Food, Glorious Food

After the food preparation of the last couple of weeks, the family visit went well – as they always do. There were errors – last night, I defrosted the stuffing, and this morning, I lost it and found it again. But it wasn’t till the end of the meal that I realised I’d put it in the oven to reheat and forgotten to serve it. There were also excesses – see below. And now – because it was a busy day – I’m struggling to stay awake and there is still some work, in finding homes for those excesses or over bought items and odd things like washing the large tablecloths and removing the extra leaves of the table.

I don’t do fancy food. We had pate followed by roast turkey and roast potatoes and vegetables, including fresh runner beans from my sister-in-law’s garden. Then apple crumble (apples from my garden – cooked and frozen a year ago) and fruit salad. In the evening, there were various savoury bits and pieces, followed by trifle, chocolate brownies and meringues. That was the theory – but my brother in law popped into Sainsbury’s on the way and brought with him a trifle and chocolate roulade and SiL2 brought an enormous chocolate and caramel meringue, which was so rich that when we had each had a piece, we could eat barely anything else. Consequently, I still have a large percentage of my desserts - half an apple crumble/fruit salad/trifle/nearly all the brownies and half the meringues; This would be fine – in past times, the aftermath of a family visit was that no cooking was required for two to three days, as we ate our way through leftovers. But M & I are both trying to be more restrained and lose some weight, so we will be having a battle with our will power during the next few days. I managed to get BiL to take home his trifle and I froze the roulade, and can freeze the chocolate brownies too, for my son & family’s visit next weekend. We also acquired chocolates and biscuits. I was inspired to write A Bottle of Plonk when a New Year’s Eve party left us with so much wine, I started wondering whether some bottles just kept going round in circles without ever being consumed. Now I wonder whether I should be writing an equivalent book about A Box of Chocs or similar.


But enough of food. It was a lovely day. As an only child, I have always enjoyed family gatherings with my two sisters in law and my brother in law and their respective spouses, etc. And after all the tension before, as I try to remember what I should be doing and juggling the various things in and out of the oven, once they arrive, they dive in and organise me, which I so appreciate. On this occasion, SiL2’s son and daughter came too. This particular nephew works in a ski resort in Switzerland and had come over for a couple of days, and my niece, a recently qualified solicitor in Reading, has been offered a job in Geneva and so will be quite near to her brother. He is going back in a few days; she is starting her job next week, so it was lovely to see them both.

When I’m preparing food in the evenings, I always listen to the radio, but sometimes I find the so-called alternative humour at 6.30 on Radio 4 absolute rubbish. Recently, though, I’ve enjoyed Alan Davies in About a Dog, which I’d regard as traditional humour, but it makes me laugh, and now, though that’s finished for the moment – Ed Reardon is back. He is the wonderful writer, who does no work, recycles old scripts and tries to earn a buck by giving Creative Writing classes to a group of cynical no-hopers. It’s great. I’ve also been thorough enjoying the Woman’s Hour serial, The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, who was a great friend of Vera Brittain. I’ve always meant to read her work, since watching Testament of Youth.

When I read Writers’ News last week, I was interested a piece on the Frome Festival short story competition. Although I didn’t get beyond the short list of nine, and I didn’t therefore get a mention in the short piece that was published, I was one of more than 450 people who took part. That’s given me heart to look out for the next competition to have a go at.