Well, I managed to do some of the cooking.
I have made coffee chocolate, which has not yet had time to set, and is still too runny to be eaten, and burritos.
I was a bit sorry about the chocolate, because it might have been nice to take to work, but thought that probably it was just as well because of not becoming too portly.
This would have been more impressive virtue had I not substituted a large slice of apricot cake instead.
I made eighteen burritos, which sounds like a lot but isn’t really, because I have one every day, and Oliver has one on lots of days, so they won’t last much longer than a week, after which I will be obliged to manufacture some more. I don’t mind this, because it is so very convenient to have an instantly pre-packaged dinner ready to stick into the microwave, it is just like being a real modern housewife.
I was going to make a curry as well, but somehow there just wasn’t sufficient availability of day, and it didn’t happen, that can be tomorrow’s job.
Making burritos is a long job, and took rather longer today because Oliver is trying to increase his protein intake and requested that I included more meat instead of my usual ingredient list of a dozen different sorts of vegetables. I obliged, but this meant that the pan was so full I had to stir it really, really carefully, and even so some still escaped, stickily.
My hands are burning even now. I have got several bits of finger which are slightly battered from house-building misfortunes at Lucy’s, and those bits have been rendered considerably more lively by the process of crushing garlic and chopping onions and chillis.
I have been obliged to be very cautious about rubbing my eyes.
Apart from a great deal of cooking and washing up, the day has been without much event. I had a happy rendezvous with my friend in the computer this afternoon. We are heading off to Glyndebourne together in a few weeks time, and the dinner menu has just arrived. This is full of exciting and incomprehensible choices, I have never eaten Quinoa, and have only just worked out how to pronounce it.
It is just as well that I have managed it, it would be terrible to turn up somewhere so thoroughly middle-class and then to reveal oneself as an infiltrating taxi driver.
It is a long time since we have worn our black-tie-and-cocktail-dress garments and I am going to have to go and investigate their bags in the loft to make sure that the moths have not discovered them in the meantime.
Also there is no guarantee that they will still fit. Some tailoring might have to be considered.
We are dining in the Glyndebourne al-fresco restaurant, but obviously we are going to need champagne and canapés, and with this in mind I have recovered our thermally lined cool bag from Lucy’s. She will not miss this, I discovered it in the shed with a pair of welding gloves inside it, and thought how very useful it would be for a Glyndebourne picnic.
I have been contemplating recipes for portable canapés, because of course they are going to have to be prepared a couple of days before the event, because of travelling, of course we will not have the camper van and so will not be able to do mobile catering yet. We are at the very least another year away from that glorious event.
I am going to have to give the thermal bag a bit of a scrub out first, it is a bit spidery for middle class pretensions, and certainly not in a state to contain quinoa, which, by the way, I have investigated and discovered that it is a sort of high-protein rice, so maybe I will got some for Oliver.
I am not quite sure how I will manage that.
I don’t think they sell it in the Co-op.
