Food, Glorious Food

With weather that would have had Shackelton quaking in his Ugg boots and asking for more lip balm, we’ve all been slip sliding our way about the UK this week like students after Happy Hour in Freshers’ week. Over the past few days I have fallen more often than Heidi Fleiss, the notorious Hollywood madame now putting her feet up in Channel Four’s Celebrity Big Brother house.

I confess that I haven’t been watching the show, but I feel I know what’s happening as I’ve heard Davina’s pieces to camera echo across London as she shouts louder than Concorde with bronchitis. Any more excitement from her and we’ll be having avalanches.

But there have been more important things to do than sit in front of TV ogling a collection of would be celebrities whose face is their plastic surgeon’s fortune. My priority this week has been given over to comfort eating.

Whenever it’s icy or there’s snow I get this uncontrollable craving for stodge, real school dinner type food piled up on my plate like a Desperate Dan cow pie with steam coming off it and heaps of seconds waiting in the wings. For all the advancements and finesse of modern cuisine, Jamie’s hand rolled cannelloni with truffle oil can’t beat a homemade shepherd’s pie can it? And to Gordon with his Fettucine with Fava, Figs and Fennel, I have just two words to say, the first one also beginning with F. It’s “Fry Up!”.

This weather takes me back to my school days, coming home through snow and sometimes fog, ignoring the girls giggling on the other side of the bus because I had a dreamy date in mind with mum’s mince pie and flaky pastry when I got home. As dates go, flaky pastry beats flaky girls.

Don’t get me wrong. Girls are great, in fact most of my ex girlfriends have been girls (I exclude the one who was so addicted to her sport she carried rugby boots in her string bag on the off chance she may get a game while we were out walking. We’ve lost touch but I like to think she’s happy in her dungarees, running a shipyard somewhere and proving her love for her husband by beating him at arm wrestling.)

My fantasy winter menu would include mince pie, shepherd’s pie, gravy, creamy mashed potatoes, cauliflower with white sauce, and hot rice pudding with raisins in for afters. If the Queen served this at State banquets there would be fewer wars.

Of course Debbie, my wife, thinks I’m immature beyond words and that I should be grateful for Tesco diet range quorn. She cannot understand my obsession at this time of year with custard and, I promise you this is true, has been telling me that supermarkets no longer stock the powder and I have to make do with the ready made. For me this is like having Piers Morgan over to dinner rather than Michael Parkinson. One’s the real deal, the other just thinks it is. So I bought a packet myself and, after two days, it has disappeared. I know you think I’m making this up but Debbie has taken it and hidden it where I can’t find it.

I’ve just seen the new George Clooney movie Up In The Air where he plays a single man who thinks relationships suck the soul out of people and that the only way to be happy is to stay footloose and fiancée free. I’m not saying I agree with him but at least no one can steal your custard when you’re solo.

It’s why Desperate Dan never married.