If you've never tried mashing them up with mature cheddar, I suggest you give it a go immediately.

Highly addictive.  Similar to Martle's butter and garlic but the saltiness of the cheese is just perfect.  Cheese and garlic - even better. 

I don't want to lead the porridge thread off topic but Ron has mentioned a slow cooker.

I have oft thought of getting one of these, for not being possessed of A Wife I think it would be rather nice to come home on cold Winter evenings and open the door to an enticing smell and know a meal was ready for the table and I didn't have to start from scratch every evening.

What worries me is bacteria, food being kept at a temperature in the cooker which would encourage the breeding thereof.  For example, if I were to do beef or chicken casserole I would brown the meat, etc., about 7.30am and then it would sit, non-refrigerated for many hours (probably about 8-9 hours) before the machine turned itself on.

So, basically, how many here have a slow cooker, are they confident about the bacteria aspect, am I worrying unduly about it, do they cook anything else but porridge in them and what models would they recommend?

I've got a slow cooker which I bought long ago and I haven't used it for ages, probably since well before I became a veggie (c1987). As it happens I took it down from the top of one of the cupboards in the kitchen last week, where it has sat all this time, and put it up in the loft. I suppose I ought to recycle it to someone who might use it. I've never thought of doing porridge in it

I think it's a Tower btw and I think it's ceramic.

Yes, apparently because of all that surface area. I think it was tinners who pointed this out to me, quite possibly on this very thread...

I don't have a slow cooker. (Is that a chat up line?  )

Use of the slow cookers seems to go in waves here, Anty, but come winter, various soups, stews and casseroles will be created with their aid.

The fried rice in the morning is always served piping hot, with plenty of fresh garlic and ginger, so there's little chance of bacterial survival. The last three occasions I had food poisoning were on a Nile cruise (it's almost impossible to go to Egypt without some gastric difficulty - hence the origin of the phrase 'gippy tummy'), following a meal in a rather good restaurant in Lima before flying back from the Andes trek (the trip doctor suspected the scallops: I was not alone in suffering) which was three years ago: prior to that, Christmas 1984, when a certain Tommy Steele treated the entire cast and crew of Singin' in the Rain to an oyster tea between the final matinee and evening performances: it wasn't the oysters that were the problem, but frozen prawns only partially thawed. I survived the night coach from Victoria to Dundee without a problem, although I was starting to feel unwell about midday the next day. It was only the following day that trouble really set in. The overnight trip back would have been horrendous had the coach been carrying more than a handful of passengers, allowing me almost sole use of the loo, and it was only on arrival at the theatre the following morning for two more shows that I discovered that virtually the whole cast had been similarly afflicted. Both performances took place with buckets in the wings, and liberal provision of proper tonic water with angostura bitters (one of the best cures for food poisoning I know).