tips

An offcut from the Story Kettle

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Copyright © 2009-2020, Michael M Wayman

Bird table?
Use an old large plastic chopping board from the kitchen. Easy-to-clean after the birds have shat on it and doesn't hurt your head when gardening.

Don't paint your sick room yellow!

Take the rings off your fingers before you artificially inseminate a horse.

If you gut chickens all day you will have nice hands.

What if they are not big enough?
Put each one for five minutes completely in your lover's mouth every day.

Got a loved one?

Soap and candles get harder as they get older. Old soap lasts longer. Old candles burn longer and drip less.

Brush your teeth with the other hand from time to time,
even if you use an electric toothbrush.

Chilli con Carne
is a spicy stew made from chilli peppers,
minced/chopped/ground meat, garlic,
onions, and cumin.
TIP: use chunks of meat instead.

Add cooked white rice or gin to your tomato soup!

Narny sandwich
Cut thick slice fresh brown bread, butter thick, slice half a banana on top, sprinkle cinnamon and mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Chocky-coffee – 1 teaspoon powered coffee, 2 sweeteners or 1 teaspoon sugar, 1½ teaspoon (cooking) cocoa in a mug, add hot water (after it has stopped boiling) and milk/cream to taste. Stir vigorously.

Honey pot lids and beer mats
Pepper mills always make a mess, ground pepper always leaks out on to the table and in the cupboard. Whereas you will have to fly to San Francisco and buy nice little saucers made of real red wood for your dining table, you can use a plastic lid from a honey jar for your pepper mill or whatever mill in the kitchen. Likewise you can place a cardboard beer mat under the bottle of olive oil or red wine or what ever liquid.

Improve German Glühwein – add an English teabag!

Remove the legs from your turkey, pin on a hundred chicken drumsticks, and have roast centipede for Xmas.

Other Xmas tips

Wedding tip: hire a choir

Hutch's rule:
First the salt and then the vinegar!

Spoon rest? Use a teaspoon!

Boil root vegetables with cold water,
other vegetables in water that is already boiling.

Other recipe tips and a one-page Herb and Spice Chart to print out.

Got cholera? Got diarrhoea? Drink this!
  1 level teaspoon salt and
  8 level teaspoons sugar in
  1 litre of clean drinking water

how to baste – Use a kitchen brush to paint the juices (fat etc.) from the pan all over the potatoes and on top of the bird. The brushes with the wobbly coloured silicone frilly bits are the best. For smaller (dry) birds you can place a rasher or two of bacon on top of the bird. For bigger birds a baster is good to remove unneeded juices (and prevent a fire) and to baste the bird. A baster is a big glass pipette.

Avocados are often hard (not ripe) when you buy them. To speed up the ripening place the avocados in a bag with a ripe apple(s).

kitchen things

BIRTHDAY CALENDAR

Need an ersatz ping-pong ball?
  Squeeze the ball out of a used roll-on deodorant and wash it,
  and Robert's your father's brother.

Have you played Gas Masks?

Are you learning English?
My English teacher used to swear: Omsk, Tomsk and Vladivostok!

colours and DIY and web design and how to and handbrake and tin can and donkey bridges

Stuck in the bath? Try hanging rope and trap.

Clearing out your home, some other house, a cellar? Want to get rid of things, but not on the dump? Try Freecycle and tin can.

If your phone won't charge, the charger plug often falls out and you keep the thing in your pocket, it could be that the charger socket is full of fluff. Try removing the belly-button-lint with a toothpick.

You're having a party tonight!
It will be dark when the guests come
and the front door is way back from the street.
What to do?
Place a clear glass jar every metre (yard) along the path.
Drop a lit tealight (nightlight candle) in each jar, no lid.
After a few tries you will be able to drop in the tealights
without the flame dying.
Stand back and admire your pretty path to your front door.