The Triffids living in our cupboards
I COULDN’T sleep and felt hungry, so quietly creeping downstairs, I started to rummage through my wife’s food cupboard. tucked away behind jars of jam, and tins of god knows what, were some miniature bottles of flavour concentrate. Intrigued, I took a closer look and found that their sell-by date ran out sometime before the last Ice Age, the same with a carton of breadcrumbs, which pre-dated the glencoe Massacre. Further inspection unearthed many assorted jars, cartons, bottles and containers of food items that should have had a Viking funeral well before the fall of the roman empire — and as she was asleep, I very quietly placed them in the bin, knowing they will be consumed by fire and eventually lost for posterity. All this clandestine rooting about also unearthed two well-forgotten red onions, which had given up on ever being used, and had decided to put down roots, literally. they looked like something from a John Wyndham novel, a miniature triffid was evolving here in levy towers. I confronted her with the onions the following morning. We, that is her indoors, decided that it might be a good idea to pot them and see what happens. I had ominous misgivings, as triffids turned out to be carnivores, and mobile. Putting my fears aside, they were potted, and found a place in the north pasture and promptly forgotten. Fast forward about four weeks: ‘tony, come here, look at these.’ I am amazed, the two onion bulbs had sprouted into two huge vertical stems, about four foot high, and topped by a golf ball-size white bud, one of which was half open, showing a dozen or more miniature stems, each topped by an equally miniature bud. I will now be secretly rooting through the fridge and freezer, though I am scared at what I might find — a forgotten frozen pack of chops, or some Stone Age smoked bacon... the mind boggles. I am convinced that the larders and deep freezes of Britain’s households, contain enough forgotten food to feed an army, and keep anthropologists — and archaeologists — intrigued for decades to come. the onion buds will be opening soon, if the good weather holds, and providing they don’t decide to rampage through the garden, they will be a welcome addition to the flora or possibly fauna here in sunny Wednesfield. And before you ask, I did get an earful of grief for binning her old jars and bottles. I settled for a tin of sardines and a glass of milk. Needs must.
TONY LeVy, Wednesfield, West Mids.