So we decided on burgers, big fat ones. Whenever I’ve made burgers in the past they’ve always fallen apart, but now, aha, I have found the secret…

So, we went for a walk in the rain, picked some wild garlic, got soaking wet, came home, dried off and got on.

The kids love this stuff, getting mucky, wet, picking some stuff to eat, although they ate all their leaves before we got back…

Anyway ere we go, easy peasy lemon squeazy.

• Minced beef, not too lean.
• Handful of wild garlic (finely chopped bulb garlic will do)
• Salt
• Pepper
• An egg

The trick I’ve found with burgers is – do not mix in a bowl. I’m not sure why, but they seem to stay together better, and it’s more fun.

So get the mince out and put on a larger chopping board and flatten out with your hands, fold it over and flatten again, do this for a few minutes.

Next, break the egg over the flattened mince, wishing that your chopping board had a gutter (you’ll see what I mean), you then fold the egg into the meat. When you have kids; the more mess the better!

The egg should be thoroughly folded in and the meat kind of sticky, add some black pepper, a pinch of salt.

Make some patties, we made big fat ones, Harvey’s got tiny hands but still managed to make the biggest. Just make big meat balls, if you want to add something to flavour, this is the time. I ripped up some of the wild garlic and folded it in with the meat and then reformed as a ball, Max added some Nando’s Piri Piri sauce (he likes it hot). If you must add onions (why?) cook them first and chop really fine. Really you should add afterwards in your bun…

Cook under a hot grill for 7-10 minutes each side (depends if you like it rare or not).

Serve with a bap (I love baps) some salad, some fat crispy chips, a sliver of cheese and sauces of your choice.

A top tip for slicing the cheese (I know most of you know this; I’m new you know), use your potato peeler, revelation, after nearly chopping off my fingers.

These burgers are great, but I have to say the star of this show were the chips, I’ve never made chips before and these far exceeded my expectations, and the kids. lol.

Sesame Oil for some reason popped into my mind, so I did a little research on the web and found that it’s been used for thousands of years for medicinal uses. Ayurveda advise the massaging of the body every morning with Sesame oil for its “healing” properties. It turns out that it is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral…

Now, make no mistake that I’m no Doctor, or Ayurvedic practioner, but I thought that I’d rub some into my sons arms every morning and evening and see how we got on. Max, hates having any kind of thing put on him (chicken pox and calamine lotion was a nightmare), I finally managed to get him to let me rub a little on and he pretty much instantly said that it felt less itchy and could I put it on the other arm. This was great.

So, we’ve been putting it on twice a day for just about a week now and the improvement is fantastic. The sore/itchy patches have died right down and his scratching has almost stopped. When you first put it on, it looks inflamed slightly, but I think that might just be the light shining on the oil. I’ve also started adding a little to the bath as well which is cool for having a shave in the bath (not Max, Me… )

The oil lasts for ages and is much cheaper than than the stuff you get from the chemist. If you want to try this please investigate for yourself first, we may just be lucky. The Sesame oil that you need should be “cold pressed” and as pure as you can get, organic is preferable.

I’ll update this again in a few weeks as a bit of a progress report. I know this is off topic, but I know so many people locked into the “pharma lifestyle” because we live in a society that “treats” the symptoms of disease as opposed to trying prevent it. I’d much rather Max had Sesame oil than anything the Doctor provides if it consistently works, which still remains to be seen.

I decided that all I wanted was a pie. Me and Gee had a game pie from a farmers market and frankly it was rank, but we both couldn’t help but fantasize over pies. So the mission the next day was to research steak and kidney pies on this interweb thingy. I found hundreds of recipes, read about thirty and realised that there were a few quantities and ingredients that are pretty consistent and a few extras here and there that seem worthy of additional investigation.

So I ended up with the following ingredients.

• 1.5 lbs of Beef cut into large cubes
• 1/2 lb of kidney, cleaned, cut into small chunks, with all tubing cut out
• 20-30 Button mushrooms cut in half
• Puff Pastry, you could make your own, but the packet stuff is pretty good
• 1 Bay leaf
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, sliced
• Worcester sauce
• Salt and pepper
• Punch of flour
• Couple of knobs of butter
• Beef stock, I bought mine from Sainsbury’s
• 1 egg

Doesn’t look enough once you write it down…

First things first, chop your steak into nice big chunks, I like each chunk to be two bites, but each to their own… The kidney needs to be washed and the “skin” needs to be peeled off. You also need to get the white tubey bits out from the middle, this was the longest part of the prepping. Luckily my local butcher did most of this for me, except the nasty tube bit.

Heat up a deep frying pan and chuck in a good size knob of butter, wait for it to melt and add the onion, we want them to go a nice golden colour, then add in the garlic slivers. Add a good few pinches of salt and pepper.

Then add the steak and kidney, let it get browned all over and add a dash of Worcester sauce. Once browned add in the stock and the bay leaf and leave for an hour or so simmering with a lid on. It doesn’t need to be exactly an hour, so go and watch 2 episodes of your favourite tv programme, or take the dog for a walk.

Once back add in the mushrooms, a bit more salt and pepper and another dash of Worcester sauce, and leave to simmer again for 20 minutes (with the lid on).
Now we need to thicken up the gravy. Someone told me to make a Rue, which is where you make a paste out of flour and butter. I’m not quite sure of the benefits of this method but it definitely works. This is probably the trickiest part of the whole recipe, but really is pretty simple. I seemed to make too much, but no matter. Get a knob of butter half the size of your thumb and add flour to it and rub the flour into the butter with the back of a spoon, when it turns into a lumpy paste it’s ready.

Stir the rue into the pan, making sure that you dissolve the lumps properly. You will notice the gravy change colour, getting lighter and slowly thickening up. Don’t make it too thick, if you do add a little more stock and stir that in.

Right we’re ready, the oven should be on (oops forgot to say), to the temperature that the pastry states on the packet(!!). Pour the steak and kidney and gravy into a oven proof dish and lay the pastry over the top. Push the edges of the pastry down a bit, and brush the top of the pastry with a whisked up egg, I made a few air holes too, to let the steam out.

Put this in the oven, and take out when the packet tells you to…

I have to say I’m amazed at how easy and impressive it is to make this. When I made it I actually forgot to make anything else to go with it, which is fine by be. I forget others like vegetables…