Pulsating

Sweethearts, shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic does NOT pay.

Better keep rinsing pulses and chitting potatoes after today’s consortium’s inspiring offerings. Not that I didn’t enjoy Magpie’s history lesson – particularly the link between Columbus bringing potatoes to Europe in exchange for a spot of STD to America. You might call Christopher the father of today’s globalization. Also liked Conrad’s subtle, yet snide, remark about the Senate.

gaelikaa always likes to tell a story, ususally another chapter in the art of perfecting patience; from Grannymar, considering that she comes from a large family and spuds are an Irish staple, I expected something on the joys of peeling potatoes to stuff many mouths. Oddly, it was one of the jobs my mother used to think me most suitable for – neither did she believe in swivel peelers.

I am sure all your recipes are delicious (depending on what your mother’s cooking was like and your own culinary expectations since) though – if I may say so - there are more imaginative things one can do with both potatoes and beans other than cooking them. Still, I am not here to piss on anyone’s parade, or am I?

Sweet gaelikaa, in the dark of what my current predicament is, recently urged me to phone the Samaritans to save me from throwing myself off an imaginary cliff. I am afraid there is no Samaritan (other than Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Charles Saatchi, any of you or myself) who can rescue me in the short term. However,  for those of your friends who do weep, for clinical reasons, quietly into their daily bowl of lentil potage look no further than a book titled “Potatoes, NOT Prozac” (‘Prozac’ being the generic term for anti-depressants). Makes you think, Magpie, doesn’t it: First Americans export the mightily useful potato to the greater good of the rest of the world, only to then flood us with pharmaceuticals. One of my friends rattles with pills, keeping the whole of Bayer in profit. I have offered him many a baked potato – to no avail.

To add humility to my humiliation here is a potato about your very own Ursula (aged nine): At the time we lived in deepest country side (north of Hamburg); my best friend, a farmer’s daughter, invited me to help her and her family with a day’s potato harvest. Oh, the anticipation of  it! I was so excited. My mother doubted that donning my very best WHITE shirt for the occasion was a good choice of clothing.  And yes, my friend’s father did laugh out loud when he saw me turn up in my finest which did make me blush momentarily. Not for long: I so did enjoy pulling out the potatoes out of the dark sandy soil with my bare hands, filling buckets in the blazing sun, the fire  lit on the field in the evening. Never tasted a potato better. Neither was a white shirt dyed black more efficiently – ever. I didn’t care. It was a great day. Whether I’d made a fool of myself or not.

U

PS I still have magnificent gift to dress inappropriately

No harvest

“You reap what you sow”.

Don’t believe it. Complete nonsense – why do you think gardeners and farmers are usually down in the mouth?

Go to Ireland and you will learn more about potato blight than you ever wished to know. Ask me about snails and I show you a mass murderer. In fact I have got it down to a fine art, and don’t say I am not kind: Beer traps work wonders - slugs and snails being attracted to yeast, then drowning themselves and MY sorrows. I console myself that they will have died a happy death.

Since research is in my blood (undiluted) I  just looked up snails in Larousse Gastronomique which is a doorstopper of a heavyweight of a book: The amount of preparation that needs to go into preparing a snail for human consumption makes you not so much wonder whether it’s worth it: It kills your appetite. It’s mainly to do with cleaning out their digestive tract by putting them on a ten day detox (also known as fasting/starvation diet). However “do not remove the liver and other inner organs which amount to a quarter of the weight of a snail and are the most delicious and nutritious part”.

Apart from setting beer traps the only other way to stay on top of the snail problem in your garden is to get up early (say 5 in the morning; dress code morning gown) when it’s still all damp and they are out there by their dozens. You pick them live and then hope that one of your visitors that day will take a bag off you. No joke.

Spring appears to be on its way considering that my thoughts are turning to terrestial gastropod molluscs.

U

PS For the historians amongst us: There was a bit of a loss of culinary interest in snails in the 17th century; revived by Talleyrand (!) who had them prepared, by Careme, for a dinner he gave for the Tsar of Russia.

NO

I am sometimes asked why I commit myself to doing things for others, helping out, when I really don’t have the time.  The answer is: I don’t know.

Since I am that most unrealistic creature, the optimist, I just say “Yes” whenever a request (for next week, next month) comes up. Sure, I’ll do it, no problem. First law of penance: DO NOT  believe that the future won’t arrive.

To me time stretches like chewing gum. There is always more. Not that I like chewing gum. It’s bad for you since the act of chewing sends signal to stomach that food is on its way down; stomach therefore prepares with acid juices to break it all down – only to then be disappointed. Instead of which the world is littered with hard gum left in often rather unfortunate places. Just as my father instilled hatred of chewing gum in me I did with my own son. My argument being (apart from aforementioned stomach) that it makes people look like cows, only stupid. Cows were designed to chew their grass over and over; and why not? We all need something to do. But a human chewing like a cow immediately makes me think of guess what: A cow. I  like cows. I have fond childhood memories of accidentally stepping into cow pats (they are very big and very green) and, when staying at a farm during the summer holidays, of helping to bring the herd down from the alm in the late afternoon – though hated freshly hand drawn milk. Awful. Not least because the milk was the cow’s body temperature complete with at least one black short hair in your cup. Still, in those days one was not allowed to be squeamish and no doubt accounts for why I am as healthy as I am.

Yes, chewing gum. This is what I love and loathe about my brain in equal measure. I start off with one subject, get myself sidetracked, can’t find the map and just get lost. A friend of mine sweetly calls it “ U’s stream of consciousness”. It’s certainly one way of putting it.

So anyway, the upshot is that I find it difficult to say: No.

U