Flowers don’t seem the obvious choice as an ingredient, but they’re worth considering – for their colour, for their scent and especially for their flavour.

Whether it's Cheap’n’Nasty for $9.95 or Giorgio Armani for $99.95 – most perfumes are poison in a bottle and definitely not suitable as a Christmas presi for anyone you love... Watching all those perfume ads on television, the following quote might serve as a timely warning:

Pack a burger bun, the polenta and and a few slices of tomatoes and gherkin and a fried mushroom into your lunchbox and assemble the burger at work. Looks beautiful and tastes even better.

Pan-fried Polenta Burger
(makes four)

Wraps are typical cafe fare and usually quite expensive. With a bit of practice they're easy to make and if you wrap carefully they transport very well. It can be daunting to roll up wraps but it’s worth it because they’re really yummy and make for a happy lunch break.

Millet Loaf
This loaf is one of my favourite transportable lunches. It tastes good warm or cold and makes a no-mess meal. That it's also good for you is a bonus.

The British version of our Consumer Institute is the Good Housekeeping Institute. It publishes “triple-tested” recipes in a series of soft-cover cookbooks under the title Easy to Make! Two recent publications are Chicken and Family Meals in Minutes.  

The other day I revisited one of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks where she talks about what some prisoners on death row order for their last meals. It made me think.

In a recent blog I’ve mentioned DYO pizza when I wrote about making a tomato sauce, but I didn’t go into the joys of making your own pizza bases. These gloomy winter days are perfect for pizza, so I’m suggesting you spread an invite for an (almost) impromtu party.

I’ve got it!  At last I’ve understood why our National government is doing all those dreadful things to weaken the health of people on low incomes: They’re doing it to make them into the morons who will vote for them in the future.
 

Nightschool is so yesteryear and shouldn’t be publicly funded, right?
So wrong! More than 200.000 New Zealanders enrol in adult and community education (ACE) courses each year, most of which will not be offered from 2010. This is because of the 80 percent cut in funding our new and not-at-all-improved National government has announced in their latest budget.