Desperate Dave

I called at a friends on the way home the other night, she very kindly offered me dinner which I accepted, I wasn’t in the mood for cooking so this I thought would be a timely gift, how wrong I was. She has discovered Cordon Bleu cooking. The starter I think was Crawdad soup, followed by something akin to Florida swamp water with things that seemed to move in it, and little squares of bread with a kind of green Marmite on them. It was hard enough to get through this lot without puking, but when she served up the (Her words) pissed da resistance, I could hardly contain my stomach. It consisted of apple pie and I assume custard, I say assume because although the apple pie looked edible, it was covered in what can only be described as bodily fluids of the kind you find in humungus zits.

I made lots of mmmm and lips smacking sounds as I fought my way through this assault course of food and complimented her when I had finished. On my way home I was tortured further by all this stuff bouncing around my stomach (probably trying to get out) and repeating on me. My first port of call was the bathroom where I assumed the quarter to six position and allowed all this crap to escape into the toilet.

I know I sound ungrateful but reflecting on my ordeal led me to wonder, what has happened to good old fashioned, decent, down to earth grub like my Mum used to make. She doesn’t cook much these days; in fact she lives on sesame seeds and lentils with the odd tin of chopped tomatoes thrown in. But there was a time when she used to cook handsome grub that put hairs on your chest. Like Savoury duck, Tripe covered in vinegar, beef pie and gravy, ribs and cabbage, oxtail soup, pigs belly with onions, brisket stew, huge great hot pots and my favourite on a Friday night, thick pea soup with ham shank. This would be rounded of with Jam rolly polly or strawberry tart and on a Sunday she would present us with a cracking Sunday dinner with a big tray of Yorkshire pudding, half we would have with the dinner covered in gravy and the other half after covered in sugar.

As I was writing that my mouth was watering, something it hasn’t done for a while, well not since Helen bent down over the filing cabinet. Any way I have decided that this week I am going to do some good old fashioned cooking of my own and relive the finger licking days of my youth. Wish me luck.