There is one powerful smell closely associated with the making of coffee in bedsitters. It is the smell of burning plastic, and will go away if you move the handle of the pot away from the flame.' Katharine Whitehorn's classic handbook of quick, simple meals - including Swedish Sausage Casserole, Lamb Tomato Quickie and Shrimp Wiggle - became the essential survival manual for the busy single person living in his or her first rented room and remained in print for forty years. Now brought back into print, Whitehorn's trademark intelligent, practical and fabulously funny writing shines as brightly as ever, addressing the problems of 'cooking at ground level, in a hurry, with nowhere to put the salad but the washing-up bowl, which is in any case full of socks'. Delightful, entertaining and utterly indispensable.