On 17/8/08 11:50, in article
, "FarmI"
ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Sacha" wrote in message
"FarmI"
ask@itshall be given wrote:

"Sacha" wrote in message
snip
I
especially like the bit above about no such plum stones being found at
Pompeii - for some reason human details like that make a topic much more
interesting to me!

I'm going to do the unforgiveable on usenet....

Me too :-)) Prolly why I like that book so much. It's full of such
snippets.

I think it's because you can then imagine 'real people' sitting around
outside their caves, munching on plums, or oysters, or whatever it is that
is found. It becomes rather touching in a way, because it creates a human
link stretching back centuries.

Yes. That is what I enjoyed so much about the "Prehistoric Cooking" book I
mentioned. We all have to eat and cooking isn't high science and probably
hasn't changed since the first cooks had to dish up a cooked meal. It
always surprises me that so few people seem to be able (or perhaps included)
to cook these days.

I find recipes from America especially frustrating given their reliance on
prepackaged ingredients. I was reading an American mag today and of the 15
or so recipes in it, not one started from basics. It was all, 'a carton
of', 'a 14 and a half ounce can of' etc ad nauseum. And the things that had
to be bought were all what I would consider to be really basic ingredients.
One was Polenta. Bought in a tube??????

My husband said he'd seen a soup recipe in there for Tomato and something or
other soup, but that it had no tomatoes in it so he thought they'd made a
mistake and meant 3 tomatoes rather than 3 onions. When I read it, the
recipe used 2 cans of marinara mix.


Hmmm, I don't much like cooking but I *really* don't like cooking that way.
I happily use canned tomatoes but not without a slight feeling that I'm
cheating. I'm always a little surprised at US recipes that call for cheese
and it turns out to be Kraft slices or that stuff in a tube. That said,
I've eaten some wonderful meals in USA in both posh and average restaurants
and in friends' houses, so it can't be totally 'instant cuisine' everywhere.
Perhaps they have yet to go through the Fray Bentos steak & kidney pie in a
tin stage in some ways! And Vesta curries and Surprise peas - we're not
guiltless here, though they do seem to have faded into the background!

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon