Making bad things

Dinner looked like shit and tasted no better

This is the opposite of what my dinner looked like. Beautiful. So fleeting. Have to take a photo because they’ll be gone by next week.

Sunday night’s dinner was the worst thing I’d made in years. No exaggeration, even our guests Ben and Kayla didn’t clear their plates, and they’re very polite people (and unfortunately for me and them, also great cooks with great palates).

The meat was like space food. Dry and crumbly lumps of beef floating in a brown, tasteless puddle. It didn’t look too dissimilar to the Sheba our cat doesn’t eat, that goes crispy around the edges until we inevitably have to throw it in the bin. It’s a mystery to all of us why he’s so fat.

Turns out you can slow cook beef for too long. Or maybe the ruined recipe was down to the fact that I’d taken an uncharacteristically laissez-faire attitude to attempting to make something on a day when I wasn’t actually going to be at home, but rather on the other side of London dropping my son at his drama class.

I didn’t cook the meal (don’t know what to call this one - a stew? a broth? cat food?) with love. Rather, I had texted my son instructions to sauté some shallots, chuck the meat in the slow-cooker, add some spices and stock and whack the slow-cooker timer on. He’s a great cook and he was confused but didn’t question my cooking-from-a-distance skills, because often I just accuse him of being negative.

I got back home half an hour before the guests arrived.

“Hope you’re hungry!” I said to everyone before I’d actually opened the lid to the slow cooker. Premature optimism. As I looked at the sorry vat of food, all I could think was: I hope you ate before you got here.

It was Sunday and way too late to get fish and chips, too late to run to Sainsbury’s, too late, in fact, to do anything but apologise.

We did have a laugh though. During the dinner clear-up Kayla asked why I was chucking the remainder of the beef in the compost bin.

Would you like me to put some in a Tupperware for you to take home? I asked her.

We don’t have any room in our fridge, Kayla replied.
Don’t worry. I can refrigerate it here and drop it around for dinner tomorrow night, Joab said.

Cue the laughter.

I’m a greedy person. When I go to friends’ houses I get a bit anxious if there’s not enough food for seconds, so obviously, I felt bad for my friends, when they – and all of us, actually – couldn’t even stomach their firsts.

But also I didn’t feel that bad. I make mistakes in private quite a lot. Sometimes they’re more public, and served up at the table, and well, I’ve learned to laugh and move on because it’s nothing serious.

We all got to hang out that evening and play cards with the kids and eat delicious pudding (made by Kayla, thank god). I’m sure everyone went to bed a bit hungry, but who cares? If you’re a little bit hungry at night breakfast always tastes really nice.

On Monday I got back in the saddle and cooked something else, a lentil and spinach soup that tasted a lot better. Turns out that just because you make something inedible one day doesn’t make you a bad cook all the time.

What have been your greatest cooking fails in the recent past? Please share.

We’re getting fish and chips tonight from Ken’s in Herne Hill and I can’t wait.

Thank you for reading! Have a great rest of the week and if you liked this please give it a HEART and I’ll love your forever and never invite you around for a disgusting dinner.

P.S. I am getting a bit sick of spunking £6 on a loaf of bread. I know, I know, I could buy sliced from the supermarket, and I do sometimes, but it doesn’t taste great really and it’s full of shit. And most expensive sourdough only lasts 2 days max and the big holes are annoying if you’re trying to make sandwiches.

Thank god for Kayla, who brought around a home-baked loaf of ‘Vogel-style’ bread. I know, I know, you get invited for dinner, and you supply bread and the pudding and then get a cat-food lookalike reciprocation. Kayla and Ben got the bum deal this time. Anyway, we’re on day three here with the bread and it’s so goddam delicious, and great toasted, and for sandwiches and good for you in general with all the seeds etc. Kayla hasn’t given me the recipe yet but I found this and I think it sounds similar to the method she described, so I’m going to give it a go.

P.P.S. I think I’m going to write about my body next week. I’ve been holding off, because talking about body shape can be boring and just a bit, yeah, whatever, so you’re happy with your body, or you hate it? Big deal either way. How a body works is far more interesting than how it looks.

However, it’s been brought to my attention that my body has changed quite a lot in the last couple of years. Baby Ray likes playing with my upper arm flab, or fe-doob-ee-dooz. (Don’t know how to spell this but Ben and Kayla from NZ taught me this onomatopoeic term which I think is far more creative than bingo wings.) I feel like I’m wearing a skin suit in a size too big. It’s a strange sensation.

My 48-year-old body has been though a lot in the past couple of years - pregnancy, post-pregnancy, breastfeeding. I’m in menopause and I’m a greedy piggy who sits in a chair doing not much at all. I suppose I wanted to talk about my relationship with my body (and my relationship with food) now. I like my body a lot and I like food a lot. It’s a privilege to be able to eat well, and it’s also a privilege to have a body that works, but I haven’t always felt so good about food or my bum. Anyway, more next week.