I think its great that you are so much behind your lad, he looks very suave in his shirt and tie by the way, you should be extremely proud. Enjoyed reading your post, especially about recipes and the like. I was brought up on scouse, which is part an irish and part norwegian or viking thing, lob scouse they called it. Basically its spuds, carrots, and anything else thats lying around, all thrown in a big pan and boiled up together, meat was usually corned beef thrown in. Remember as a kid my old fellow would make a pan on a sunday and just keep adding stuff to it all week, its a wonder we all didnt die of food poisoning lol..all poor people who came to Liverpool from Ireland lived on it almost exclusively, didnt do us any harm though, well not as far as I know that is.

I havent made it for a long, long time now, not since I left home in fact. These days my culinary delights dont stretch much beyond, steamed broccolli, carrots, peas, and spuds, I like a lot of the vegetarian meat substitutes as well now, funny how your tastes change.  And I shouldnt forget 85per cent dark chocolate, and my favorite apple pie and ice cream;)

Scouse is quite simple to make though, you fill a big pot with water, and get it boiling then chop up the peeled spuds carrots and any other veg you fancy, throw it in and add gravy and some form of meat, shin bone works well, but a  lot of people wouldnt eat that these days, personally I liked corned beef. Anyway you throw gravy in and keep boiling till it all thickens as you said, there is no crust on it or anything like that, but there is a crust on lancashire hotpot, which is similar. I used like to like dipping bread into it, you know a thick unsliced loaf, delicious, oh and you also throw salt in, almost forgot that. My old fellow used to eat a lot of things like cows heart, baked, and tripe, any offal as they were not to picky when it came to food. Very thick cut and fried potatoes were also popular in Liverpool, which we called scallops, which as you know really are from the sea, and are not spuds at all. we called dinner, what you would call lunch, and the evening meal around 5 or six o clock we called tea time.

Emily, scouse is basically stew, not left overs, but the only stuff people had at the time people from Liverpool are famous for it, lobbies is another, which is bread soaked in milk and sugar, then heated up. Generations of Irish in Liverpool were brought up on that, amazing we had any teèth by the time we were ten.

In fact they are called scousers by everyone else in the country, the secret is letting the spuds fall to the right consistency almost like, but not quite, porridge, very tasty:)

I myself would be called a woolyback by anyone from Liverpool because my family moved away to a town close by when their house got bombed in the war.