I'm muting all political threads now

I’m a bit of a guttered mouth Aussie, especially after a couple of wines :rofl:

Apparently some believe it is because they’ve spent too much on cigs.

I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, I find it a vile habit, but when I think of the word ‘nicotine’ the next word I think of is ‘addiction’. While people may or may not have a point when it comes to flat screen tv’s, iPhones and whatever the other right wing tropes people generally come up with in these situations, I when you’re dealing with something that’s a recognised addiction that’s really quite something. I wonder if it would be ok if people quit the cigs and spent 80 quid on nicotine replacement treatments instead lol

interesting comment @kirsteastevenson
I used to smoke a significant amount (in order to cut down on ciggies, I started smoking Hamlet cigars until it got to about 3 packets a day!)
I gave up when my son, then about 7 asked me "why do you smoke daddy?) and I couldn’t answer him.
When I gave up (nearly 40 years ago) I just stopped. End of! No patches nada… (like I did in more recent times with drinking alcohol.
I convinced myself it was my positive mental attitude that got me through it and I haven’t gone back to it since (nor alcohol either).
So, I smile to myself when people “give up smoking” and then proceed to vape or attach placebo style patches on their upper arm…
Perhaps I was fortunate in that my wife has never smoked so there was great encouragement and support there too. Is that the magic bullet perhaps?
I guess we have saved a considerable amount of money over the years as a consequence.

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Perhaps it was a subject they covered at school ??.. but around the same age as your son, our daughter looked deep into her Dad’s eyes and said
" I don’t want you to die Daddy !!" :sob:

They hugged and he dried her eyes, vowing to stop smoking… which he did… and that was one time I was glad she had him round her little finger… :wink:

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I have never smoked, but quite like the smell of fresh smoke and miss it when going out - it was always the smell of a grown up event rather than a children’s party. But not smelling it is a very small price to pay for better general health and not having stinky clothes next day.

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@graham At first I thought you had written about me, the only difference being that I stopped when we were expecting our now oldest 40 years ago.
Gave up alcohol 3 years ago.
Both habits stopped overnight and never looked back although I still enjoy the smell of cigar smoke and remember fondly the tast of a King Edward (cigar not potato)
Eating habits too have to change as we get older, for me anyway.
Cornish pasties, lardy cake, black pudding, chips, sugary buns, malt loaf, chocolate digestives and so much more are now in the past. I adored them all but know now they are taboo. I can still taste them in my mind and am thankful for that.

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Food of gods. Nothing like a slab of malt loaf with a slice of salted butter on it.

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gosh, that’s brought back some memories… my mouth is watering at the thought… miam, miam.

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when my iron levels were compromised, my MT suggested eating boudan noir… did the trick!

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Now that has been a while - my Grandfather used to bring one to our house every Saturday when I was a child.

(Malt Loaf - had some yesterday, and followed @vero 's serving suggestion!)

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I’ve not had that in a long time. The best I ever tasted was from the 1066 bakery on Hastings west hill. There was a bakers in Bicester that made it, but it was always dry and disappointing.

:drooling_face::drooling_face::drooling_face::drooling_face::drooling_face:

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Mary Berry’s recipe for malt loaf is good, not sure where you’d get malt syrup stuff in France though.

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Bio shops have it in jars, that’s what I use, it works :slightly_smiling_face:

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Which is why his food bank offers workshops on cooking from scratch with very low-cost ingredients.

I think some of us have discussed how to provide a decent meal for 30p and (mostly) come up short.
I’d be seriously interested to read some of these recipes which the workshops are using…

Learning how to cook is not a lot of good if you can’t afford to buy the raw ingredients or pay for the electricity/gas needed to cook the meals.

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Which is rather where food banks come in.

As Stella said, we would really struggle to make a meal for 30p, both in France and the UK, but from the examples posted, we can see it’s possible to eat at relatively low cost, especially if some of the ingredients were provided from the FB. Cooking only works if you have the material resources to prepare food, of course. As pointed out earlier, having greater resources up to a point enables one to live at lower cost.

It would be interesting to see a transcript of the speech we’ve been discussing to know what was originally meant.

It’s a Facebook link unfortunately, but it is on his Facebook page, the irony of course is that he’s posted it an attempt to make himself look better, ‘see what I really said’ sort of thing, but in fact after this 8 minute speech I think much worse of him than I did before.

The man seems like an absolute buffoon, and spends 8 minutes repeating government propaganda, hitting all the dog whistles that the hateful part of the Tory party and the hateful part of their voters love; protesting, asylum seekers, open borders, then into food banks, where weirdly he starts by inviting everyone on ‘the other side of the house to come visit’, presumably because all Tory MPs have perfectly run food banks and everyone else needs a lesson?, he then repeats this several more times throughout as if he’s doing anything different or better (without actually giving any examples, many other places do free cooking lessons, and not compulsory to be able to get food which frankly seems a little evil to me, the carrot is always better than the stick), he does say there isn’t massive use for them, he does claim they can make food for “around 30p”, he does say generation after generation can’t cook, which frankly is bullocks.

He then ends by slagging off the other side of the house, saying they’re sat there with glazed expressions looking at him like he landed from a different planet, which, and this is my editorial of course, frankly if I was sitting there having watched what looked like a northern halfwit deny there was much use for food banks, say they can make meals for around 30p, try to cram in every right wing talking point in the first 3 minutes of his speech, then repeatedly, and with a bit of an aggressive tone, virtually demand the other parties come visit his very average unspecial food bank which he seems to believe is the model example, I would be looking at him with a glazed expression thinking “what a tusspot”, which is I suspect what they were thinking too. He seems to have a hell of a lot of passive aggression which would concern me greatly if I had to work alongside him.

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