It's not all cooking from scratch in this house. Ruby Tandoh writes in her brilliant Eat Up!: "making peace with your appetite is acknowledging that it's not always pretty, and sometimes you will enter a fugue state halfway through a packet of Cadbury Fingers and eat the lot and feel ill, and that's OK. Not every meal will be in some sunlight-dappled orange grove; sometimes what you need a pasty by the side of the M4, and there's no harm in that." I completed agree, and what I needed last night was pizza and chips.
Not that it wasn't without some preparation. I had booked a table to meet friends that day at a pub, my first pub visit for months and months. We were "booked in" (so strange, these Covid times) from 3pm - 8pm. Pints of beer were definitely going to be consumed and I anticipated that very particular beery hunger that kicks in after a couple, the slightly hazy walk home, and the fact that the first thing on my mind would be carbs a plenty but certainly not cooking. I popped to Aldi earlier in the day and grabbed one of my old favourite frozen pizzas (back in my long commuting days, I used to keep these in the fridge for emergencies) and a bag of their really rather good chunky oven chips. Stowing them in the fridge and congratulating myself on my forethought, I headed out for a deliciously decadent Thursday afternoon in the pub garden. And it was great to be back sharing beer with friends, if a little chilly.
Back home later, pleasantly merry but definitely feeling that beer-induced nagging in the stomach, we happily popped our pizza and chips in the oven. When you're a bit tipsy and tired, I'm not sure if there's anything better than some kind of combinations of cheese, bread, potatoes and fat. Finally devouring our fine feast around 9.30pm, it was not the most
complex or mindful meal of the week, but it absolutely just what our appetites called for.
No comments:
Post a Comment