Perhaps it serves only to highlight the sheer happiness food brings in the most farcical of circumstances.

I enjoyed that Vesta Chinese thing with the crispy noodles in the late eighties, my dad used to make it for me. Dust them with a layer of cornflour to ensure they don’t stick together and are extra crispy when fried. When the chicken pieces turn white, after about 2 minutes, quickly drain the chicken (discard the cooking water).It was actually ok despite being laden with enough raisins to ward off a small scale famine and i was able to brag about it at school for days on end as no-one else my age was allowed to have something so exotic. I’ve picked up their love for food along the way, and with this blog, I share my food story with you. You could experiment with other noodles like udon noodles but be aware you will not get the same crispy texture with thicker noodles, so it isn’t advised. This is a really important step because the longer you leave them in the cooking water, the longer they continue to cook. Given our new-found love of food-based nonsense, we always continued into pudding, which, on Wednesdays, pretty much always happened to be two satsumas.

That ways you always avoid over cooking these, because remember they will cook further when you deep fry these.Check the oil temperature often with a thermometer, and increase or reduce the heat to keep it at 375-400°F (190-204°C). I wonder if our taste buds have evolved since we had these meals as kids - maybe they were always horrible and it's only now that we're realising it!

While we do our best to provide nutritional information as a general guideline to our readers, we are not certified nutritionists, and the values provided should be considered estimates. She clearly struck a chord, because the company asked her to be a recipe tester, and so began a wondrous few months of fortnightly reviewing, where international dishes came packaged up and quirkily presented along with scorecards, tasting sheets, t-shirts and all.But that may be because easy to prepare, tasty meals - such as the exciting eating experience of our Chow Mein - were not readily available in ancient times. They often sell out early, but can also be heavily discounted later if they don't, so here's a round-up of some of the best I’ve seen. I said I'd undoubtedly find them disgusting now, and I didn't think they were still made (Sainsburys/Waitrose certainly don't do them). I noticed some comments elsewhere that Cracker Barrel's closest approximation is an Irish cheddar of strength 4.

Crispy Fried Noodles - if you can't resist those golden, crunchy noodles that come as a side to soups and salads at restaurants, you are going to love this simple method to make them at home!

In this recipe the chicken is velveted: that is, coated with egg white and cornflour, to keep the meat moist and tender. If you should meet a creature with the body of a snake, the head of a crocodile and the claws of a lion, that's flapping leathery wings and breathing fire, you've found yourself a dragon. The oil should start shimmering around the edges of the ladle or chopstick and that's when you know its ready.