Will Bob lose weight?

Tuesday March 15th. 2011

The pate was a disaster and was binned after a couple of days. It was too salty, probably because I used far too many anchovies, but it really just seemed to be a wodge of undercooked liver. I explored various recipes for pate and most of them seem to begin with cooking the liver before it is minced up and mixed but I stuck to the original recipe when I made my second pate the other day. The raw liver was minced very much finer than the first time and more garlic was used. I feel that it was a resounding success but there are then some rather predictable sequelae. The consumption of this delicious pate calls for quantities of crusty French bread.
Not only has the weght loss been damaged by the pate but it hasn't been helped by my latest cooking adventure - cake baking. I have always been particularly fond of fruit cake and I now realise that baking cakes oneself is the best way of getting exactly what I want. Mixing the ingredients oneself of course makes one realise just how unlikely it is that Bob will lose weight! I have tried to burn off a few more calories by some extra heavy digging on the allotment where I am entering a new phase of digging an area that has been covered by thick black polythene and hasn't been dug at all for at least five years. I had thought that I had plenty of time to do this deep digging but I am probably returning to work fairly soon. After two months since I stopped work it is striking how much less active I have become simply because at work one is on the move all day long whereas at home there is hardly any reason to move more than a few yards and on rainy days there isn't any inclination to head for the allotment.
Apart from the new phase of digging, the allotment is under control, tidy, weed free and pruned. Today I had the first picking (and meal) of purple sprouting broccoli. There are still leeks to be harvested and some spinach. The Italians seem to already have rows of peas and broad beans that are both several inches high and rows and rows of onions and garlic so I have some catching up to do. I have learned what not to try and grow, so I shall not under any circumstances grow cabbages, broad beans, tomatoes or carrots. I shall concentrate on French and runner beans, cucumbers, beetroot and lettuce. I may try courgettes again but mainly because other people like them and they dont really take any effort once they're planted. I also plan to grow parsley and rosemary and mint. I used to have mint at home but it grew like a weed and spread everywhere. I managed to clear it completely but now regret it.
I don't know of anyone else who reads Maugham these days. In fact nobody seems even to recognise the title 'Cakes and Ale' or the others that I thought were quite well known such 'The Moon and Sixpence' or 'Of Human Bondage'. I can understand why he's no longer read; the style seems very dated but I'm surprised that nobody to whom I've spoken recently has heard of them. I abandoned Cakes and Ale after about twenty pages. The latest Donna Leon and the latest Robert Crais to appear in paperback didn't disappoint but further reading of Peter Sallis has convinced me that I wont try any more. As it happens I have been reading Simenon and Elizabeth David recently. I hadn't expected a cookery book such as 'French Provincial Cooking' to be so readable; more like a novel or a travelogue than a recipe book. I feel that I have rather neglected her cookery books though perhaps she was more widely read in the seventies and eighties when I wasn't really interested in cooking. Her name was recently an answer to a question on University Challenge which the students didn't get!
I shall move on to another by Philip Kerr and another Peter Temple and another James Lee Burke but have decided that Simon Kernick is simply dull and the plot too improbable to hold one's interest. Perhaps nobody is reading this but I would still welcome suggestions for detective/crime fiction that I haven't yet come across.