Category Archives: Food

Pasta mission

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As a child, I used to love lasagna day.  Mum would spend an entire day preparing the components of this, now legendary, dish.  First off was the meat sauce, made with three quarters beef to one quarter pork mince, loads of garlic, red wine, herbs, tomatoes… and salt.  It would cook for hours until the aroma permeated the entire house and drifted outside.  The bechamel always precipitated much stress.  Again, this permeated throughout the entire house and was heard outside: “IT’S CATCHING ON THE BOTTOM OF THE PAN!!!  Oh, what a life.  What a bloody life!”  It was always fine though, made with a balance of nutmeg, Parmesan and mozzarella that I’ve still never been able to replicate.  In those days, fresh pasta wasn’t available unless you were mental and made it yourself, so the lasagna sheets that were bought from the supermarket were the dry variety and they came in boxes.  In those days, there were two varieties of dry lasagna sheets: white and green (spinach).  Actually, there were four varieties: white or green; straight or wavy.The absolute best type was green and wavy, which was always part-cooked before the dish was assembled.

You can’t get green lasagna sheets in the supermarkets these days.  You can get whole wheat, fresh egg, dried egg, even spelt, but no green.  The stores claim that they now stock a wider variety of pasta to suit a more diverse palate and differing dietary needs.  I claim they’re talking bullshit.  There is no such thing as whole wheat pasta, so save some shelf-space and get shut of it.  Spelt pasta is something that should be confined to crank shops, actually no, it should be confined to history.  Spinach lasagna is the absolute business and anybody who claims otherwise is an idiot.

The only form I’ve found any sort of spinach pasta in recently is tagliatelle from Morrisons.  It’s not even the whole bag though, since half of the nests are standard egg noodles.  Why do they do this?  Surely, if when given the option of buying standard or half spinach/half standard fettuccine, you go for the latter, this means that you like the spinach component, so why not have just the spinach variety and not cut it with the boring stuff?

Of course, spinach should only ever go near pasta for lasagna sheets, cannelloni and tagliatelle.  The very thought of spinach rigatoni, spaghetti, penne or orzo makes me feel a bit queezy.

 

Special dietary needs

I could claim to have special dietary needs because:

  • I don’t like boiled carrots, but love them roasted and raw
  • I won’t eat peas in things but they’re fine on the side
  • I can’t stand milk in coffee but I like it warm as a bedtime drink
  • Whole wheat pasta makes me sick (the thought of it does)
  • Peppers bring me out in hives

But I don’t have special dietary needs, other than needing to avoid too much fresh coriander, I’m just a bit fussy about a few things.  It’s fine to admit that you don’t like certain foods, or food combinations, or your mashed potato running into your gravy or baked beans.  People who claim to have special dietary needs just because they’re a bit fussy and they’ve been pandered to like a tantrum-throwing toddler all their adult lives need to grow the fuck up, or maybe try some different foods.  Cocks.

 

Domestic studies

I’ve heard quite a few people say that, while they have a dishwasher, they don’t use it and they prefer to do the dishes by hand.  This causes me much gnashing of teeth.  What is wrong with them?  That’s like saying that they have an automatic washing machine but they prefer standing over a washboard and wringer.  Or that, while they have the television for news, they prefer to make their own entertainment by playing the pianoforte and parlour games (I have sympathy with this one).

These people say the most remarkable things like, “I find that washing my dishes by hand gets them cleaner than if I used the dishwasher”.  What the bloody hell are they using in their dishwasher, gravel and dog poo?  How can washing by hand compete with super-heated caustic chemicals?  Centuries ago, people like this burned others for being witches.  They are dangerous and they need keeping an eye on.

 

Metropolitan, liberal, elite, establishment

I swear, if any fucker says these words in any combination in my presence, I will rip their fucking throat out.  Throw in mandate and I’ll set them on fire.

Dairy of a mad man

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I don’t use milk. My preferences for the way I take my coffee are well documented:

Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrison’s own brand “Italian style” ground coffee, number 4 strength; brewed strong
Three heaped teaspoons of Coffeemate Light (the blue one)
One heaped teaspoon of white sugar

This combination is perfect and I don’t understand why nobody else takes their coffee this way. It irks me when I have to buy a pint of milk so that I can provide visitors with tea, especially when those visitors are builders who are relieving me of £300 to fix an unstable chimney breast and some loose ridge tiles from my roof. But whilst milk in tea I can understand, even though I don’t drink the stuff, I simply can’t comprehend why people like to destroy a good cup of coffee by adding milk. Things will change when I’m in charge.

I am in charge in my house I suppose. Just as I would never expect to be offered my preferred soft drink when I visit somebody’s house, nor should others automatically expect me to have milk. But they do, so I buy it very occasionally and then it turns to cheese in the door of my fridge and those who discover it think I’m the bad person for letting it get like that.

Whereas milk-cheese is an undesirable by-product of the dairy industry, veal is absolutely delicious. I just had some for my lunch. I don’t quite understand the objection to eating veal from those who eat dairy products, much in the way I don’t understand the objection to eating frois gras from those who have never tried it. Let’s just say, I was very much in the “anti” camp until I was force-fed it myself.

Matrimoany
Having experienced a certain degree of heartbreak and upset a few months ago, I am now on fairly good terms again with a woman I was sort of involved with last year. She comes here for a meal occasionally; we have a nice chat and she compliments me on my coffee and my cooking. It’s always lovely when somebody who I’d happily settle down with, but who has no interest in me says: “I don’t understand why you’re not married”.

Stunned silence from Tina.

It’s odd that every woman who’s ever dumped me has said exactly the same thing.

I have come to the conclusion that I am under a hex: “The Barcelona curse”. It seems to me that, as soon as I get involved with somebody who I really like – a keeper if you would – and plans start to be made to visit the Catalan capital, everything goes wrong. If I’m ever in a relationship again and my significant other suggests a trip there, they’re getting dumped.

Cheese

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Some people are quite obsessed with cheese. To some, a savoury dish isn’t complete without, what is quite frankly, the compressed solids of gone-off milk. Cheese with baked beans, cheese with pasta, baked pasta with cheese and tuna, cheese on chips, cheese on chilli, cheese on burritos, cheese with wine, cheese with biscuits, cheese, cheese, cheese.

I’m not such a fan. Don’t get me wrong, a bit of crumbly Lancashire with piccalilli is divine, and parmesan definitely has its place, but it’s the sort of thing that I can enjoy in moderation.

There’s this weird thing that you’ll see on menus at restaurants amongst the desserts: cheeseboard. Cheese is NOT a pudding. When I own my restaurant, I will replace the cheeseboard with “chessboard”. Oh, how I will laugh at the faces of customers who order a strategic boardgame, thinking there was a typo on the menu. The chess pieces will be made of intricately-shaped mini puddings: take one of your opponent’s pieces, get to eat it. I bet it’s already been done in some fancy schmancy eatery somewhere, only with pieces of carved cheese. Nobheads.

Nob cheese.

Vegans
What I certainly can’t comprehend is the concept of vegan cheese. For goodness’ sake, aren’t these weirdos’ lives miserable enough as it is without more self-punishment? It’s no less than they deserve. I find it puzzling that people who take on a lifestyle that eschews all animal products think it’s acceptable to have animal-product substitutes. There’s a deep philosophical argument in there somewhere that I don’t have the intellectual capacity to engage in. But surely if you have an attitude with the supposition that it’s wrong to exploit animals in any way, then having fake animal products is akin to saying, “Well, actually, I really like eating animals and their by-products and I can’t really live without them totally, not psychologically at least, so I eat pretend animal by-products”. If you were to fully embrace the whole vegan thing, then you’d consume only things that have ever been and only ever pretended to be vegetables, or soil, or whatever, not things that maintained that mental link to your meat-eating past.

Or, just not eat at all and fuck off and die, you fucking crackpot weirdos.

Cafe culture
As I ate my, wait for it, cheese and piccalilli sandwich this evening, I was taken back to my childhood when Mum used to treat us to lunch at the Kingfisher Cafe on Swinton Precinct. There, I’d always have the same thing: cheese salad barmcake with a strawberry milkshake. I always took great pleasure in making as much noise as possible as I sucked the last foamy bits of pink milk up through my straw. It was one of those places that was always busy with people who were taking a break from their shopping. The smell was coffee and Embassy Regal, with a little bit of the chippy from next door that wafted in when the door was opened.

It was delightful. Everything was back then, when life wasn’t complicated by the need to have things, to be a certain way.

Every time I go to a cafe, I always look to see if there’s a milkshake option on the menu. More often than not, my pursuit of childhood pleasures ends in disappointment and an Americano or a fruit smoothie. Living in the 21st century isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be and it would be nice if we could maybe stop and think about what made us happy when we were kids, bottle all that up and recreate it somewhere special that’s insulated from from the worst bits of what stresses us all in adulthood. Back to a place and time when cheese was the main part of a sandwich and not an unnecessary accompaniment.

Le weekend
The tiredness I’ve been experiencing for the past couple of weeks – brought on mainly by the onset of autumn and restless nights’ sleep – has me looking forward to this le weekend more than I have done for a while. What’s even better is that I have given myself an October bank holiday Monday and so, when the majority of the working masses are having that Sunday night feeling, I shall at least for one weekend, be immune to the dread of the Monday morning alarm clock.

And it’s things like this that make me an absolute winner.

Pasta is my birth right

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I posted a photo of tonight’s dinner on Facebook earlier as a veiled complaint about how much mess cooking creates in my bijou kitchen. It does, and it’s often difficult for others to appreciate the effort involved in preparing a meal and the post-apocalyptic aftermath of the clean-up operation when you’re only cooking for one. But sometimes, given a little forethought and planning, preparing a really lovely dish takes very little effort, time or expense. Still though, there’s only yourself to appreciate it and you’re the one who has to clean up the mess it generates.

Anyway (:@), somebody wanted the recipe and I’m certain that the four people who happen across this might some day give this a go themselves.

Four mushroom papardelle
Or is it five? Whatever.

Prep time: five minutes max
Cooking time: fifteen minutes ish
Eating time: about two minutes because it’s so fuckindelish that you’ll devour it, the only thing slowing you down will be grating of the parmesan and taking time to emit ecstatic moans

This is what it turns out like:

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What you need (for about two people)

Big clove of garlic (or two), crushed
Bird eye chilli, chopped
Fresh sage leaves – handful, chopped
Chestnut mushrooms – about five, sliced
Shitake mushrooms (“shite ache”, never fails to amuse me) – about five, sliced
Oyster mushrooms – a good few, sliced
Those dried mushroom things in a bag – use half a bag and get them soaking in boiling water
Papardelle or similar lah-di-dah fancy schmancy ribbon pasta – 250g
Creme fraiche – half a tub? Who knows? Just enough, couple or three big dollops
Oil – sufficient
Butter – add a dollop
Salt & pepper
Parmesan cheesiness (fucking LOADS)

What to do

1. Fill a large saucepan ⅔ full with water and get it boiling for the pasta
2. When the water is boiling, add a good handful of salt and a dribble of oil and add the pasta
3. Slice the chestnut mushrooms, crush the garlic and chop the chilli and sage, then get them frying in a frying pan over a moderate heat. Get them started then add the sliced shitake mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper. Blah, blah, blah.
4. When the pasta has been cooking for about ten minutes (cooking time is usually about 12 mins), add some butter to the mushrooms, allow to melt, then add the oyster mushrooms and the soaked, dried mushrooms (save the soaking liquor back)
5. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and hold to one side
6. Add the dried mushroom juice to the mushroom medley and bring to a simmer before stirring in the creme fraiche

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7. Mix in the cooked pasta

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8. Serve, maybe garnished with some parsley… but not too chopped
9. Add grated parmesan to taste, replenishing the plate throughout the culinary experience
10. In other words, don’t be like a stingy bastard restaurant, keep the cheese on the table and grate at will
11. That’s to say, as much as you bloody well like

I tried this with some single cream that I had knocking about (going off) in the fridge and it was OK, but creme fraiche is actually really nice. I probably wouldn’t use any old “creme fraiche/single cream lookalike” that was knocking about the fridge though. I can’t image that this would be nice if you used Muller light yoghurt or mayonnaise. I can’t imagine anything that would be improved by the addition of mayonnaise… other than a really irritating person with an egg allergy.

Happiness is a cold gin

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I have bid a temporary farewell to the ever delightful April and “Jesus, Sacha!”. It’s been a tiring, yet enjoyable week. We didn’t get to do as many things as I’d hoped – cheeky! – but part of that was down to jetlag and unfortunate weather.

As if compelled by a strange force of nature, April brought us a litre of Tanqueray gin. I finished the last of it this evening. Served over ice, with a squeeze of lime juice and Indian tonic water (not slimline, ever), this is one of the finest drinks known to mankind: refreshing; antimalarial; and hangover-free (in moderation).

Irksome beans
The tinned beans on offer at supermarkets are vile, expensive and not worthy purchase. I am referring to the vegan staple fartogenic borlotti beans, red kidney beans, cannellini beans, chick peas, etc, etc, etc. The only varieties on offer at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons are undercooked, without salt, sans flavour. Why? Why do we have to be victims of the salt nazis? Even bread has no flavour any more because it is baked without sufficient salt.

I despise the health-freaks who impose their taste-free lives on the rest of us. So fucking what if your systematic review shows that reducing salt in pre-cooked produce by 80% reduces the risk of early mortality by 0.5% (0.3-0.8% CI)? Who gives a crap when it reduces enjoyment of what life we do have by 80% (75-100% CI)? Mongs.

And yes, I do realise that the previous paragraph exposes my lack of understanding of statistics and that, but the salt nazis more than make up for it by exposing their lack of understanding what things taste delicious.

My Tuscan bean soup won’t tolerate the inclusion of inferior ingredients. It simply cannot be eaten with the undercurrent of resentment induced by the incorporation of bullet-like, tasteless borlotti beans. Having reached the age of 44 (bon compliano to me, btw), I refuse to subject myself to this shit. Accordingly, I shall henceforth be boycotting beans of the precooked, tinned variety on offer at the supermarkets and be cooking my own, from the dried ones, that you buy in bags.

I love dried beans. You can buy half a kilo for less than a pound (sterling) and freeze them once cooked. Even more exciting is the fact that a lot of them contain highly toxic lectins that will actually kill you if you don’t soak and cook them properly prior to eating. I remember watching That’s Life! as a child and there being a campaign about kidney beans because people too stupid to soak and cook were actually dying. There’s this thing called natural selection…

Anyway, I’m sure that in a few years time, dried beans will be banned for one reason or another, but until they are, here’s how I love to prepare the poisonous little fuckers.

1. Rinse beans in cold water a couple of times and soak overnight in fresh water.
2. Rinse again, transfer to a bigger pan because they’ll have doubled in size, cover in fresh water, add bay leaves and a couple of cloves of garlic, bring to the boil.
3. Boil for ten minutes, ADDING AS MUCH SALT AS YOU LIKE half way through.
4. If using beans for a casserole, remove from heat after boiling and allow to cool.
5. If eating beans, simmer for ten to twenty minutes until soft.
6. The brilliant thing is that the beans can be frozen in batches. Just cover them in cooking liquor and freeze for future use.
7. That’s about six cans’ worth for £1, cooked properly and so very tasty.
8. So fuck off and die on fire, salt nazis.

Anyway, I now have three batches of borlotti beans in my freezer; the remaining batch went into my soup.

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I have no idea why borlotti beans are called borlotti beans in cans, but pinto beans in their dried state.

Horeetho
Chorizo annoys me. Inappropriate, overuse of chorizo annoys me. You can’t move for this Spanish so-called sausage in supermarket deli aisles and sandwich shops. It isn’t even nice; the overpowering overtones of paprika are harsh and unpleasant. I simply cannot comprehend why shops and sandwich bars serve this doppelgänger of a pork product and not the beautiful, refined salamis from Italy.

Nothing can beat the combination of salami Napoli with an olive oil-dressed rocket sandwich, oo-la-la’d up by a few parmesan shavings. If you’re feeling a bit cheeky, substitute the Napoli with Coppa, Ventriciana, Finocchiona or Bresaola. For a thunderbolt of piccante, go for the full-on blast of a Calabrese. In each of these, the subtlety of flavours flow, sometimes followed by a hit of fennel seeds, other times, the warmth of chilli washes over you. Never though, are you hit in the mouth, face and nose by the simultaneous assault of paprika, chilli and pig.

Inappropriate absence of Chorizo is utterly inexcusable
While in York the other day, my search for a lovely cafe that, thanks to Google and Twitter, I know still exists was abandoned due to a raging headache, low progesterone, hypoglycaemia and the company of others. Desperate for food and painkillers, I suggested going to La Tasca for lunch.

Now, about, Jesus Tina! twenty years ago, La Tasca was an excellent tapas bar in Manchester, it then became a chain with outlets all over the place. Needless to say, after patronising the one in York, I’ll not be going back. I paid over £10 for paella, recalling the one that I’d had on my visit to the restaurant on Deansgate in 1995. It was bursting with authenticity, flavour and colour, overflowing with excellent ingredients, and even provided the entertainment of ripping the flesh from langoustines. The one in York was bland. It was lacking in even the basic flavours you would expect from the dish: there was no blast of saffron and where the dish isn’t the dish without the paprika-infused oil from the initial cooking of chorizo, there was not a sausage. Literally, there was not a sausage. How could they make a paella without starting off the dish by cooking chorizo? Where was the garlic?

It was dreadful.

I hate going to restaurants and knowing that I could cook what I’m eating so much better for a fraction of the price. The restaurant being part of a chain is absolutely no excuse. The fact of the matter is that I know I can’t cook a quarter pounder with cheese better than McDonald’s, so from now on, when I’m out and about, that’s where I’ll be going when I’m in need of a quick lunch that’s prepared to high standard without being eaten with an element of resentment and an unwelcome dollop of mayonnaise.

Like a bad smell

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How often are you supposed to bath a dog?  Fuck me, my little feller pongs already and he only got tubbed on Sunday.  I think he’s been mixing pheromones with some male company that I had over the past day or so.

Of course, when I say “male company”, I refer to the partner of my visiting female friend.  I was horrified when he lay on my bed – might I get pregnant?  Euch.

After years of telling April how I’m an OK cook, I had to put my money where my mouth is and cook for us the other night – coq au vin.  This involved the use of quite a lot of garlic, some of which has been residing in my kitchen bin since Monday and has taken on the smell of hideous garlic breath; you know the sort of overpowering funk that grabs you by the stomach, throws you to floor and makes you vomit until your eyeballs explode?  Like that.

I don’t like smells, unless it’s my own trumps.  You get to thinking how your natural smell affects people who you share office space with.  Not referring to body odours, I mean the sort of fragrances that cling to you as a result of your morning ablutions – shower gel, hair products, moisturisers, perfumes.  How does one have that difficult conversation with a colleague who wears a vile signature fragrance – in perfume, shower gel and moisturiser form? Is there a subtle way of sending them a link to the Jo Malone website?  They’d probably still choose some combination of scents that, alone are divine, but in union turn into something that could be used as biological warfare agents.

Jesus loves you

Oh good grief, this is brilliant.  There’s something about people of religion that just makes me want to kill them.   Nothing personal, but they’re clearly suffering from serious mental illness and they need conversion therapy to turn them into fully functioning, rational members of the global society.  Am I being harsh?  You decide by checking out the Team Jesus for Michelle Bachmann facebook page, and this little beauty that I found there today:

Gay dinosaurs

Dinosaurs became extinct because they were all gay

Fuck a doodle doo.

The Bachmann Facebook page is clearly a spoof (I hope) to show how utterly ridiculous some Christians are, but I’m assuming some class A moronic bible basher came up with this graphic.

Maybe in years to come we’ll be able to make a cartoon that said Christians became extinct because they just pissed off so many free-thinking, normal people off that world governments decreed they were either put into mental asylums or sterilised banned from having access to children and mass communications tools.

School dinners

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When I spend time with my parents, conversation often turns to the youngest (human) family member, my niece, Little Con. She’s recently started her second year at primary school and I asked my mum (Big Con) as to how she was settling in with her new teacher, classmates, and the like.

“She came home starving the other day; hadn’t eaten a thing”

With our family, food is everything. I can trace this to a few things:

  • My parents being children during the Second World War (Mum’s family were in Liverpool and living on rations and whatever could be grown in allotments, Dad’s family were in the south of Italy and literally had to go and dig in the forest for food after the Nazi occupies had taken all the village’s provisions);
  • My Dad being Italian;
  • The acknowledgement that our combined tempers become unbearable when we’re hungry (we’re a pretty irascible bunch at the best of times)

So the news that Little Con “hadn’t eaten a thing” all day at school was tantamount to national disaster.

Con used to take a packed lunch to school with her, but her mum recognised that a hot meal during the day might be better for her powers of concentration as the intellectual effort was increasing. But things aren’t the way they were when we were at school. When we were at school, you lined up in the dining hall and you were given a plate of whatever was on the menu that day -no choice. The dinner ladies patrolled the tables to ensure that you ate everything (including the odd bit of gristle) and that you drank plenty of water before the main treat of pudding completed what generally a good meal.

I understand that primary school children are given a choice these days, but they don’t know what the choices are until they reach the end of the dinner queue, by which time it’s too late to go back and they end up with a crappy sandwich that they don’t want.

Choice and young children do not mix, this is developmental fact. This is something that parents and people responsible for the care of little ones need to understand, especially when it comes to providing food to kids who rely on school for their only hot meal of the day.

I’m going to write to my Little Con’s school and tell them what’s what:

  • Hot meal every day, including pudding
  • One meat (if necessary), one veggie option
  • Chips no more than twice per week
  • Lots of veg
  • A healthy mix of flavours
  • No choice
  • No processed shit
  • SAS trained dinner ladies
  • Death to any parent who complains

And now as I hit the “publish” button, I see what a cock up I’ve made of my bullets.

Finger licking goooood

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I’ve just had to curtail Rocky’s blast on the field because he PISSED ME OFF!  We’d been having a lovely time, hiding from each other in the undergrowth, chasing after crows, sniffing (him, not me).  After covering the perimeter of the playing field just the once, I took him back over to the wooded area that leads to the canal to have another sniff and a game of sniff and seek in the undergrowth.  Ready to start my second circuit, I set off walking away from him and, as the distance between us increased, I realised that he was paying even less attention to me than usual – he was concentrating very closely on something, picking it up, throwing it about, catching it again, chewing it.  Had he finally, at long last, caught a mouse?  Had he done what he was bred for?

I started towards him to see what he was up to, but he was having none of it and decided to play the “act like cheeky robin” game, whereby I’d get within a couple of metres of him, he’d pick up whatever it was that he was tormenting, then bounce off.

Then he spotted the dog on the other side of the field.  I’ve given up trying to run after him, especially while wearing wellies, and I just hope that the object of his attention (and its owner) is friendly enough not to chew his face off. He never comes when called, ever.  He’s a total shit and I could kill him.  Anyway, trudging through the mud, I finally got near him to find that he was still chomping away on whatever it was that’d he’d picked up on the other side of the field.  He made the mistake of a dropping some of it.

What could have been so fascinating?  What could’ve been so very good that he played with it for finve minutes and carried it from side of the field to the other?  Was it a small furry animal?  No, it was a bit of chicken carcass.  No meat or anything, just the bone.  I pulled the remainder of it from his mouth and, my fingers covered in dog spit, I dragged him home.  Finger licking good.

He came so close to being left there, the little fucker.  He’s so disobedient, annoying, embarrassing.  I have a friend coming over on Sunday and we’re supposed to be taking him on a nice walk.  Nice doesn’t come into it, it’s always such a fucking toil.

All I ever wanted was a dog that I could take on a nice walk, that’d bring things that I threw for it, that wouldn’t hassle other animals, and that would come back to me when called.

And I get him.

He’s funny as fuck when he runs at full pelt though.

Le Weekend

Yay, it’s the weekend.  At last!  I’m going to be creative in the kitchen tomorrow (after tidying up in there), make a lasagne for me and a special one for the freezer… just in case unexpected visitors drop by.

As I said, I have a friend coming over on Sunday and she’ll be staying over too.  A sleep over, at my age!

And I think I’m taking Monday off because I can’t be fucked going in to work

But the weekend starts properly at 8pm this evening when Taz Radio goes live.  An evening of all my favourite music.  Fabulous!


Peanuts

I see that the end of peanut allergies might be in sight.  A small trial in 4 children showed that they could be desensitised to peanut allergens by gradual exposure to increasing amounts of peanut flower.  After suffering severe allergies to peanuts all their lives, the children can now eat up to ten peanuts.

But where’s the fun in that?  The good thing about having friends with peanut allergies is the tricks you can play on them.

“I’ve cooked you a meal.”

“Ooh, thanks, I’m STARVING; been saving myself for this all day!”

“Great, I bought some really special ingredients.  Now… what did it say about being packaged in a nut-free environment?  It either was, or wasn’t, but I can’t remember which.  Have you got your epi-pen handy?”

Fag patchwork

I’m running out of places to stick my fag patches to.  Every bit of skin that has previously had one attached to it is now very red, quite sore and rather itchy.  The things are a nightmare.  I’ve taken to cutting them up so they’ll fit into what remains of my unaffected skin.  I’ll be moving on to my shins next.

Still, I’ve not had a cigarette in about ten days and not really thought of having one.  More than anything, it’s just breaking the habit, but wearing a patch kind of adds a psychological boost to my efforts.  “It’s called a PLACEEEEEEEEEEBO”.

Crunched

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I’ve been shocked and appalled by the price of things these days. After not really eating for three months, and not buying groceries during this period, I have returned to the world of supermarket shopping to be truly horrified by the escalating cost of living.

Here are some frexamples:

Antiperspirant: was £1.96, now £2.96

Chopped tomatoes: were 24p a can, now 33p a can

Lean minced steak (250g): was £2.19, now £2.69

I can’t think of anything else, I never really look at the price of stuff, but those things really stick out.

All I can say is, fucking hell, things were much cheaper when I was starving myself.  But not as much fun, obviously.

I’ve now rekindled my fondness for messing about in the kitchen and seeing what I can make from my cupboard that includes the staples: onions, garlic, chilli, ginger, chopped tomatoes, chick peas, olive oil, herbs, spices, pasta (a variety), rice.  It’s not surprising that I’m a whiz at dishing up a red sauce for pasta and chick pea curry.  Nice though.

I should be more adventurous, I have the skills.  I’ve threatened my good friends Taz and Pig with a lasagne.  It’s not really a threat, my lasagne is usually fuckin’ delish, even if I do say so myself.  Based on Mum’s recipe, which she stole from a genuine Italian woman, so it’s authentic and everything.  I even do a veggie version for my friends that uses Quorn instead of minced steak and it goes down a treat with them, and me.  Apart from the first time I made it….

Take yourselves back to the summer of 2000.  I was having a bit of a rough time of things for one reason or another and my dear friends opened their home in Leeds to me most weekends so I could spend some time away from the solitude of my life in Sheffield.  We did normal, boring things, like doing a bit of gardening, sitting in the sunshine, cooking, watching TV, smoking… lots of smoking.

One day me and David decided to make a lasagne together.  The red sauce was made and it was time to get on with the bechemel – easy peasy, I’d seen my mum do this a million times and it looked a doddle.  Using her method, I warmed milk in a pan and made an emulsion from cornflour and cold milk.  At least I thought it was cornflour, but I couldn’t be sure because David had a habit of taking the labels off everything, it had the right powdery consistency, so I went with it.  The warmed milk was added to the flour/milk emulsion and returned to the heat to thicken.  Only it didn’t.  So more flour emulsion was added without much success.  I found some different flour and tried that and it thickened a little bit, so I went with it – adding grated nutmeg, salt, pepper, mozzarella, parmesan, etc, etc.  The dish was assembled and cooked and we sat down to eat with the summer sun still relatively high in the evening sky, shining through their dining room window where it emanated a warming yellow glow.

We each took a mouthful of our meal, paused simultaneously and looked at each other with puzzled expressions on our faces.  Speaking over each other, the three of us uttered the words “Does this taste a bit sweet to you?”.

So the moral of this story: don’t take the labels off things in your store cupboard; icing sugar doesn’t half look like cornflour to the clinically depressed.

Fag patches

Following my short-lived attempt to give up smoking back in October, I have decided that the time is right to make a proper effort at weening myself off the delightful weed and today, I am wearing a fag patch.

Apart from itching like a bastard and nearly falling off after just ten minutes, things have settled down and I’ve been OK today.  On a day when I have been looking at spreadsheets from the comfort of my own home, a day when normally I’d have been chain smoking to get me through the boredom, I’ve not wanted one.  Well, of course I’ve wanted a cigarette, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to have one, so I’ve been OK.

The problem with being a bored smoker as opposed to an addicted smoker is that nicotine patches don’t really do much to substitute the punctutation of your day that smoking a cigarette affords.  Instead though, the slow and constant release of nicotine provides a different type of punctutation in that you find that you nearly shit yourself every hour, on the hour.

I’m looking forward to going to bed wearing my 24hr patch.  It’ll bring nightmares and much grinding of teeth, and possibly a few emergency trips to the en suite.

All part of life’s rich tapestry.

Yackety Yack

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Pigswill

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I’m watching Hugh Fearnley-Pigswill on the telly.  He’s one of these organic foodie campaigner types who evangelises about stuff that grows in shit.  I can’t stand him.  Everything about him is nauseating: the way he looks; the way he talks; what he cooks.  But what I find most objectionable about him is the way he eats really noisily and talks to camera while doing so.

Pig of a man.

There is nothing more disgusting than the sound of people eating, smacking their lips noisily as they find it impossible to keep their mouths closed until they’ve finishing munching like normal people can.

When I was at university, me and my friends needed to find a housemate and we ended up with a bit of a headcase who watched the TV with the sound turned up to full blast.  She ate with her mouth open, smacking away and slurping till the end of the very last mouthful.  Every evening when she came back from college, she’d go straight to her room.  We’d time her, one, two, three, four, then it’d start, the thumping base of Alannah Myles’ Black Velvet.  But she was a right loon: occupying the attic bedroom, me and my fellow housemates could hear her talking to herself in different voices whenever we went to the bathroom, which was also located on the top floor of the house.  On the day of my last ever university exam, I’d gone upstairs for a shower at something ridiculous like 5am and, even at that time of day, I heard a sinister laugh coming from within her room.  Freaked out?  Most certainly.

Mississippi, the middle of a heatwave…

Wardrobe fun

I was at Mum and Dad’s earlier.  And I decided to go and have a look in my old wardrobe for a laugh.  There are still some clothes in there from my skinny days.  I can get into some of my old jeans and things, but let’s just say that I’m in between sizes, with my current clothes slightly too big and the next size down being slightly too small for me.  Irritating?  You betchya!  Why are there no odd sizes?  Why do they have to go from 14 to 16 to 18?  What’s wrong with a 15 or 17?

So what do I do, starve a bit to go to the next size down, or eat a few kebabs and get tubby?