Be Excellent To Each Other

Well I don't know about you lot, but I'm a big fan of Aunt Bessie's grub. Things I eat fairly regularly include her roast spuds and Yorkshire puddings, and lately, pancakes.

Also, I do like to think that "Aunt Bessie" is literally one old lady doing all the cooking herself (albeit she gets some help with the packaging etc).

Anyone else enjoy her many sweet and savoury treats? I do believe it would be perfectly possibly to make an entire three course meal using Aunt Bessie's food, apart from the roast beef or whatever.

I prefer my mums cooking, she's awesome!

but I have dabbled with aunt bessies yorkshires and they're rather enjoyable

Home-cooked ftw, its all superior. Although as you'd expect, my mum's cooking tops all. No really, her roasts are fucking well legendary.

You can't beat a roast dinner from a Mum, I'll grant you that.

Roast spuds, yorkshires and pancakes are all pretty quick and easy to make yourself and cheaper and better. Aunt Bessie can fuck off for me.

Nice to see you back, Agent.

I wonder if she cooks for her own children?

I only thought she did yorkshire puds though

I hear Aunt Bessie is good friends with the Man From Del Monte and Granny Smith.

Counting myself as a reasonable cook I would never buy Aunt Bessies foods. That and I'm far too tight to pay lots of money for something I could make myself for next to nuffink.

However, I have tried such foods at other people's houses and found them to be enjoyable.

Edit - Ooh I sound well stroppy. Not intentional

Roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings and pork & sausagemeat stuffing balls.

Aunt Bessie kicks roast-arse.

I can safely say that Aunt Bessie cooks much better than my mum.

I can make kick-butt Yorkshire puddings, Craig will attest, but sometimes, you know what? I can't be bothered. I have no issue with Auntie B or, more likely, Marks and Sparkles, coming to my rescue when I want Yorkshire puds quick and convenient.

As it happens, I have just consumed some roast spuds from M&S, and quite tasty they were.

I am shortly going to open a pack of Percy Pig sweets, also from M&S. I have to ration myself with these, as I could quite easily eat a ton of them.

Didn't Percy Pigs win some acclaim recently for being mega awesome and/or popular? I can only agree.

Aunt Bessie makes crunchy Yorkshire puddings that shatter as soon as you try to cut them. There's a special circle of hell reserved especially for employees of companies who make Yorkshire puddings like that. And don't get me started on Aunt Bessie's frozen mash. No, too late. It's all runny. Mashed potato should NOT BE A LIQUID, you fucking dolts. Luckily, Asda own-brand frozen mash is utterly marvellous, and if you're a lazy cook slash tightfisted bastard like me, it's a godsend at just 59p* for a big bag.

(*Or something like that. It is dead cheap, and dead nice, though.)

Aunt Bessies Roast Potatoes are excellent.

Don't think much of her Beef Curtains though.

*makes mental note to investigate these when next in Asda*

If nothing else, it has the consistency you expect, nay demand of a mashed potato. However, be wary of the tantalisingly inexpensive 'luxury' buttered variant. One bag is still the right side of GBP1, but the bag is much less full. If you need ten pellets to make up one serving, what's the faffing point in putting about 26 pellets in each bag?

Frozen mash? Oh, excellent news! I love mash, but making it myself always results in lots of wasted food, which I can't abide (just in myself). ASDA, you say? Er, anyone know if Morrissons do it, and if it's any good?

I love making roast potatoes though, with olive oil and Marmite. They taste 'more potatoey', the slight, mild flavour of yeastiness is superb with some good fluffy hot potato.

I find the best thing with the frozen mashed is that you don't get the lumps you can so easily get in 'normal' mashed. Also, even when it says on the packet - "One portion = six pellets", or however many - I always chuck a couple more on for greed luck.

Erm, not wanting to come across as self-appointed BETEO Frozen Mash Correspondent here, but in my experience most supermarkets (specifically Tesco, Sainsbury and Somerfield, which are the only other ones local to me) only sell the horrid Aunt Bessie's frozen mash, which I feel the need to reiterate is horrid. Really. It's like a sort of cover version of mashed potato, performed by Blue, late on in their career, when they were getting really desperate for attention. Possibly Morrisons are the same.

Mark X, I implore you to change your 'member title' from boring ol' "Excellent Member" to the above.

SO MOTE IT BE.

I had toad in the hole today. I over-egged it. But: It was still better than aunt bessie. SO SHUT UP.

Aunt Bessies yorkshires taste of nothing. Even the Co-Op sell better ready made Yorkshires.

M&S ready prepared food is usually good. So good I suspect they put heroin in their food (subs please check).

What you need for lovely lump-free mash is a ricer:

No lumps ever.

Gonna be a long wait, I think

Precisely this. Although I'm fairly sure I've never cooked for Craig.

I shall ask him...

So - frozen mash?

I have never seen or heard of frozen mash - how do you cook/warm it? Do you need a microwave as I don't have one of those. I quite like Marks and Sparkles fresh mash when I am being lazy - especially their mature cheddar mash. Om nom nom!

I genuinely never knew that such a thing even existed. Frozen mashed potato! Whatever next?

I did try that dried powdered stuff once though. Truly a vile substance, suitable only for camping or post-nuclear-holocaust survival, and even then only just.

Microwave, 2.5 minutes, sorted. From freezer to plate in under 180 seconds. Yum.

They were in Vogue's 'cool things' list, I think.

No microwave.

We had Aunt Bessie's yorkshire puddings just last night, and they were lovely and crispy at top, soft at base, and not at all tasteless.

The important trick is to buy the batters, rather than pre-cooked ones (20 minutes instead of 4, but eh). Either that or she just likes us better.

She used to do giant ones. They were absolute best.

What's with all the lunacy about lumpy mash being somehow wrong? Eh what?

I hear they sell microwaves in shops now

I hate lumpy mash.

I wanted to say to the chef at the Waterwitch once that 'just because your mash has lumps in it, doesn't make it posh'.

They do if you have any money, I am sure.

I doubt they'd give me one, though.

Mash should optimally also involve mature cheddar and plenty of garlic. And more butter than is technically good for you. And cream. A big pot of cream. In fact, screw the mash, pass me that cream. And a spoon.

The chef at the pub I used to work at used to put nutmeg in mash. Om nom nom nom.

I like garlic and/or mustard mash. Moroccan mash is good too (plenty of chickpeas). Sweet potato mash is good, too; and butternut squash mash.

I like mash.

Yeah, I usually make mash with cheese, and just a bit of garlic and mustard. I'm something like lactose intolerant which makes milk and butter a no-no, but cheese usually okay. Unless it's the "Seriously Strong" brand, which isn't that strong but does give me sinus death.

Left-over mash fried in a frying pan with some onions is the best mash of all mashes.

I like the monster mash.

It caught on in a flash.

Malc

Tesco apparently do one for 20 quid. Have seen one in Woolies for much the same price.

No fancy features mind and they might irradiate your kitchen.

I think ASDA used to do one for £12.47 or something but it had a propensity for catching on fire.

I'd refuse to pay anything less than about £80 for something like that, and £80 is a lot for a thing that I'd use very rarely so I just don't have one.