Skip to main content

Hurry up, darling. Where's the ham and coke?


Butter wouldn't melt... the She Quickie Cookbook has every tip the 60s housewife needs

Every so often, it's good to feature a book on Washed and Ready, although it's fair to say my reviews can sometimes be a little tardy. I'm just catching up with the 1964 She Quickie Cookbook No 2, which is full of great recipe tips for the busy modern woman.

"Tonight there's a wonderful play on T.V., so it's a quick and early supper." Ah, in that case, it must be haddock with eggs. After cutting fins and tails, opening cans of spinach and doing a bit of simmering, stirring and sizzling, we lift the egg and ease it gently on to the fish. "Call husband to table," the copy continues. "Ease out second egg. Stir spinach and arrange around dish as a border. Serve immediately."

Your appetite must be well and truly whetted by now.

"He just 'phoned to say Surprise, he's bringing two home for supper..." No problem. Not when you've got the recipe for devilled lamb's tongues up your sleeve. "Open the can of tongues and heat gently in a pan with the Babycham..."

But what if it's a special occasion? I strongly recommend Ham in 'Coke' sauce.

"You'll never be alone any more once you've had him round to a supper featuring this 15-minute super-savoury... Put ham with 2 cloves into a saucepan. Add the Coca-Cola, leaving a little to mix with the cornflour, and boil for 5 mins."

Next time on WARTE: Kidney Scramble. "Finicky boy friend coming to supper? There'll be no more finicks when he's finished this dish - your only trouble will be stopping him asking for more..."
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m
Post a Comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at
Post a Comment
Read more

The race for bogus Olympic stats

Of all the dubious statistics thrown around in relation to the London Olympics, the claim that there are '47 tube journeys in central London that can easily be walked' is surely one of the most misleading. I suspect it is based on the relative proximity of one station to an adjacent one. Embankment is walking distance from Temple. Charing Cross is a stone's throw from Leicester Square. But what exactly is a 'tube journey'? As I've understood it - and I'm only going on three decades' experience of using the network - it is a journey that takes you from any one place with a tube station to another. My journey from Leicester Square might take me to Charing Cross, but it might also lead me up the line to Camden Town or down south to Morden. In fact, from any one tube station - thanks to the wonders of interconnections - there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of options available to me. Now, I don't claim to have a PhD in mathematics, but the number of p
1 comment
Read more