Green Bits & Cooking Tips

'I hate this sauce, there are THINGS hidden in it, disgusting slime Vegetables and Things I Don't Like. Why do you always make things I DON'T LIKE I only like Daddy's cooking because it is very simple*and he doesn't HIDE THINGS in the DISGUSTING SAUCE!' sobs R as he runs from the table - in front of the dinner guest.

The incident was only resolved some hours later in a settlement involving a seive.

Obviously I am not so clever at hiding things in the sauce as I thought. I've always wondered, if green bits are so good for children, why do they all turn against them at about age 4? Even though they've always been offered them since they were weaned and have watched Mummy eating them with relish exclaiming 'Mmm, delicious, and so good for you too'.

However, I have redoubled my efforts on hiding good-for-you things in sauces, and I think I'm on to a winner (laughs like Blackadder). My mother gave me an old Tower Slow Cooker from the 70s, still going strong, they don't make 'em like that any more. After I've roasted a chicken and consumed as normal, that evening I put the bones, an onion, and lots of grotty vegetable bits including the green bits, herb stalks, broken bayleaf, in the crockpot, fill with boiling water, boil up on 'high' for a couple of hours and leave on low overnight. By lunchtime the following day it is really juiced up. I ladle out the hot liquid into a saucepan and cook pasta in it, the pasta swells, absorbing the minerals and concentrated vegetable essences without leaving a single trace of suspect sauce, and it's delicious! Cunning, eh? (laughs again like Blackadder).

* Please note JC never cooks, and the only thing he knows how to cook is potato omelette, which R&B do not like, R does not like eggs unless they are boiled in their shells and B objects to the smell of omelettes, although he likes eggs in every other form. Actually, it is enough to drive you mad.