Moot_Geeza wrote:

Get an Instant Pot Noodle, Nick.

nick_md wrote:

England, potato.

If there was ever a vegetable that has helped shape our national destiny, it's the humble spud. A mainstay of our national dish, we serve it in a hundred different ways, and always insist on it being there for Sunday lunch.

In England, it partners up with cabbage to make bubble and squeak', or colcannon if you're in Ireland. And in Scotland, tatties' go hand-in-hand with neeps on Burns Night. In fact, the potato is so much a part of our culture, it's easy to forget it isn't even British.

On this day in 1586, Sir Thomas Harriot stepped off the boat in Plymouth. He had just returned from Sir Walter Raleigh's English colony on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, where he had made detailed studies of the wildlife and potatoes.

In the months that followed, Harriot recorded his adventures in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. In it, he described a curious tuber:

"Openavk are kind of roots of round forme, some of the bignes of walnuts, some far greater, which are found in moist & marish grounds growing many together one by another in ropes, or as thogh they were a string. Being boiled or sodden they are very good meate."

Britain isn't short of "moist & marish grounds" and the potato soon took root, so to speak. Since then, potatoes have become part and parcel of our national cuisine and our history too.

The failure of the potato crop in Ireland in the 1840s sparked one of the first great waves of emigration to the United States. And the great Marxist thinker, Friedrich Engels, even saw the "farinaceous tubers", as he called them, as having fuelled Britain's industrial revolution: "[Iron] is the last and most important of all raw products that play a revolutionary role in history; the last if we except the potato."

So, next time you're eating mashed openavk', remember that if it wasn't for Sir Thomas Harriot, Britain today might look and taste very different.


Recipe

Take a potato and put it in the microwave for 15 minutes.
Cut in half and put some butter on it.

Escape wrote:

Add some broth, a potato...

Baby you got a stew going!!

i'm not much of a one for cooking. even goober's 'simple' recipe on the previous page looks like a lot of faff to me.
add in 2 kids, one of which in particular is a very fussy eater, wife and my work schedules aren't in sync, kids have activities at diff times most nights of the week....and our 'cooking' generally involves taking stuff out the freezer and chucking it in the oven. doing fajitas (with a kit obvs) is about the most involved bit of prep/cooking i do regularly - I have to actually chop up some ingredients!
We're also a family of chocaholics, and also very lazy when it comes to eating fruit.

We do all look forward to the sunday roast at the grandparent's each week and have a vitamin tablet each day

Breakfast is usually a bit better, for me and the youngest anyway as we'll have wholemeal toast or a 'healthier' cereal option.

My work lunch is often a Huel shake. While it's obviously processed, it seemed a better and cheaper option then the premade/junk food i was often buying for lunch whilst also saving me the faff of making my own, and does at least claim to have plenty of nutrients like fibre and protein and various vitamins etc.

Ram, writing out that recipe took me more time than I usually spend cooking it.

Brooks wrote:

And when the ingredients aren't great, that's what shitloads of seasoning is for.

Haha yep, I've always got some of this stuff handy.

https://www.ohmygreek.co.uk/products/philotimo-oregano

It's only about 10 minutes of actual work though.

I consider myself fortunate enough to find salads delicious.  I generally get the impression some people don't like them? Madness

mixed leaves, olives, avocado, little tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, grilled halloumi, toasted pine nuts, and a good dressing. It's sublime. Or make it proper unhealthy by adding crispy bacon on top. Or make it more filling by adding in a tin of chickpeas or fava beans.

I can knock up a solid French dressing that makes pretty much all salads delicious, I just don’t tend to find them particularly satisfying as meals.

You could put that on my gravestone

By beans I obviously don't mean baked in tomato sauce nor green beans something similar

Although you absolutely need the crunch of cucumber and pepper if you add beans.

You can eat anything if you put olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it. You might not want to eat green leaves etc but add those two and they become delicious. Plus rocket. Rocket in everything. Even pizzas, amazing on pizzas.

equinox_code wrote:

Got to add in a can on beans or chickpeas.

Yes, chick peas (and beans generally) are godlike.  Protein and fibre etc etc, great food.

Oh, broccoli.  I forgot to mention that I add broccoli to my salad too.

hylian_elf wrote:

Oh, broccoli.  I forgot to mention that I add broccoli to my salad too.

I like sugarsnap peas in mine.

Kow wrote:

The devil has all the best leaves.

He's got a bit of a hit and miss repertoire for me.