133. Enjoyably Wasting Time

I don't know how it's happened but this post from December 2016, has suddenly appeared here and so if you think you've read it before, you're right.

TW 6-1-22

Around about 10 o’clock every morning, I start thinking about what we are going to eat in the evening.  I have responsibility for food because Caroline works and I don’t.  There are always three alternatives: eat out, buy a ready meal, or cook. 

I like cooking.  I’m no good at it but I rather enjoy everything that goes towards the outcome and sometimes I enjoy eating the end result as well - but not often.  Other people usually seem to enjoy what I’ve cooked more than I do.  There may be some psychological influences going on there or people are just being polite?  I suspect it’s the latter.

Eating out is the simplest and easiest option but it is expensive around here and not something to do every day.  When we lived in North London, we were within walking distance of tens of restaurants and maybe, it was the fierce competition caused by the high density of restaurants, that kept prices low. 

There are no cheap, independent restaurants in this area the way there are in London, just chains like Giraffe, Prezzo and Nando’s.   The days when we would pop out at seven and be back by eight because we had nothing in the fridge have gone. 

Every time we go to a restaurant nowadays, it is an “Event”.  Of course, the event is usually nothing more momentous than the fact that it is a Friday night, but our social life is such that Friday night is quite an event for us. 

I spend most midweek afternoons preparing food to be eaten for dinner that evening.  I made Prawn Caldinho the other day.  First, I had to marinate the prawns.  I had to grind the cumin, coriander seeds and peppercorns to a fine powder and then pound garlic cloves to a paste. After the preparation and cooking, I was left with four dirty pots that had to be washed up and put away. 

It was very nice but it took me more than two hours in all to prepare and cook.  Much simpler and easier to pop a ready meal into the microwave.  I have never had a ready meal from a supermarket that I didn’t enjoy. 

A King Prawn Masala ready meal for two costs £3.30 and it is really good.  As I said at the start, I only bother cooking because I enjoy it. 

I know that many people disagree, but growing your own food seems a particularly daft thing to do.  A couple of years ago, my brother, who appears to have turned horticulture and plant husbandry into an obsession, gave us a cucumber plant.  Cucumbers need to grow in soil that has to be kept moist.

We were supposed to go away for a few days but we nearly didn’t because we were worried that the cucumber might suffer from neglect.  We went but only after my son offered to stay at our house for the time we were away and water the damned thing.

What a to-do!  Look at it: prickly, stunted and thick-skinned.  We looked after it like a newborn baby on life support and at the end of it, all we “harvested” was just one cucumber.  Why bother?

Last March, we planted potatoes.  At least they don’t need nurturing while they grow but what you dig up is nothing like the potatoes you buy at Waitrose.  They are caked in mud for a start!

A few years ago, I spent an October afternoon making date pickle. That is not cooking.  There is virtually no preparation necessary apart from chopping the ingredients.  Mixing is the only technique required.  If you can measure weight and volume, it is impossible to get it wrong and it is worth doing because I’ve never seen it for sale in a store.

The first year I made date pickle, I didn’t know that you could buy pitted dates and I spent two hours removing the stones from two kilograms of them.  I also had to buy several ingredients that I'd never used before such as sumac, tamarind paste and asafoetida (on its own, it smells as its name suggests it might, but it adds an oniony flavour with no odour).

The date pickle I make in October is perfect by Christmas and two kilograms of it lasts a year.  It would all be gone earlier if Caroline liked it but she doesn’t and so I eat it all myself. 

“Why not make a normal pickle?” she suggested.  “Something that I like.”

I bought ingredients to make four kilograms of “Classic Pickle” and at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, I began.  Apples, onions, beetroot, turnip and swede all had to be peeled and chopped.  Tomatoes had to be skinned before chopping.  It took hours!

I don’t know whether it’s an age thing but my eyes have recently become extremely sensitive to onions.  The moment I start to remove the peel from an onion, my eyes hurt.  It never used to be that bad.  In the end, I had to admit defeat and Caroline finished the job. 

She only moaned about it for about a week.

Unlike date pickle, these constituents of “Classic Pickle” have to be softened for an hour by simmering and it required regular stirring.  As the pan was cooling, I could see I was going to need more containers and so I went out and bought eight Kilner jars.

This pickle is fairly bland but it tastes good and goes particularly well with cheese.  It is unlike any pickle I’ve ever tried before as it doesn't have the sharp, vinegary tang of shop-bought pickle.

I’m making a rather special dessert for Christmas and I need glacé clementines.  I found that I could buy them online but the smallest quantity available is 1 kilogram.  I only need 100 grams and I wasn’t prepared to spend £12.99.  So, I spent 95p on three clementines and glacéed them myself.  It was very easy and they taste pretty good.

Is it worth it?  Making the glacé clementines and date pickle certainly is - but making the classic pickle most definitely was not. 

Branston Pickle in a supermarket costs around 35 pence per 100 grams.  The ingredients that I used cost £25 and so that works out at 62p per 100 grams.  However, if you add in the cost of the eight jars I had to buy at £2.99 each, that puts up the cost to £1.22 per 100 grams.  

But it doesn’t end there.  The value of my labour has to be worth the minimum wage and so that’s another £45.  I ignore the cost of the electricity used over six hours from the first peel to closing the last lid.

Consequently, to make my home-made pickle cost £2.50 per 100 grams.  A 360-gram jar of Branston Pickle is £1.29 in a supermarket. That low price shows the advantages brought about by economies of scale.  Making your own pickle really is not worth the bother. 

I will sell a 400-gram jar of my pickle for just £9.00 and that is a saving for you of 10%.  However, you can have one for £6.00 - but I would like to have the jar back, please.