Now that the Christmas is over, let's all look forward to the year 2011 :-).

May it bring you all happiness, health and wealth :-)

Lots of love

Mamta, Kavey and Pete

over with ?.. haven't even washed up yet.. .lol

Thank you and a Happy New Year to all.

Steve

A happy new year to everone, may you get what you want and deserve what you get.

At least the washing up is done, but still need to get the Glenfiddich out of my system to get it ready for the New Year's party. :D

I had a couple of glasses of that last night !

Steve

yes. happy new year to mamta gupta...family and all who sail in her and the site. may the new year bring love prosperity wealth happiness and peace on earth. my christmas lunch was fab by the way. i made some curried tomatillo chutney and have bottled it. it was just an experiment because a mate gave me a bag of frozen tomatillo thingies that were really sour. i used some homemade curry powder tamaind pulp and other stuff and it works really well with cheese. the great thing is that there are no onions or garlic in it either. i made some mango chutney for myself with garlic but it is safe because the OH cant eat it. :)

Happy New Year, when it comes, everyone.

Sid: what's tomatillo? Have you had a go at aubergine pickle? I did it, and it's great. I've just discovered that I have kaloonji in one of the spice drawers. Must use it in Indian pickles.

I'm doing saag aloo and taking it to a New Year's Eve party, at which there will be lots of veggies.

Phil

A very happy New Year to all.

My free range chicken I had ordered for Christmas proved a little too free range and was not to be seen, luckily there were a brace of pheasants in the freezer!

However it has now reappeared so will be cooked on New Year's Eve.

Winton

phil. i only heard of them the other day when i was given a bag of them. they were in my friends freezer and the freezer passed away and he had no room in the other freezer for them. so rather than him throw them away i took them and made a chutney from them. they taste quite sour but the flavour reminds me of a sour apple. they are used a lot in mexican cookery. i make my own curry powder up for a quick fix and i made the chutney using some curry powder garam masala turmeric tamarind sugar sultanas vinegar tomato puree and it has turned out great. the next time i make it i will write down the ingredients and i will share it. i just did it as i was going along adding bits and pieces. i imagine due to the curry powder that it will improve with age.

winton. your chicken must have gotten a taste for freedom LOL.

Sid: they're small tomatoes, are they? I vaguely recall that '-illo' is a diminutive suffix in Spanish.

I'm slowly making my way into Indian pickles, so keep us posted on how it goes.

Winton: have you ever tried a capon? We did one once for Christmas, and it was fab!

Phil

These are tomatorillos;

http://www.google.co.uk/images?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&q=tomatillo+picture&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=VLkcTfT3Oo-zhAeKhJC3Dg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCYQsAQwAA&biw=1600&bih=677

We had them somewhere in South America, probably Costa Rica. They were served pan fried, if I remember correctly.

phil. no they are not tomatoes. texture and flavor is nothing like tomatoes. they are quite unusual but they made a nice chutney. if i can get some more i will make another batch at some stage. the link mamta gave is correct. they have a husk on them.

Thanks, Sid. I couldn't get the link to work, but I'll try to Google it.

Two big batches of saag aloo ready for tonight's party: no idea how the French guests will react.

Phil

Well thats work finished for a few days, off to my mates to see the New Year in, hope everyone has a great time and spends some quality time with friends and family.

Steve

Yes, all of you nice people have a wonderful bringing in of the New Year!

Cheers!

Mamta

PS I have just been sitting here deleting 5 pages of bad SPAMs, one by one! I hope they will be bust elsewhere now for the rest of the evening.

I saw the tail end of them and cleared about a page worth as well Mamta.

It seems to be happening a lot lately as Winton and I hammered about 10 pages worth not to long ago and another lot before that...

Steve

Thanks. Now I know why they (SPAM pages) disappeared faster than I thought they would!

I have left a message for Pete to take a look.

I think Pete already has some plans but as you know he's a busy chappy..

Steve

Sorry, we weren't home today so didn't get to the spam...

Between us, we usually make sure it doesn't last long, though it's a pain, I know.

Hard to eradicate completely, unfortunately!

We are always going to be reacting defensively on this one, I think!

Well, thanks to you all for clearing all that rubbish off the site. I simply don't understand why anyone would want to take the time to send stuff like that out.

Phil

I know, I can't BELIEVE there are many people who click on such links anymore (since the ones we get here are certainly not well disguised and are very obviously spam) and even if anyone links through, surely they don't buy anything!

As I keep saying to people ... If you were in the library reading through a text book to find out some important information for a job you were doing and generally minding your own business. Suddenly some oik runs in, jumps on the shelves and sprays across the books and shelves "follow me for a larger...." or "get a new car for nothing, just come with me"... you wouldn't in your wildest dreams follow him out to the van parked round the corner would you ? However when links/spam/popups appear some people will actually click on them in hope of a freebie...

Steve

spammers spam because there is major profit in it. there are internet based companies in the united states that make an entire living from doing it...even the court cases are not enough to put them off. so it would appear that spamming is worth while for some people, or industries.

its a bit like the advert for go compare. i know of their company from old and my parents used one of their insurance companies (formally known as insure and go) to take a break in majorca a few years ago. my brother had gone on holiday a week or so prior to that and died suddenly on holiday and although he had insurance and it was easy for me to get him repatriated. my parents had gone on holiday on saturday and were flying home on sunday and even though they got home (thanks to credit cards) it took us over 2 months to get any kind of payout from insure and go. they eventually paid up but it was not enough to cover a flight for 1 of them. and yet now they have changed their name and a few other things they can afford to advertise constantly on the TV.

just goes to show the power of advertising.

Oh sid, what a terrible experience! It must be awful when insurance companies make life difficult when you are at your most vulnerable.

yes a nasty experience and the insurance company didnt help. took about 2 months of constant phone calls and promises before they finally paid out (for what it was worth). as the saying goes. once bitten :-)