pumpkinstrokemarrow

We had a combined senior moment the other day. Which consisted of my cooking some new potatoes from Mr S. in preparation for a potato salad, in the evening. Then the BH cooking the same potatoes again the following morning. About 15 minutes on each occasion. One odd thing was that the twice cooked new potatoes were fine. The second odd thing was that they seemed to be the same as the once cooked new potatoes - a second bag, bought on the same occasion - as we had yesterday. Maybe the trick on the first occasion was that they cooled off between the cookings. So the next task is to cook them for 30 minutes and see what happens. Third odd thing, I have never managed to grow new potatoes. I put the new potato seed in the ground, and while they do not come out as old potatoes they do not taste like the new potatoes my father grew when I was a child. Those were so flavourful (veggy, ecological and environmental, organic, dusted down by dusky maidens by the light of the moon), that they were happily eaten, still warm, by themselves. Nothing I have ever grown has met that test.

Potato salad made with coarsely chopped new potatoes, finely chopped old onions and lashings of full strength salad cream from Heinz. None of this slimming gear or mayo thank you.

Failry heavy consumption of green peas at the moment, soup made of same being my latest discovery. Easiest thing in the world. Simmer peas for an hour or so. Fry some bacon and onions in butter. Add into peas. Simmer for a few more minutes and serve. I get through about 250 grams of peas at a time on this basis. Maybe they are less fattening than orange lentils.

And last night our other, newly discovered recipe. E-number pie (see above) made with a couple of rump steaks from Mr S - which cost rather less than the same amount of stewing steak from Cheam. Very good - although I think stewing steak - chuck steak rather than silverside - is actually better for this sort of thing that the better cuts. All that gristle and connective tissue dissolving into the E-number sauce (aka mushroom sauce) makes for a better gravy.

A propos of Aldous Huxley been pondering about niceness, as a concept applied to persons. From which I slid sideways to the various television detectives that I know about: Morse, Dalgleish, Poirot, Linley, Barnaby, Wexford, Frost and Holmes; the staples of ITV3 (which has become my favourite channel). Of the eight, all are men. Only two (or sometimes three) have wives, both comfortable middle aged types, not in the least threatening to the lady spectatorship. Six have male sidekicks, three of which are serially abused. Five have bad habits: Morse can be very rude, Frost has bad table manners (which really irritate BH), Holmes takes illegal drugs, Linley is a Henry and Poirot takes a semi-legal drug (nicotine). While all eight are decent chaps, fit to rescue any deserving member of the public from the jaws of death and destruction, only the remaining three might be described as nice. Which on this basis is a concept which reduces to a rather negative blandness. Which leads one to the thought that niceness is no more a pre-requisite for success for a television detective than it is in other fields of endeavour. Indeed, it might be a positive handicap. One gets much more fun out of playing the bad guy, and one gets much more fun out of watching the bad guy, than the good guy. Edmund (in Lear) in more fun than Edgar and the Sherriff of Nottingham is much more fun that the dull Robin (Kevin Costner. Although this might have something to do with native as well as role dullness). At which point one might dive off into the nature of evil but I have not taken on enough of the good stuff for that to be a runner quite yet.