It is all very well for our beloved leaders and their pals at the BBC to witter on and on about the evils of processed food.
It is almost impossible to pick up any kind of modern publication without getting some kind of lecture about the fatal consequences of eating E numbers and fructose. Processed food is right up there in the league of self-righteous guilt-inducing wallowing, along with dead fish because of climate change, and the least unacceptable way to mention that somebody has got brown skin.
It is, in short, a drum which is currently being bashed to a repetitive, tediously percussive death, despite the fact that nobody has asked for an encore.
Eating processed food, we are being assured, is a certain route to a richly deserved early mortality. Live a Healthy and Virtuous Life by eating Unprocessed Mediterraneans, and your centenary is virtually assured.
The problem with not purchasing processed food is that you have got to do all of the processing yourself.
Food, as we are all aware but somehow never mention, has almost all got to be processed somehow, unless it is an apple, and nobody wants more than one of those every day, and actually neither Mark nor Oliver could ever be enticed to want that many. Any apples I have ever given to them have all had to be retrieved, in a slightly more brown and slimy condition, usually from the darkened forgotten recesses of their cars a few weeks later.
To be appealing, most food is thoroughly processed, and I can tell you from personal experience that there are a lot of processes that happen in between bacon trotting round the field saying Oink and the moment it is smelling savoury and enticing next to some mushrooms on the breakfast bar in the hotel buffet. I have done them all, and most of them are messy.
We are not pig-owners any more, fortunately, but nevertheless today my job has been to get on with the processing of most of the dinners that we are likely to eat for the next week.
It is such a massive, time-consuming job that I can’t help but think I wouldn’t object to eating a few emulsifiers if only it meant that somebody else would have done it all for me.
They wouldn’t just have done the processing. Obviously they would have done all of their own washing up as well.
That bit certainly appeals.
I have been faffing about all day, and most of yesterday as well, and all that I have got to show for it is a freezer full of burritos and an enormous pan of curry.
It is Thai curry, because I had purchased a pineapple that I didn’t much like. When I came to cutting it up last week, with the virtuous intention of feeding my menfolk on unprocessed bits of pineapple it turned out to be bland and tasteless, so I shoved it back in the bottom of the fridge and gave them biscuits instead.
Hence I had an unoccupied pineapple loafing about in the fridge drawer, and I needed to shove it in some catering.
A quick bout of research on the mighty Internet suggested that Siamese people put pineapple in curry, so I did that.
It was an enormous pineapple, and so it is an enormous curry, with coconut and almonds and some cashew nuts that weren’t included in any recipe but which have been hanging about in the drawer for ages.
The burritos also took ages, because of being mostly vegetables, which need cutting up into lots of tiny bits, mixed in with not very much mince meat and a very lot of smoked paprika.
There are now twenty two of them in the freezer.
I had intended to make a cheese and onion pie, but ran out of day, maybe tomorrow.
My car is not back on the road yet. The engine has been thoroughly rebuilt and is back under its bonnet, but it needs a new master cylinder and there is some difficulty with wiring, so it is going to be a few days longer before I am freely independent again.
Mark has gone to work. He has been there for most of the day. I am going to go to work when he comes home. This should have been ages ago but just as he was about to set off back he got a job to go to Keswick, so I had a reprieve, in which I finished the washing up and emptied the dogs.
I think I can hear the car.
I will see you tomorrow.
