Friday, July 21, 2006
Fictional Food
Friday July 21st.
My spelling is quite reasonable usually; its the typing that lets me down.
Another weekend coming up which makes it more difficult to stick to dietary plans because of social interaction. It should however be possible to avoid eating bread, pasta, potatoes etc. Alcohol is a different matter and I know that it would not be possible to stick to a strict ration.
I had intended to cook a beef stew with vegetables last night but in the end couldn't be bothered to do any cooking so I had a surprisingly filling cheese salad, a particularly tasty peach and a yogurt. And a few cherries. And an apple. Sounds very healthy. No exercise because I was working all day but I am planning a long swim today. There is always gardening and I suppose it does you good though most gardening seems to be clearing things up rather than the sort of stuff you see on Gardener's World. The beef stew will be the main meals of the weekend. That's one of the things about living on one's own- its not worth cooking dishes just for one meal, so one tends to eat much the same for three consecutive days. The peaches were particularly good but so they should be at 44p per peach in Morrison's. Usually the peaches I buy go from being inedibly hard to inedibly mushy and rotten and I miss the optimum moment to eat them. Perhaps there never is an optimum moment to eat them and there never is a time when they are ripe and juicy before they go bad. There is of course quite a lot of sweetness in good fruit but I don't want to give up fruit particularly as I have a good crop of pears this year. The plums are rather few and far between but they will be delicious and are best eaten straight from the tree. Pears are a bit like peaches in that they go suddenly go bad and the secret is to remember that they can still be very juicy inside while still very firm on the outside.
Before the fruit there will be the runner beans which the locals round here seem to call 'kidney' beans. I don't understand the logic. If they called butter beans or broad beans kidney beans, it would make sense; but not the runner. Home grown runner beans are one of the highlights of the gardening year for me but perhaps if there were more produce from the garden, there would be more highlights. I therefore am planning to apply for an allotment and grow artichokes and sweetcorn and raspberries ( the queen of the soft fruits and jolly expensive in the shops ) and other things that do not thrive in my garden which does not get enough sunlight.
I had been musing overnight about meals in fiction and it wouldn't surprise me if someone has already written about this. There are some characters in fiction whose life revolves around food. Maigret was often tempted by an enticing dish in a restaurant or at home but now I come to think of it Philip Marlow never did much eating. Elvis Cole seemed to cook rather pretentiously as though the author is trying to impress the reader, rather than feed the detective. I suspect him of being a hamburger man. Poirot was a bit too pernickety about food though I can't exacly remember what meals he ate. I will have to be more attentive in future and maybe make a note of meals in the books I read. I hasten to record that I do not read Agatha Christie these days. More on this theme in due course. Perhaps I wll produce a recipe book of meals in fiction. 'Detectives' Diets' maybe, or 'Fictional Food'.
My spelling is quite reasonable usually; its the typing that lets me down.
Another weekend coming up which makes it more difficult to stick to dietary plans because of social interaction. It should however be possible to avoid eating bread, pasta, potatoes etc. Alcohol is a different matter and I know that it would not be possible to stick to a strict ration.
I had intended to cook a beef stew with vegetables last night but in the end couldn't be bothered to do any cooking so I had a surprisingly filling cheese salad, a particularly tasty peach and a yogurt. And a few cherries. And an apple. Sounds very healthy. No exercise because I was working all day but I am planning a long swim today. There is always gardening and I suppose it does you good though most gardening seems to be clearing things up rather than the sort of stuff you see on Gardener's World. The beef stew will be the main meals of the weekend. That's one of the things about living on one's own- its not worth cooking dishes just for one meal, so one tends to eat much the same for three consecutive days. The peaches were particularly good but so they should be at 44p per peach in Morrison's. Usually the peaches I buy go from being inedibly hard to inedibly mushy and rotten and I miss the optimum moment to eat them. Perhaps there never is an optimum moment to eat them and there never is a time when they are ripe and juicy before they go bad. There is of course quite a lot of sweetness in good fruit but I don't want to give up fruit particularly as I have a good crop of pears this year. The plums are rather few and far between but they will be delicious and are best eaten straight from the tree. Pears are a bit like peaches in that they go suddenly go bad and the secret is to remember that they can still be very juicy inside while still very firm on the outside.
Before the fruit there will be the runner beans which the locals round here seem to call 'kidney' beans. I don't understand the logic. If they called butter beans or broad beans kidney beans, it would make sense; but not the runner. Home grown runner beans are one of the highlights of the gardening year for me but perhaps if there were more produce from the garden, there would be more highlights. I therefore am planning to apply for an allotment and grow artichokes and sweetcorn and raspberries ( the queen of the soft fruits and jolly expensive in the shops ) and other things that do not thrive in my garden which does not get enough sunlight.
I had been musing overnight about meals in fiction and it wouldn't surprise me if someone has already written about this. There are some characters in fiction whose life revolves around food. Maigret was often tempted by an enticing dish in a restaurant or at home but now I come to think of it Philip Marlow never did much eating. Elvis Cole seemed to cook rather pretentiously as though the author is trying to impress the reader, rather than feed the detective. I suspect him of being a hamburger man. Poirot was a bit too pernickety about food though I can't exacly remember what meals he ate. I will have to be more attentive in future and maybe make a note of meals in the books I read. I hasten to record that I do not read Agatha Christie these days. More on this theme in due course. Perhaps I wll produce a recipe book of meals in fiction. 'Detectives' Diets' maybe, or 'Fictional Food'.
# posted by Bob @ 3:55 am 
