frogprints

Our three years old Thetford c200 has started, occasionally, filling up with flush water. There is no constant drip from the flush tube but I guess an internal seal may be going. Given the high price of the replacement valve has anyone had experience of replacing just the seal, is it feasible?. From the manual the dissasembly to get to the valve seems to be a b*****r! so any advice would be appreciated. Cheers David

Mention of the nettle pesto reminds me of these delicious & simple recipes: Wild Garlic Pesto 1. Put the blanched wild garlic into a blender. 2. Pop in some walnuts which mellows the taste out. Now add a good slug of olive oil and some roughly chopped Somerset cheddar (or any strong cheese). 3. Now put the lid on, press the button and blitz it up. You can add this pesto to anything that needs a bit of pepping up. Wild Garlic Ravioli egg pasta dough made with 300 g flour and 3 large eggs a bunch of wild garlic leaves (about 1 1/2-2 cups), finely chopped 200 g ricotta drained as much as possible from the whey 1 large egg 50 g grated Parmigiano salt, pepper and eventually bread crumbs 1. Prepare the dough first and rest for at least 30 minutes. 2. Mix wild garlic, ricotta, grated cheese and egg together. Season with salt and pepper and check the consistency. The stuffing should be slightly moist but not wet to the touch, if needed add bread crumbs till it feels right. A wet stuffing will soften the dough of the ravioli and often result in them breaking apart while cooking. 3. Roll the dough as fine as possible, either with a rolling pin or a pasta machine, and cut into squares, about 5 cm in size. 4. Place about half a teaspoon of filling on every square, fold the pastry over and seal. You can shape these any way you want actually, but just folding along the diagonal will give some pretty triangular ravioli. 5. Cook in plenty of boiling water and remove as soon as they float to the top. Serve with melted butter and extra grated Parmigiano if you wish. Shame we have to wait till spring for the main ingredient! Enjoy!

If you are interested in simple, tasty & healthy microwave recipes there are 60+ on my project's web site: http://www.wansbeckrealfood.org.uk/recipe Any feedback would be welcomed. Enjoy David Malone

Thanks guys for all your advice, seems I need to do some poking around in t' ole and getting acquainted with the old ‘barbers arts’ Cheers!

My daughter advises me that her hot water system, from a calorifier, is "no longer getting as hot as it was" i.e if she ran the engine at night to charge the batteries, she would have adequate hot water the next morning for a shower - this is apparently no longer the case. I suspected that the tank was not getting heated through so checked and topped up the engine coolant, which was low, but this has not solved the problem. Although the water is getting hot, but the tank is not, is it possible for there to be an airlock/blockage of some sort? How would we go about bleedin the system? As it will be a couple of weeks befor I can have a look myself is there any thing simple that she can try? Thanks in advance for any help.

I have read with interest a number of discussions about gas free/all electric boats and am surprised that the issue of microwave cooking is not more prominent. As someone who uses microwave cookers in my project, working in deprived communities to improve health through improved diet, I have looked closely at the cost comparisons between conventional hob/oven and microwave cooking and the potential savings are enormous. In general, savings of 60-75% are usual, for example, my favourite chocolate carrot cake recipe takes 50 mins in a preheated oven compared with 12-14 mins in my 800w microwave - that's an energy saving of over 90% by my calculations - no wonder the gov would like people to use microwaves for cooking rather than just re-heating see - MIcrowave usage Assuming that you have mains/inverter power, microwave cooking which is quick (50-75% quicker), cheaper (25-30% of the power), and healthier (because it cooks quicker more nutrients are retained) would seem to be a good solution for boaters. What do you think?