Just doing my duty….

For those of you who enjoyed “Tuna and Pasta Bake, Oh My!”, here’s the original from which I shamelessly lifted the idea. And, it turns out, some of the phrasing — though I hadn’t even seen it for about three years when I wrote. Weird, eh? Must be the urbane genius of the original. Note also my mangling of the original title — apologies.

This recipe is copyright Tom Witney.

Lesson 1: Scrambled Toast.

For this simple, yet time consuming, snack you will need:

one sandwich toaster (I find that geriatric ones work best for this
recipe)
4 slices of bread
some of that marvellous low fat olive spread
fillings of your choice

The first thing to do is to make sure that you clean the sandwich toaster
thoroughly using plenty of detergent. We don’t want any nasty grease do
we?!

The next step is to decide on which fillings you want to use. My
favourites are mozzerella, sun dried tomatoes, olives, parmesan, fresh
basil leaves, lime and coriander. (If you’re common don’t
worry. I’ve heard that mild cheddar and HP sauce work wonderfully.)

Now we’re ready to start cooking. Take your 4 slices of bread, I always
make sure I use fresh granary - it gives a lovely nutty flavour, and
spread thinly with some low fat olive spread. (Again, the common people
reading need not fret. Sunblest and lard work just as well I’ve been
told.)

When the sandwich toaster is good and hot, put in the bread spread side
down and assemble the fillings. Close the toaster and leave until the
cheese has melted and the bread is thoroughly welded into the toaster.

Taking care to burn yourself several times, laboriously scrape the bread
and fillings from the toaster and arrange on a plate using a sharp knife.
If you do it properly this can take up to half an hour!

When you’ve scraped all you can, you should find yourself with a plate of
slightly cheesy breadcrumbs and a knackered sandwich toaster. Delicious!
Leave the toaster to soak overnight, then attempt to chip the rest of the
cheese from the cooking surface. Spend a good hour or two over this.
Then throw the damned thing away!

Unfortunately this meal only serves one, but it makes a marvellous starter
at dinner parties (Common people: you can stop reading this now and go
back to The Sun crossword). Make your guests the toast in the usual way in
individual sandwich toasters. Serve hot and still in the toaster. Your
guests can experience the frustration and anger themselves as they try and
scrape the remains of their dinner from the awkward corners!

Enjoy! And remember. The time consuming nature of this dish makes it
ideal for times when you’re really busy. Like exam term perhaps.

Next week: Delia shows us how to burn eggs!

Phew! What a relief that DRM keeps us from nightmare scenarios like this, eh?

Now I just need a new car, a spare couple of hundred thousand quid for gifts, a place in the country and a couple of labradors and I’ll be practically Chelsea material. Well. Hmm. Maybe not.

Paleface maiden is Miss Popov
Known to us as Mighty Sneezer.
She may sneeze and blow your top off –
Treat her gently, do not tease her.

To this day, I can’t find the link between teasing and sneezing. Oh, hang on.

Anyway, had a nostalgic sniffle around IMDB and Wikipedia and found out that Michael Stanniforth (write the theme tune, sing the theme tune….) who also played Mr. Claypole, very sadly passed away in ‘87. That’s made me quite glum: I attribute much of my present sense of humour to the low camp of Rentaghost, of which he was a splendid, appropriately mugging exponent. Hmph.

Obviously hip-hop is my thing now. I am buying my spray cans this afternoon and will be practising my “tag” all afternoon in a well-ventilated area. Just as soon as I’ve done the washing.

I’ve had three conversations with three separate people* lately which brushed gently across the same territory. The topic is, as you have probably guessed by now, my artistic input. Since you’re reading this, you fairly certainly know or are aware of me to some extent. You know that I lead a telly-free life here in the civilised London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, spending my evenings running loads through the washing machine on inappropriate programmes for thrills, and occasionally dipping into the print media to keep the old thinker ticking over.

The problem is that I don’t get out of the house to do it often enough. I have splendid sofas and am happy to curl up with the Riverside Shakespeare or Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, but this doesn’t fulfil the important purpose of keeping me, to borrow some hideous corporate jargon, “in the loop” with Arnold’s “sweetness and light”. (Arnold explicitly borrowed the phrase from Swift, thus proving T. S. Eliot’s point in that most undergraduate of all essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. Although I suppose you could argue that it couldn’t prove Eliot’s point, given their relative dates, but then fossils do prove the odd point now and then, so perhaps it’s all just a matter of perspective — like so much in life, he said, by now so finely balanced on the fence he scarcely dared move.)

What to do? Well, since it’s (checks watch) Sweetmorn the 73rd of Discord, 3174, it feels like time for a little resolve. Since I don’t do them at New Year on principle (and with a heavy sense of my own human failing) I’m doing it at a randomly chosen date instead (rather like my birthday party and, I suppose, my housewarming, should I ever get round to it). And the resolution, O Ye of … well, Ye, is that I shall, on average, visit the theatre twelve times in one calendar year.

I don’t think a night in the circle a month is unmanageable, but busy / poor months happen, so we’re just measuring it on an average basis. This should ensure I a) don’t live like a permanent hermit, b) take more notice of the theatre-going I do do — more than I think, but I always forget about it ten minutes later — and c) give me something extra to mention at all those smug dinner parties I go to in Islington**.

I should be clear that this is not a call for tickets - I would love to come along with you, of course, but I need to organise this myself and have a sense of operacy, as I believe the smart young folk in the research institutes call it. Let’s see whether I manage. Bwahahaha.

PS Yes, I moved, yes, it’s lovely, and yes, my drying laundry is presently hanging from every possible ledge, how did you know?

* Yes, separate people. Not conjoined people. No value judgements about either group, you understand.

** Yes, you’re right, I don’t ever go to smug dinner parties in Islington. And I am rarely lost for words. In fact it’s rarer that I shut up. That’s a fault — I’m working on it, but I’m realistic. No resolving yet, thank you very much.