Toast and sarnies for the first half of the day.
Guacamole and crisps followed by the other fishcake for the second half.
Pret choc bar at half time, with one of those pomegranate drinks that didn't seem to exist two years ago.
Rumours that I also demolished a honey sandwich are speculative, scurrilous, and absolutely true.
A make-do-and-mend kind of day, foodwise. Running late for lunch so I throw together tuna and sweetcorn sarnies for us all. It's one of the few things we're all guaranteed to eat, and time is short. The linseed bread helps lift it from the 'staggeringly mundane' category.
This evening is haphazard too. There seems to be, as so often, a lot of bitty food that needs eating up. Four avocados, each at a different stage of squidge; a couple of cold sausages; the last fishcake; several bundles of foil, each giving no clue as to the contents. The foil parcels can be tackled another day, when I'm feeling stronger. I have a feeling they are mostly the Christmas cheeses.
Improvising an edible meal from cold sausages and a fishcake would be beyond even the most Charlie-Parker-esque of kitchen extemporisers, so The Wife and I agree to go our separate ways: she will tackle the sausages, while I will attempt to give the fishcake a good talking-to. We are united by a hastily-mashed guacamole with kettle chips. So far, so dippy.
The main course of this two-course extravaganza is less successful. Let's be honest: the fishcake is a dowdy invention. One cannot imagine it as the signature dish of any aspiring chef, for example, no matter how much they might drizzle it with deconstructed tartare sauce or tower it upwards, surrounded by finely minced lemon zest and ginger. It is a relentlessly unglamorous concept. The ones that have been in the organic free-range dolphin-friendly carbon-neutral don’t-you-dare-put-that-pesticide-anywhere-near-my-food delivery box every few weeks for the last six months or so are always a huge disappointment. They'll be light and crispy, I think to myself; moist and tender; accompanied by green beans, they'll make a simple but wholesome supper dish, washed down with a lightly chilled glass of chenin blanc.
Pah! they may be wholesome but blimey o'reilly do they let you know it. 'I am good for you', they seem to cry, as you force down each dry and mealy mouthful. 'Don't even think about enjoying me.’
The crust formed is barely rizla-thin, the fish has been mashed to within 2.54cm of its life, and each cake is about 35% too big. It's a bit like reading Steve Waugh's autobiography: dense, worthy and interminable. Come to that, not totally unlike one of SW's innings.
I try to liven it up with some ketchup, but it's no good. Finish it and move on.
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