Perfect Food

Perfect Food ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I’ve just mastered WPS2019, ok I clicked in the right place, the menu is slightly different so it threw me. Yes I’m stupid but the non beta version is cleaner so you have to tell it to drop down the options from the Blue Home button. Yes I know a two year old could work it out, but I like things that I’m used to.

Such as food. Yes I am a simpleton, I lived on frozen food such were my working hours and timetable. The MSG on the frozen food could have caked my veins and subsequently led to my unplanned quadruple heart bypass 4 years ago. However I used to go and see bands in a very smoky bar for years, before everybody got trendy and banned smoking everywhere. Not forgetting working with noisy and dirty printers in my early print room days. So it my not have just been bad diet.

Which brings me to today’s theme, perfect food. I have some Iceland frozen chicken kiev ready, some Irish sausages, the Richmond ones, and some sweetcorn with seeded bread all lined up for my dinner. So that’s a perfect dinner for me. We are lucky in our house because my small daughter is turning into a Little Chef, not the food places, but she can really cook. We have some fancy knives which she knows how to use, maybe Delia Smith will adopt her in future. So when I’m not making my DIY dinner my small daughter can and will impress.

There is a pause now while I cook and eat my dinner, I’ll have a gossip with my daughter too once she gets home from school. And yes if you are interested my left shoulder came out to play today, PAIN on a plate served up with plenty on wincing, WINCING, not MINCING, what kind of writer do you think I am? If I had any flesh lettuce left I’d slap the backs of your legs, go google Larry Grayson while I go eat.

Well its 7 hours later, no I’m not a greedy pig eating for that long, though in the old days sometimes the King would not eat for a day or so, hence the Feasts. I had my food and then a pain induced nap, it does tire you out, and yes it may bore you too hearing about it, but this is this writer’s life these past few years.

I am reminded of a Feast or rather a Chinese friend’s Wedding Meal, when each guest brought some food. There was loads of variety, and plenty to eat, a DIY banquet, and afterwards it was cleared away fast as they only had the church hall for so long. I did shed a tear at that wedding because as the man was pronounced Man and Wife a friend or even the Best Man handed him the phone so he could tell his Mother back in China that now he was married. My own mother was long dead when I was married, so maybe that day 10 years ago or so reminded me of my own mother not on any phone.

But back to food, it does not have to be perfect, if it is properly cooked, or even if it is cheap and cheerful food, what matters are who you are eating it with. Obviously you need to stay out of my way if I am eating, and yes I do eat with my mouth open. Barry and Julie were forever telling me off, but I always ignored them. Food is the breaking of bread, and the way people eat can reveal a lot. Poor people, simple people, Farmers if you like, they eat more with their hands and will tear the bread, and share the bread. I hope I’m still like that. Que Aproveche is the Spanish if memory serves, no doubt my Spanish readers will smile when they see that.

A meal should do you well, it should not just be a mechanical thing, we are not just machines as some doctors might like to think. Perfect food should have taste and quality and variety. Try Ukrainian apples  from your local store, try a different cheese, try a different bread. Don’t stay in the Ghetto of Taste, we always eat sliced white, we never eat anything else. Yes, if in the end you are Warburton white person, that’s fine, but if you can be grabbed by your baguettes with a different butter or marg on top, then be tempted.

Food is not a Sin, besides we have past Lent and Easter day now, so wipe off the Cadburys from your smile and be tempted by all kinds of everything, and I don’t mean make a pass at Dana. That’s why we all go on holiday, to try different foods and drink. If you are a boring person, you’ll expect egg and chips everywhere you go and Manuel should speak the Queen’s English. Or perhaps if you are American you want Burger King everywhere, and to stay in your island of friends, experiencing  just yourselves, and not the location you are it. Little America but in X Y or Z. I’m sure my American readers might be upset by me saying that. I just want you to all THINK.

And finally just to make Peace with the Americans, when my dad discovered Hamburgers in 1968 or thereabouts while we were in Rhyl Wales he thought they were so good he had 6 of them one after another and waited for the street vendor to cook them for him. I can actually remember the place with a low wall where they were being cooked. My own record is 3 hamburgers in a row after a rugby match, where I was playing, maybe 45 years ago.

This is simple food, far from Perfect Food, but at the time and place on a family holiday it was perfect as far as we were concerned. I’ve had Chinese dumplings in Shanghai too, my mother in law had all of them and brought them to the hotel in the city centre where we were staying. The other locals were disgusted that she bought all of them so they had to wait. I ate too many and the result was disgusting too, as I blocked the toilet once they went through my perfect stomach.