Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Food glorious food

In our house, Karen mostly cooks, and I do everything else.*

Every now and then, SheWhoMustBeObeyed needs to be at an evening event or is on a brief stay away. On these occasions where I have had to reluctantly grant her a pass out, I need to be able to prepare my own food.

My Mum was a good cook. She used to make these lovely little pizzas with anchovies on the top and she could make a Vesta Chow Mein look like it had... er... come from admittedly well presented dehydrated ingredients.

My Gran was an excellent cook, or more accurately, she was an excellent boiler. She could sublime vegetables into slurry after 4-5 hours in the pressure cooker. The consequence of this was that everything had a similar constituency and we needed a lot of serving spoons.

Cabbage? Gloop. Carrots? Gloop. Potatoes? Gloop. Beef? Gloop.

I can cook when required, but don't particularly enjoy it. I'm actually quite squeamish about eating food that has obviously come from a carcass- i.e. with bones, fat, sinew and those horrible little tubes that stick out at silly angles implying that this protein used to be self-sustaining. My idea of a Sunday Joint is something that has been shredded into slurry and squashed together again into a nondescript shape at high pressure by Bernard Matthews.

There are, however, people who love to Cook, and Welshcakes Limoncello is one of them. She upped sticks and moved to Sicily in her mid-fifties and has been blogging about life there ever since last April. Her output is well written, informative and entertaining reflecting her strong teaching skills as a former (or is it?) linguist in education. She is an entertaining read has a strong following.

Welshcakes also enjoys sharing photos of her food. Whilst I would struggle to compete with her capabilities and flair, I do offer one of my culinary creations to savour.

I call it Piccate speziato saporito cane da caccia salsicca

*apart from washing, ironing, putting away, sewing, gardening, cleaning out the guinea pig, making the beds, hoovering, dusting, attending to the water rooms and paying attention when she is talking. As I am a man I am obviously useless at these things.

I do a bit of D.I.Y. but draw the line at fixing carrier bags as I'm not an Engineer.

9 comments:

Liz Hinds said...

I'm glad you added the * bit. Not that I'd have believed you anyway!

GP said...

A lovely review of a great site!

James Higham said...

Oh my goodness, Ian. What would Karen and David say?

Shades said...

Karen here.

I just keep telling him that he's great!!!

There are far more things that he's useless at than the ones he listed, but I've always been aware that his cooking ability is limited to warming things up!

Shades said...

James, David didn't mind- that was his hot dog on top of the tins. (He isn't too keen on spicy food).

Karen also thinks it is reminiscent of the Millennium Dome...

Colin Campbell said...

I laughed out loud at this one. I used to cook like this, but went through a creative transition and am actually quite creative now. That said, in my supermarket shelf stacking days, I wondered what to do with those kinds of cans. No I know. All you need is some frozen peas on the side.

Shades said...

CC, I can cook when necessary and we do eat large amounts of fresh food most of the time.

Having said that, Stagg Chilli is reasonably healthy (it is an acceptable slimming world red day portion) and the dogs were 99p for two tins.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Thanks so much, Ian. I only just realised this was here and you have made my day! Love the pic and the name for your dish, btw!

Shades said...

Welshcakes, I'm pleased you finally got round to seeing your "tribute"!