COOKING BACON IN A MICROWAVE

Nature Crafts With A Microwave: Over 80 Projects

"It makes a great deal of sense to fast-dry materials that otherwise would consume a lot of preparation time. Drawing on the talents and projects of 10 designers who work with herbs, fruits, and vegetables, and Mother Earth's other produce, Cusick offers crafters more than 60 patterns to copy. Wearable walnuts and seed jewelry, bath powder, and herbal lip balms are only a few of the final results."--Booklist. "...concentrates exclusively on handcrafted items made from natural materials....Most are easily completed and suitable for young people working under adult supervision....Recommended."--LJ. 128 pages (all in color), 8 1/2 x 10.

Dried materials lend themselves to any number of crafts, but they generally take so long to dry or are so expensive to purchase pre-dried that some crafters overlook them. Fortunately there is an alternative--armed with this book and your microwave oven, you can preserve all sorts of natural materials quickly and with relative ease, not only flowers but fruits, vegetables, grasses, nuts, seeds, mosses, and even popcorn. Once you've mastered microwave drying, proceed to the book's nicely handled project section for ideas on using the elements in wreaths, sachets, wall hangings, baskets, and more.

The world has gone mad. Look at the confusing amount of info on the back of this pack. I should say early on in this rant (at the usual suspects), that although it wasn’t really my sort of thing the food was okay. Prawn toasts, wonton, vegetable spring rolls, duck in plum sauce, chicken with cashew nuts and egg (they just had to go and spoil it!) fried rice.

Mrs. L had two hospital appointments today so, in the interests of rejoining real life as quickly as possible, for a dinner plan I hit the knockdown counter at a certain well-known supermarket, you know the one, founded 1869 etc etc. Carefully avoiding the gaze of her diabetes consultant (who I think was buying cigarettes btw) I picked up a “Chinese banquet for two” reduced from ?8.69 to ?4.30 – well, something different y’know. I’d rather pay a real Chinaman a bit more, but at 3.30 in the afternoon and on my present finances that’s not an option. But, to my tale...

Now I know it’s not a brilliant photo, but you don’t need the detail. Just LOOK at all the traffic-light info! Never mind Chinese we’re talking Spaghetti Junction. 4 different sets of allergy info. Yeah, like you're gonna divide it depending on who is allergic to what and who isn't allowed any fat/sugar. IT'S A CHINESE FOR GOD'S SAKE! contents aside the whole principle is that you share the thing out. Look at the cooking instructions – a whole column of small print – it transpired that the conventional vs microwave oven pargarphs weren’t alternatives, they were complimentary – you could ONLY do the rice in the micro, and ONLY do the other bits in the conventional. Within the conventional-bits’ there was pierce this, open that, discard the next thing, give this the whole time, add that towards the end – not even do this for so long, add that and give it so much longer, no no give this a total and add that so much before the end (unless of course the sauce reduces in which case, d’oh! And forget the maths). Even the recycling instructions were in two parts, (a) most councils will collect xxx for recycling (b) sorry yyy is not yet recyclable (but keep it in the shed until HM Governemnt develops the technology???)

Like you, I am constantly told by the government I don’t work hard enough and will need to work harder to create a financially secure future. Yet they expect us all to make the time to actually read all this BS and sort our refuse into absurdly homogeneous small piles(*), while their downward pressure on prices ripples though the economy to the extent that I, a self-employed professional and almost full-time carer, can only justify buying the stuff when it’s on the reduced aisle at the end of its shelflife.

So in what respect is it convenience food? Well, it was quite near the door.

(* but happily not yet here in Dyserth where the poly bag continues to reign supreme. Pink see-thru nowadays for ease of examination, but still ...)

Cleaned out the cellar yesterday from old furniture, an old TV, paint buckets, other buckets filledwith whatever, VCR's, satellite recievers, a microwave oven and much more. Turned out to be bad idea when you have the flu! Dizzy Spell here I come! The people at Blomorado then filled their big truck and drove off to the "atervinningsstation", or recycle station if you like.