Help! I want to sleep tonight!

  Oh dear! Alas! I am old enough to remember Butterflies - although I think I got sent to bed when it was on! It is a huge pan I am using, but it was full to the top! I doubled the recipe (way too many courgettes!), Hugh Fernley's Courgette Glutney. It smells pretty good, but I think there is another hour of cooking left yet!

Well of course I was only young too It did make me laugh tho' 'cos I didn't see Wendy Craig, I just saw my mum

And if you doubled the recipe A. Ann that was why it took so long.

Just as when you do a pan full of potatoes it takes about 20 minutes if you are catering for crowds and doing cauldrons of spuds they take a great deal longer  just to bring them to the boil never mind cooking them through.

I tried doubling on a few recipes and decided that I would stick to a certain amount of chutney in the pan as some recipes doubled makes a mooshier chutney than they would if you did the smaller amount. It depends whether you like smooth mushy chutney or ones with a few chunky bits it.

Just as the type of apples in a chutney will give a  different texture. All Bramleys will give you mooshy, eating apples will give you chunks and a mixture of both will give you the underlying smooth texture with chunks in it.

I do a ratatouille chutney that gives a better finished product sticking with the original recipe than doubling it.

Yet with the courgette and cracked black pepper chutney it doesn't matter 'cos it is a thick sticky sweet chutney.

Don't stay up too late, Ann

Rachel, maybe we are both changelings.  Yep, tinned soup and spaghetti, vile muck, yuck and we had worse than Sara Lee, we had Angel delight and vesta dried packet chow mein.

Oh I feel ill just thinking of it.

 Yea I remember those as well.
With me it was my Grandma who was a very good plain cook and we always had her strawberry jam on brown bread with thick salty butter.

She encouraged me to cook and would buy the ingredients so that I could try out new recipes and she taught me to make jam too. I still have several things from her kitchen including  her old balance scales.

I remember the instant whip etc too! Rachel your childhood diet reminds me of my own, only I used to do most of the cooking! I remember making my first cheese souflee, I was about thirteen and having hunted through my mum's collection of recipe books (all two of them!), it was the only thing we had the ingredients for. It turned out really well, I didn't know it was supposed to be difficult! To this day we have to sneak veg into mum's food, she has discovered that she actually likes quite a lot of it now. It is the way it is cooked  that makes the difference.
Ah! Mrs Ball, that explains the longer cooking time, I had not thought about the greater quantities making such a difference . It should be obvious really. Well, it is done now and will hopefully be nice

I remember the instant whip etc too! Rachel your childhood diet reminds me of my own, only I used to do most of the cooking! I remember making my first cheese souflee, I was about thirteen and having hunted through my mum's collection of recipe books (all two of them!), it was the only thing we had the ingredients for. It turned out really well, I didn't know it was supposed to be difficult! To this day we have to sneak veg into mum's food, she has discovered that she actually likes quite a lot of it now. It is the way it is cooked  that makes the difference.
Ah! Mrs Ball, that explains the longer cooking time, I had not thought about the greater quantities making such a difference . It should be obvious really. Well, it is done now and will hopefully be nice

Obviously we should be thanking our mothers for making us such great cooks. If they had been good we might not have bothered

We do seem to have similar upbringings, looking at all the food memories. I could cook a full roast dinner by the age of 11.

And it is not obvious about the longer cooking time. I know about it and yet still get caught out

Yesterdays chutney Chillillilli, with loads of courgetttes and apples of course, is a large quantity one almost a full pan. i should have put it on early in the morning but it didn't go on till 2 as I had a couple of last minute cheesecake orders come in. I got to 7pm and then had enough! Am off to finish it off as soon as I have had my morning coffee.

And as for garlic bread I try not to make it too often as I can't resist it and my weight is rapidly moving upward.

Having said that I do a cheese and tomato garlic bread when I have enough people to eat it all which is a basic garlic bread with a squirt of tomato paste and a handfull of grated cheddar, or sundried tomato paste and a few sundried tomatoes in with the cheese and I make a pizza sized sundried tomato and oregano foccaccia to put it in.

Now that is irrisistable. Thank fully everyone else thinks so too so I only get a to eat a very llittle.
Piccallili is good for using up courgettes and beans and it is quick to make