Hey, Cluin, how ya doin'? I had a bet with myself that you'd be one of the first to arrive. Don't exactly know WHY I thoght that, but . . . .

Take a bunch of beef and chicken bones and boil 'em. Get an onion (peel off or on, no matter) and stick a dozen cloves into it. Add a few tops of celery (with leaves attached), a few carrots (halved). That will render (nice cooking-sounding term that, render) a delicate and utilitarian brothel for your future dining pleasure.

The discriminating chef, while being cognizant of caloric intake and rich flavour, will allow the brothel to cool so that removal of the congealed fat takes away all the bad stuff it contains, like the junk that clogs yer piping.

I agree with my good friend above who has suggested beef-barley and that wonderful delicacy--Mulligan stew--which both warms the tummy and enlivens the memory of days passed in hobo camps along quiet streams in Ireland (hey, I'm on a roll), and hope that the spirit of calm and peace prevails on this thread dedicated to the proposition that all people get hungry from time to time. I was attracted to the expression 'warms the cockles of the heart", but I worried that that might be perceived as an invitation to whelkers and other assorted ne'er-do-wells to bring chowders into the thread and thus confuse an otherwise fairly straight forward culinary series of posts.