another quiet day

And another day of sitting close to the Aga and not doing much.  At least I don't have to go to work. It would be awkward to ring your employers and announce that you weren't going to work because you had a cold, on the other hand a day standing in the plant centre with this cold (or either of the last two) would have left me with pneumonia, and probably post-viral fatigue syndrome to boot. And infected the entire workforce, given the system of shared telephones and radios.  And as for doing teas...  At least my nose isn't running as much today.  Unfortunately the headache is still with me, kept at a low background level only by regular doses of aspirin and carbohydrate.  It's a shame that I ate all the cake.  I am sure fruit cake is good for colds, all that vitamin C in the fruit.

I have been rereading Matthew Fort's Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons in a desultory sort of way.  It's an account of his travels around Sicily on a Vespa in search of authentic regional food.  Cookery travel is a marvellous genre for when you don't feel well (unless you feel sick, in which case I suppose it might not be a good idea).  There's no plot to keep up with, and the descriptions of delicious food and picturesque scenery are comforting.  Ignore the cover blurb comparing him to a cross between Elizabeth David and Jack Kerouac, for he is far sweeter natured than the latter and infinitely more riddled with self-doubt than the former.  Though I am a big fan of Elizabeth D. (couldn't stand Kerouac, irritating man).

I was taken by his description of the gigantic broad beans of central Sicily, fava larga di Leonforte, containing a massive 27 per cent protein, and a staple up until the second world war.  By the time he wrote his book a few years back they were endangered, and they still are, as far as I can discover from the internet.  Alas, no UK seed merchant seems to offer them.  Of course, it might be that beans from central Sicily wouldn't grow too well here, but I wouldn't mind giving it a try. Given I have natives of Australia and South Africa scattered around the garden and doing pretty well, beans from Sicily seem worth a try.  Have the dried beans sold as ingredients been subjected to any more treatments than the simple drying out a seed merchant would do?  I don't know, but if I ever saw a packet of dried giant beans in a deli it would be worth buying them and experimentally sowing a few.