that oh my God, booo-ring, and also they would all be made up (see 'wood polish is a con do not use it') and/or not helpful (see 'stainless steel polish is great because it's in an aerosol can and you can practice your tag on the fridge') and sometimes just plain inappropriate (see 'spit has powerful cleaning properties, just ask Hugh Hefner's shiny wang.')

So I don't have much to blog about. Saw 48hours film for the first time last night & it was awesome! Will link to it when it's been put on youtube and then you can all go and watch it.

Taking Stock

I spent from 5.30am this morning til 2pm stocktaking at a New World near you, and am doing the same tomorrow at a Woolworth's, before going to clean my aunt's house, and then to kickboxing. There is not much punctuation in this post because I am really really tired & quite frankly cba making this readable.

Stocktaking is not exciting but the time passes quite quickly and sometimes interesting things happen (not today). Today I started at 5.30am as I believe I may have mentioned and let me tell you it is really fucking early at that hour, especially when your usual rising time is like 8 and then suddenly somehow it's ten to 6 and you are counting packet upon packet of bacon. At one stage I held 12 kilos of bacon in my arms. I swear the bacon almost killed me. I only had a piece of bread for breakfast because it's kind of obscene to eat anything substantial at 5am unless it is a kebab and you're on your way home from town and/or drunk and I was neither of these. I was just sitting there counting these packets of bacon and being hungry. Then I was relocated to the out-the-back (storehouse) chiller & counted butter for a while and then bam! I rounded a corner in the chiller and there it was. Piles of delicious smallgoods waiting to be counted. So I went back to the bacon. Bacon bacon fucking bacon. Then I counted wine for a bit, and now all I want is wine and bacon.* At the same time. Maybe even in the same glass. I went out for dinner the other night and for dessert I had tiny rockmelon balls suspended in gewurtztraminer jelly and if they can do it with rockmelon then why not with bacon? It would look like this:
On second thought maybe that would be disgusting.

Anyway after I was done with the bacon I went into a walk-in freezer and counted in there for about half an hour, or until I couldn't feel my toes and my fingers were really sore. The guy who was counting in the bay (bit of shelving) next to me said with no little sense of wonder, "I can feel my nose hairs freezing!" I think it's actually your boogers which freeze, in case anyone's interested. (If you actually know what freezes please tell me. Me and the other guy kept sniffing in huge gusts of air just to feel it rush icily up our sinuses.) Was like the Antarctic would be if there were no penguins or polar bears (you're a smart kid, you can just pick the right one) and everyone was counting packets of frozen peas instead of exploring. I was going to write down some witty comments about working in the freezers but the ink in my pen was half frozen (not kidding).

Did manage to note down that lots of cartons of food had DON'T DROP printed on them. I guess maybe it happened a lot for a while there.

Best product slogan of the day: "(Some Toilet Paper) Double Length - It's Twice as Long!" No fucking shit, toilet paper company. What next? "Toilet Paper! Quite Nice To Wipe Your Arse With!" "Toilet Paper! Not Gritty!" "Toilet Paper - It's On A Roll!" Pun.

Sorry, it's been a long day and I am a big fucking grouch. Mainly because I am tired and I totally used to be able to function on barely any sleep and now I can't what is this am I getting old am I no longer cool? I have about ten million bloggable things and most of them are rants but now is not the time. I am talking to several internet people and appear to be being obnoxious whoops. OH WHOOPS. Next thing you know I will be making declarations of love and vomiting on my keyboard and all I want is bacon! and wine.*

Kate bought a jersey last week and she loves it. It is big and green and called Big Green. She just came into my room and told a long story about Big Green and how he nearly got wet and so she ran all the way home. It was like one of my stories. Her boyfriend does not like Big Green. "Do you think I look like a hobo?" she asked him. "No," he said, "it is just that Big Green looks like something a hobo would wear." When I was little my favourite sweater was called Bokko (because he had a house on him) and I wore him all the time. I think all the best sweaters look a little hobo-y. Hobo-ish? Hobo-like? Hobolean? Hobocore? Hobotic? Hobo-erotic? Derelicte. I'm going to bed.

*and a onesie

Gather ye roses

Dog control man came round today - our cranky old neighbour keeps complaining about the dog barking, "particularly the small one." We only have one, and as dogs go he's on the bigger side of medium (he's a bearded collie (no, not a border collie, it's a separate breed,)) so Neighbour Lady is either mental or vindictive. Possibly both. She's decided that all of the barking in the neighbourhood emits from our back garden, and has made it her mission in life to Eliminate Our Dog. She wrote yet another very rude letter to the dog control people - luckily they think she is a nutter as well, so our dog isn't affected. But it's still annoying.

After the dog man had gone, I went out to our garden and picked a HUGE bunch of Neighbour Lady's roses, which are sort of on our side of the fence but not really. Ha ha ha, you old bat. I hope that you go to rose shows, and that your prizewinning bloom is now sitting in magnificent splendour on our dining room table.

Did anything else happen today? I went for a walk with the dog. He did a large and time-consuming poo by the side of a busy road and interrupted a teenage couple making out on the riverbank by leaping out of the river, leaping through their entwined bodies, and shaking vigorously. How embarrassing.

Oh, and Kelly left a comment on my last post saying that she loved my graphs (thank you!) and so now you all get to learn something about my daily food intake, which today went a little something like this -

Meringue

Have just eaten meringue made by my sister - had leftover egg whites from pasta carbonara (dinner) & she decided that meringue was the way to go. Unfortunately, all of the recipes the Internet had to offer involved things we didn't have in the cupboard (see: castor sugar, cream of tartar (seriously, what kind of flat has cream of tartar? come on, Google, cut us some slack)) & so she did what our family has done since the age of time when confronted with a cooking problem: make up your own recipe. So now we have all eaten (and politely commented on) what is essentially sweet, vanilla-flavoured poached eggs. Sadly, the vanilla did not mask the taste of egg. They bear a startling resemblance to a Japanese sweet/savoury jellied treat. Weird.

Anyway, this post wasn't originally intended to be a discussion of ways not to make meringue. I've forgotten what it was intended to be a discussion of. Probably just a forum for me to bang on about Plot, Lack Of (as in, Novel, not as in 'I have lost the plot')

On a completely unrelated note (how unlike me! I can see this post just being a list of unrelated things which have caught my attention), I am enjoying the ampersand today. &! Punctuation is very aesthetically pleasing. So are fonts. I am capable of spending a stupid amount of time messing about in Word trying out all the different fonts and then, when I'm done with that, trying them out in bold, and italic, and with strikethrough, and with double strikethrough, and with shadow, and embossed...you get the point. Strangely, I only seem to do this when I'm at work.

New fad: iced tea! Iced tea is the new (un-iced) green tea. Iced tea is the new spirulina (although it probably doesn't make your chest magically grow). Iced tea is the new...hey, I have a plot now! (I promise I'm not writing a novel about iced tea.)

"Claire used to eat 70 packets of crisps a week." Jamie Oliver is singlehandedly overhauling the health of a small English town, or perhaps province, that I have forgotten the name of. It makes me feel tired. Is it a worry that my first reaction to Claire's chip habit is, "Oh, that's ten packets a day, I could probably eat that many?" Mmm, chips. The vending machine at work will be the end of me. I have eaten much more recently in the interests of 'taking better care of myself.' Good theory, but I think I may've gone from one extreme to the other. Size of a house! A house full of chips.

I don't have an alarm clock any more - this is my first night without one since losing my phone. I mean, I do have one - but I'm not sure I know how to work it. I am terribly, terribly afraid of waking up really late and missing work. Gah! I'm sure I won't - I'll probably wake up every half hour in a sweat-drenched panic that it's 9am and I'm NOT AT WORK - but it is still terrifying. Think I will sleep on the uncomfortable couch to minimise chances of me sleeping through everything. Wish me luck.

7

Hello! It's me again.

My impossibly coloured friend Andrea (acatofimpossiblecolour.blogspot.com) has found another nice meme for friends to complete - you list seven random facts about yourself (and presume that people are interested in reading them). So, without further ado, let me present

Seven Facts About Ally
Now I can't think of anything even remotely interesting.

1. I am a huge fan of the Easy-Off Bam! ads. The catchphrase they shout after demonstrating the amazing cleaning powers of Bam ("Bam! And the dirt is gone.") is my favourite part. I have developed a habit of shouting it whilst cleaning things. I shouted it in the shower the other day. I have also been known to shout it when leaving a room ("Bam! And the Ally is gone") and drinking ("Bam! And the wine is gone.") Not a particularly illustrious start to the seven facts I know. But I feel Bam! is an integral part of my personality and, obscurely, the key to understanding my inner workings.

2. I had a storybook as a child which still makes me cry - it's called Black Dog. It's about a girl who has a black dog, and the girl and Black Dog are best friends who do everything together. One day the girl and Black Dog go to the beach, and the girl sees an absolutely beautiful bird. She goes to play with the bird, but before she reaches it, it flies away. Every day from then on, all the girl does is stare out the window looking for the bird. She never plays with Black Dog any more. Weeks go by and the bird doesn't come back, and the girl gets sadder and sadder. Then one morning she looks out the window and sees the bird in a tree outside! So she runs outside, and as she runs outside she sees Black Dog jump from the tree and fall to the ground, and Black Dog dies, because he was trying to be the bird for her, and he was trying to fly.
Silly story - am pretty sure dogs can't climb trees.

3. I really like my hands - they aren't particularly pretty hands, they're too square, quite scarred and my fingers aren't very tapered (rings make my fingers look squat, one more reason to not get married! hee) but I like them anyway. I am occasionally jealous of people with slender, delicate little hands, but then I guess I can...hold more stuff? Yeah! They may have dancer's hands, but I can hold stuff. Like, seven wine glasses at once. Although to be fair that is more down to the precise art of balancing wine glasses rather than superior hand strength or size.

4. About five years ago I drew an almost perfect interrobang, freehand, in Vivid on a white sheet of paper. I've kept it ever since, usually stuck up on my wall. It was only a few months ago that I was messing about on Wikipedia, looking up obscure punctuation marks (I do not remember why) when I came across the interrobang and instantly went, "That's that thing I drew!"

Sorry that I'm not much good at this!

5. I enjoy making graphs. I used to love analysing data, plotting points, joining them and then sitting back and looking at the perfect lines. Which is quite out of keeping with my normal haphazard style, but probably explains my love of cleaning fridges and Bach fugues.

6. If I could pick any superpower, I'd go for teleportation, closely followed by telepathy. If I had three wishes, I'd wish for teleportation powers, telepathic powers, and happy and satisfying lives for my friends and relatives. (And then I would give all of my money to charity. Ha ha.)

7. (Thank God, last one! There don't seem to be many interesting facts about me.) When I was 16, I dyed my hair orange by accident. I wanted to bleach it from its natural very dark brown to white-blonde. Obviously doing this at home was a great idea. With Andrea's assistance (thank you, Andrea) I managed to get it white-blonde. For about two days. And then, unsurprisingly, it went ginger and refused to go back. It wouldn't dye blond, it wouldn't dye dark...it was a nightmare. My friends called me Matchstick as it was what I resembled. On the plus side, it's pretty easy to pick me out in the yearbook photo! Tee hee.


I am so very much looking forward to going to sleep tonight! It has been a long week so far - work's really busy at the moment, and haven't been having the earliest of nights. We're down a team member at work since the departure of VB (who is loving his new job, company car etc...bastard) and as he and I did about 70% of the work between us, his absence has left a rather large hole. IN MY HEART.

Tee hee! Not really. Right, I am going to bed because otherwise I will be a zombie tomorrow, and it's hard to be enthused about eftpos when all you want is brains. Although today was almost as bad - I had immense bagel cravings until lunchtime, when I had a bagel and didn't think about bagels for almost half an hour! I am a bagel zombie.

Cancellations!

I had a rehearsal tonight and now I don't. How cool is that? (Moderately cool.) Cool because I can stay at home in front of the heater and the TV, and not worry about putting on makeup and finding something clean to wear and Venturing Out Into The World (although I may have to go to the supermarket and/or the DVD store (ooh, yes, the DVD store), but as I know no-one in this area (besides StupidZooBoy, who doesn't count because he's stupid anyway, and Band Neighbour (is neighbour who is also in band, which would be rehearsing tonight but now isn't and who I probably won't see anyway (although I do tend to run into him a lot, our supermarket & dairy clocks seem to be set on the same schedule (these brackets are WAAAAY out of control)), and if I do see him it doesn't really matter as he has seen me without makeup before (at nationals early in the morning, before the insinuations start)) it doesn't really matter that I won't have any makeup on and will be in grotty old hoodie with soup stain down the front), which is always nice on a Sunday.

I bet the inventor of brackets is a) dead (that's not the point I was going to make, it just occurred to me) or b) very proud of me right now or c) spinning in his grave in indignation over how his creation, probably designed to streamline the English language, has been so cruelly abused. Sorry, Mr Bracket (yep, they were named after him. I always feel a bit sorry for the people who invented things, like Mr Table and Mr Pot and Mr Flange (architectural usage)).

Obviously I have spent too much time in my own company this weekend - which is actually quite a stupid phrase - a redundant phrase, if we're being grown-ups - because all the time you spend is in your own company. Obviously I have spent too much time with no-one but myself for company. Like, all day.

Although flatmate is in the kitchen, making a sausage and mushroom casserole - she came in and said briskly, "Right! I am going to make a sausage and mushroom casserole for dinner, you interested?" "I am," I said thoughtfully, "just trying to think if I have anything to contribute," I said as I thought about it, thoughtfully. "You," she said, "have the sausages." Oh.

They are those Cheese Sizzler ones though - am not sure if they're perfect for casserole as a) are precooked and b) are probably not really made of meat and, c)'ly and most worryingly, are cheese flavoured (so when you heat them and cut into them molten cheese sauce squirts everywhere - mmm mmm. In my defence, I only got cheese flavour because they were out of double cheese flavour (in which there is not only squirty cheese, but the meat (ish) part also tastes like cheese - mmm mmm))!

Update on casserole to follow, when have eaten it. Will pretend am restaurant reviewer. "Lacking in ambience," I shall say (top 100 80s anthems on in background, sunday paper dissected on the floor) "but excellent decor, especially in the bathrooms."