With a twinkle in my eye

  The best plan for a quiet boxing day is to stick on a stew for the coming peaceful, minimum activity days. Having eaten my entire yearly pork quota in one day yesterday, I opted for lamb. All stew is pretty much the same; brown the meat and remove, fry some veg then add acid and liquid as well as returning the meat to the pan and leave on a low temperature for a few hours.

  If the acid part of the above paragraph seems confusing, I'm only referring to ingredients like tomatoes or a bottle of wine. As the various ingredients are infusing gently on my hob, I thought I'd share my favourite christmas image.

  As a word of warning, I'll be posting that again next year, (if we're all still here), as I love it so much. While I'm still in a festive and playful mood, I came across these seasonally wrapped bags of shite in my local waitrose and decided to take my passive aggression out on the staff.

  We play the roles of shop assistant and apparently respectable customer who clearly thinks he's funny. The shop assistant has been flat out for two weeks dealing with the christmas rush and probably spends half an hour crying in the stock room at the end of each shift. As this is my local, I know a few of the staff. I know this guy by sight but we've never had an interaction.

  I open with, 'What makes these christmas walnuts?' The visible sigh is all I need to see that whatever was left of his sense of humour departed a while ago and is on the phone to the Samaritans. 'It's just the packaging that is different. The line is produced at this...' blah blah, perfectly delivered without a hint of irony. My go, again 'And is the roasting of the pistachios in a particularly Christmasy style?' I aimed for an even more deadpan delivery and fixed him straight in the eye looking for any signs of life behind his beaten, thousand yard stare. None. Just the detached, almost robotic, 'It's just the packaging that is different. The line is...'

  Both of us, wearing the veneer of our roles, glide off to negotiate the heaving aisles. I look forward to running into him again next year and seeing if his smile has returned. The rain meanders down my window as my flavours continue to mingle. The hob is on at the lowest so the aroma slowly permeates my flat like a reluctant incense, but as I lift my head from the page and breathe in deeply I can tell I'm in for a treat.

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com