Haven’t we been blessed with gorgeous weather over the past week!! On Thursday, the sun was blazing and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Having just dropped the children off at school, I was driving through the beautiful Surrey countryside when a squirrel darted out into the road in front of me. It looked up and seemed to smile as I waited patiently for it to amble across (nothing’s too much trouble when the sun shines, is it?). ‘Nice Day’ (Stereophonics) began to play on the radio. How fitting, I thought, admiring my surroundings. Rabbits frolicking around yonder field, tiny birds warbling as they playfully flitted from tree to tree – perfect! I was in danger of imagining myself the star of some bizarre production of Snow White.
Dare I throw open the sunroof and head for the south coast? I cook, clean and graft hard for my family, was it too much to ask – just one day to myself?
Engine ticking over, I hesitated at the next junction. In my rear-view mirror I could see a car had pulled up behind me and its driver was tapping his steering wheel impatiently. It’s now or never, I thought.
Sighing, I turned right and headed for the supermarket.
Unfortunately we don’t have one of those great little ethnic mini-marts around here. You know the type; alluring unsuspecting passers by with its artful display of strange, exotic (and sometime amusingly shaped) fruits and vegetables. Then inside, stuffed to the gills with colourful packets, boxes and tins of fabulousness, stacked floor to ceiling. If only we had such a shop, I wouldn’t need to travel so far to pick up ingredients ‘a little less ordinary’. But would I make it to the beach? Probably not; I’d be at the mini-mart, sniffing the pungently spiced air and smiling politely at the shopkeeper as I squeezed his oversized Dudhi’s.
20 minutes later I rolled into the car park, it was busy already. The energy seemed to sap out of me as I walked through those automatic doors. Mile after mile of fluorescently lit aisle stretched before me... everything from radishes to bicycle tyres. What seemed like half a day later, I finally reached the ‘World Foods’ section - my oasis in this hellish place. Here I could happily float up and down the aisle with a look of childish wonder on my face. I’d probably read every single label twice when I realised I was attracting strange looks from the guy on the fish counter, who may have begun to suspect I was stalking him.
When I smiled and waved, he blushed and pretended to busy himself with a fillet of John Dory. Job done, I picked up a packet of Chat Masala and began reading it for the third time. As I perused the next shelf, I noticed something strange. It was called Rice Pasta and looked exactly like tri-coloured fusili. This had to be investigated further, so I checked the ingredients and found it was exactly what it claimed – pasta made from rice. Still reeling from this revelation, I noticed another oddity a few packets away. It looked like a bag of rice but had the word Macaroni on it. Having read the ingredients, I realised that what I had in my hand was indeed pasta disguised as rice. Had the world gone mad? Now I can see the merits of the rice pasta, some pasta lovers may be wheat or gluten intolerant, but Macaroni rice? Why? (Yes, I did buy some, to try and fathom this out).
The fish guy withered when he saw me approaching and tried to conceal himself amongst the lobsters. He needn’t have worried though; I was heading for the youngster on the meat counter. Is it so unusual to ask for a single slice of rump steak weighing a kilogram? It certainly perplexed the meat lad. ‘What’s wrong, haven’t you got one big enough?’ I enquired after he’d been rummaging around the fridge for ages. Apparently this was the wrong thing to say to a teenage boy. He instantly developed a stammer and began blushing profusely. The fish guy looked on sympathetically, but when I glanced over, he retreated once more amongst his crustaceans.
Anyway, I got my kilo of steak (well it was almost a kilo, but I won’t go into how the embarrassed the meat boy became when explaining the shortfall), so I intend putting into action an idea I’ve been mulling around for a while. My family will be my guinea pigs and if it turns out as great as I hope, I’ll post my recipe soon.
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