My cold is gradually on the wane, though in an attempt to prolong its sojourn under our roof it has taken lodging with the Systems Administrator, whom I could hear coughing ominously from the bathroom this morning. I woke with a headache, and lay in bed for half an hour trying to summon the energy to get up while Our Ginger bounced on my chest, before being precipitately deserted at the first hint that the SA might be going downstairs to serve breakfast. Once I'd got up and had some muesli the headache subsided without taking any more aspirin, and I had to admit that things weren't as bad as they had been three days ago, or even yesterday. Not so good I felt like gardening, which was a shame as it was a sunny if windy day and goodness knows there's enough gardening to do. Certainly not so good I felt like trying to understand the spreadsheets of beekeepers' subscription renewals sent hopefully to me by the membership secretary 'for checking'. But as the day wore on I felt less horrible than previously.
Tomorrow life has to start again. My car is booked in for its annual service and MoT, and it would be deeply inconvenient not to get it to the garage, for many reasons and not least to my garage. And it goes on from there. It's supposed to be a busy week, unfortunately. Essential things will get done, one way or another. Some others I may have to postpone or simply miss. It is just as well I'm not a believer in New Year Resolutions or a new perfect life starting on January the first. Today is March the first, and the year so far has been such a scramble of things missed and half done that I'd already be writing the rest of 2015 off as a bad job if I believed that anything that started badly must be irredeemably spoilt.
I have been consoling myself with Claudia Roden's book on Picnics and other outdoor feasts. Early March when you have a cold is not an obvious time for a picnic, but I don't want to have one at this moment, just read about them. She is such an erudite and engaging writer. On one page you'll find an extract from Jane Austen (Mrs Elton and her strawberries) and a few further on be reading a spectator's account of the coronation of George III, or a late Victorian riverside picnic that was greatly enlivened for its unwilling young protagonists after several of their companions ended up in the water. And I have complete faith that the recipes will work when I get round to trying some of them. And not too many are for fish, which I rarely worry about cooking since the SA doesn't eat it. I was stalking the book on Amazon when it became unobtainable other than at great expense, before being reissued to my great joy by Grub Street Press.
That was the problem with Matthew Fort's Sicilian recipes at the end of each chapter, at least half of them seemed to be for tuna, or swordfish, or octopus, or squid. There again, given that he was investigating the food culture of an island, and confessed mid-way through the book that he hates marzipan, he was pretty much bound to end up a bit fish heavy. Luckily I've got another book about Sicilian food, by a baker brought up during times of great economic hardship by some grim nuns, whose recipes are almost entirely for biscuits and cakes, so they average out.
There is a sad article on the Telegraph website by someone claiming that the average person has only six recipe books, and cooks just nine dishes. One of her six was by Gwyneth Paltrow, and I'm sorry but that doesn't count. Several people must have a lot fewer than six, since I've got considerably more. I love reading cookery books. They are great escapism if you aren't feeling well, imagining all those nice things to eat and interesting places they came from, but more than that, they are a window into other worlds. What grows (or grew) there, how much time are (or were) people prepared to devote to cooking, what past waves of invasion and colonisation have left flavours and techniques behind them? Poor societies develop ways of using up stale bread. Cultures where women are confined to the home evolve elaborate little pastries that take forever to shape and mould. Traditional patterns of consumption of different kinds of grain follow climate and topography. One of my particular interests at the moment is the interface between pancakes and griddle breads. How and when does one turn into the other?
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