TAVERN OF THE SEAS david biggs My days of eating charcoal are finally over
ONE OF my most important kitchen utensils these days is my cellphone. I’d probably starve without it. If I decide to make myself a pie, or – with winter on its way – a stew, I slap the ingredients together, switch on the stove and reach for the smartphone, which has a very good timer on it.
If I were a real cook I’d hover about in the kitchen, probably whipping up a few dainty profiteroles (whatever they may be) while waiting for my dinner to cook. In the real world I usually wander off and get sidetracked by something in the garage until the smell of burnt food brings me rushing back to the kitchen in a panic to rescue my charred meal.
I have eaten a significant amount of charcoal over the years. Never really developed a taste for it, though. Well, that’s what used to happen before smartphones. Now I just press the timer button, slip the phone in my pocket and forget about the cooking until I get a merry tune from my hip, reminding me to rescue my food.
The problem about the old-fashioned kitchen timers was that they always went off in the kitchen, which was no good if I happened to be in the garage or garden. I have almost forgotten the acrid smell of melting aluminium.
I wonder how many single people still do their own cooking these days. The shops stock so much ready-cooked food it hardly seems worth the effort of chopping, mixing, stirring and cooking for one person.
By the time our rapacious city councillors have raised the price of electricity and water to painful heights it’ll be cheaper to buy precooked stuff. I’ll probably have to sell the stove, anyway, to pay the electricity bill.
In a fit of enthusiastic economising I decided to try making my own bread last week, when I found an easy-sounding recipe in a magazine. The problem was it required a 340ml bottle of beer to make it rise, and once I’d taken the price of the beer into account the bread cost far more than anything the supermarket had to offer. My friends agreed it was good bread.
Economy can be very expensive. I sometimes look with hungry eyes at the pigeons that gather from time to time to enjoy a communal poop on my roof. I believe pigeon pie can be very tasty. They certainly don’t appear to be an endangered species.
Last Laugh
A late night reveller staggered out of the bar and swayed along the pavement, occasionally bouncing off lamp posts and traffic signs.
Up ahead, two workers were carefully unloading a priceless grandfather clock from a delivery van and moving it into an antique shop. Our drunken hero stumbled over the clock and crashed face-down on the pavement. After a few moments he sat up and shouted angrily at the workers: “Why can’t you
buggers wear wristwatches like everybody else?”