As most of you will already know Twitter is a social networking site where you can send messages limited to 140 characters to the twitter site. Here anyone is able to read it, but it will only appear directly on the page of those people who think you are interesting and have chosen to follow you.  Put in words it does not sound at all compelling, but once you enter the Twitter world you will find it is strangely interesting.

Why tweet? The reason I joined was a number of my friends had moved from a forum into twitter and it was much easier to find them and speak to them instantly. Another additional bonus is that a large number of companies have joined the Twitter world and are now running competitions on there. One tweet can lead to a win.

What amazes me however is how quickly news can spread. I learnt about many news events on Twitter before I heard about it on the news. Recently there was an attack on Twitter, where people using the website were effected by malicious code that took advantage of y0u scrolling over it with your mouse. Within minutes people were asking what was the problem with twitter, solutions were being suggested (use a third party client while they fix it) and finally loads of news articles suddenly sprung up discussing the attack. Twitter also fixed the problem reasonably quickly. This demonstrates the power Twitter has of spreading the word.

Twitter can also be fun. Silly ideas can take hold and the word spread with searchable # hashtags. On any given day there are a number of trending topics and these usually include things like #compingfilms where a word in a film title is changed to make it a film about comping. An example of this would be ” The winner wears Prada”

So whats the point of Twitter, really there is no point, but it is fun, fascinating and lively. Really Twitter is what you make of it, if you find good people to follow and who follow you it can be a roller coaster ride of endless fascination.

Its October. The mornings are dark when I wake up, the evenings are dark when I come home. The leaves are on the pavements and I have to swish though them as I walk. There is a hint of mist in the air and the days are cooler and wetter.  On days like this I turn to my slow cooker.

I got this as a Christmas present last year after hearing lots of people saying how fabulous they were and I have to say they are fabulous.  You spend a little while preparing food in the morning, bung it in the slow cooker, turn it on and when  you come home there is a fabulous meal waiting for you. As an added bonus the house smells lovely as well. All you need to do is bung on a few vegetables and relax. No worries about preparing diners.

So what can you cook in them? I was pleasantly surprised.  As well as a range of stews, you can also do soups and joints of meat. They all taste meltingly fabulous. It is possible to do puddings as well, but I have yet to try this. Ideally if I had two slow cookers I could do dinner and pudding at the same time.

So where do you start. First get a slow cooker. There are a large range out there, from expensive to cheap. Make sure you buy one where you can remove the crock pot. This makes for easy cleaning and you can also carry it to the table for serving purposes. Second get a reasonable book. I recommend Hamlyn 200 Slow cooker recipes from Octopus Books. This covers a wide range of meals which will give you ideas to get started.  My particular favourite is the baked ham in cola, it give the ham a lovely nutty taste. As you gain in confidence you will find that most things you normally cook can be easily adapted to the slow cooker and you will wonder how you ever lived without one.