The pesto incident

At work, we do a sandwich which has pesto on it, instead of mayonnaise. Well, actually, it’s pesto mixed with mayonnaise. We only use it on one sandwich, a chicken and avocado combo which is quite popular. If, for whatever reason, we don’t do any of the chicken avocado sandwiches, the pesto mayo doesn’t get used.

I think that is what must have happened the day before The Pesto Incident. The pesto mayo had, I think, developed a little skin on it’s surface inside the bottle.

I was starting work at 11am that day. I wandered in, all casual from my long lie in and the lovely weather. I was wearing a white summery dress, embracing the sunshine. As soon as I entered, though, I could feel there was a bit of a rush on. The person in the kitchen was evidently having a rubbish time of it and they asked me to take over.

I grabbed an apron and got stuck in. The first sandwich was something fairly straight forward, a pastrami and mustard, or something like that. Next up, the chicken avocado number. Great, I love making this sandwich.

Chicken in pan to warm. Grab bread. On chopping board. Put pesto mayo on bread… I squeezed the bottle but no blob of pesto mayo came out. What was wrong? (Remember that little skin it has got from not being used the day before?) I shook it slightly and squeezed again. It felt like there was something hard pushing back against me. I’d show that pesto mayo. Squeeeeeeeeze! Nothing. What is WRONG with it? Both hands this time. Squeeeeee….

PESTO EXPLOSION!

I looked up in shock, still holding the pesto bomb in my hands.

It. Was. Everywhere. It had hit both walls either side of the kitchen and found it’s way, miraculously, into the toaster. The bread on the chopping board was barely visible underneath the pesto mountain which covered it. It had gone on the underside of the shelves which held the crockery and even over to the sink (a fair distance away) and on the wall and taps and drying rack over there.

Then I looked down. It was covering the top half of my apron, my lovely white summer dress and my hair. I had gone for a girly down-do that day, a long plait which had been hanging forward over my shoulder at the time of the explosion. It was now covered in pesto mayo. From the elbows up, my dress was covered with large splats.

Ever the pragmatist, I ignored it all and finished up the sandwich. As I put it on a plate and turned around to take it out, my manager walked into the kitchen and looked at me in shock. Then laughed. Then told me to go home and change.

My hair still smelled like pesto all day.

Top Tips, doctor’s letters and strange dolls

It’s time to check in with the crazy world of Chat again. But first, let me just mention an odd dream I had last night. I went on holiday to Marbella (I think) but I forgot to book the week off work so I was there, swimming and sunbathing, then I was flying back to England in the evenings so I could work in the morning and flying back to Marbella in the afternoons after work. Wierd.

Anyway, let’s get started. There’s a surprising lack of ‘I used to be 20 stone but now I’m not’ stories. Not one single weight loss story. Disappointing. Never fear, though! Chat never lets us down. We have instead a picture of a cat pushing another cat in a little trolley. I’m not joking. Look.

Then there’s the usual page of photos about nothing, e.g. here’s a photo of me and John from Jedward. She waited eight hours for him apparently. I’m speechless. I didn’t think anyone took then seriously enough to wait eight hours. Another photo is just of a cat asleep. The caption says ‘Here’s our little cat Tigger, he’s fallen asleep in our bed.’ Nonsense.

Top tips next. This is always a good page. One of the tips is from a woman who says she covers her oven shelves in foil to save on the washing up. Another is a woman who has the answer to one of life’s big problems. You know when you try to fill up a large bucket with water but it doesn’t fit in the sink? Well, you shall struggle no more!

Put your dustpan under the tap and direct the water down the handle and into the bucket waiting underneath.

Another lady has cut her old net curtains up and sowed the floral patterns onto her top. I mean, thanks for sharing, but I think I won’t be using that old-net-curtains tip.

There’s a really random letter on the doctors page too. Check it out.

What. On. Earth. An extra thumb!? And she’s writing to Chat about it? And then Chat are like, ‘O yeh, tie a thread around it and it will fall off.’ Something feels a bit dodgy about all this. I’m going to have a serious think next time I put anything around my finger….

Another letter says, honestly, “I have a phobia of mice. I really freak out and have to run if I see one. Can I be cured?” Now, I shouldn’t imagine that this really needs writing to Chat about. How often do you see mice in everyday life in England? I saw one in the garden ages ago and before that it must have been years. So a mouse-phobia, however serious, is not really a major setback, is it? If the intervals at which you see one are years apart. Anyway. Maybe she lives in the country and sees them all the time. Who knows.

Lastly, a woman who collects and makes wierd dolls.

She thinks they’re ‘cute’ and gives them to people for their birthdays etc. She gave one to her mother in law for Mother’s Day. I honestly don’t know what I’d do if someone gave me one of these for my birthday. Well, I do, I’d hide it somewhere no-one would see it. But I don’t know what I’d say right there in the moment, when you’ve just opened it and present-giver is looking at you, eagerly awaiting your reaction. I mean it’s fine her making and collecting them but what on earth would I do with one? I guess I’d give it a little hug and say ‘Wow, thanks, I love it. I was hoping someone would give me a little strange gothic doll thing for my birthday this year. And now, at last, my dream has come true. Thanks. You know me so well. You knew I’d love this. And I do. I really do.’

My worst food disasters

I had a recent one and it’s been haunting me and making me think of other kitchen disasters I have had.

I’ve tried making chocolate mousse a few times and can’t quite get it sorted. I don’t know whether I’m not whipping the egg whites enough or something but it seems fine when I make it. It’s the right texture and all that. Then I refrigerate it for a while and when I take it out, it’s just solid. It’s not light and fluffy, it’s heavy and un-airy. And it depresses me. It make ME feel heavy and un-airy. I don’t try to make chocolate mousse anymore.

I made some flapjacks a while ago. They were going to be a present for someone so I made sure I did a good job. When I took them out of the oven, they looked lovely. I left them to cool and went in the front room… Came back ten minutes later… They were black! I’d left them to cool on top of the oven, with the hob on! I NEVER leave the hob on. I’m really strict about turning things off with the oven and hobs. Lovely apricot flapjacks, cooked and finished and ready to eat… and ruined.

When I lived abroad, as opposed to one specific disaster, we just had an ongoing disaster concerning our diet, which was mainly that we were 18 and didn’t really know much about cooking. We mainly ate plates of rice with something added, eg rice with sweetcorn mixed in, rice with chopped onion mixed in, rice with butternut squash, rice with rice. We also made these dumpling-type things which were just flour and water with something added, eg, dumplings with sweetcorn, dumplings with onions…..

My latest one was a marmalade cake. The recipe said to use self raising flour AND baking powder. I thought it seemed wrong but I trusted it anyway. So I made the mixture, put it in the oven and checked on it twenty minutes later. Disaster! The mixture was bubbling like crazy and expanding at an alarming rate. It had overflowed out of the loaf tin and formed a little cake mountain on the bottom of the oven. I didn’t know what to do about it, I turned down the heat and watched it closely. When it eventually stopped exploding, it then sunk into the empty space that had been created from all the bubbles in the middle of the loaf. It looked awful! I felt like a failure. The next morning I woke up and tried it again, plain flour this time. It worked!

I had used the Great British Bake Off cookbook for it and later found out the recipe was one that a guy used then got eliminated! His had sunk too! And then they just put the recipe in the book without changing it! Madness. For anyone else wanting to make a sticky marmalade tea loaf from that cookbook, use plain flour!

P.S. 21 days till first exam. Today’s study topic – Theft. And I can’t find any of my Land Law notes! Oops!

V is for….

VAYNITES!

This was apparently the thing to say while my friend was growing up, to protect you from getting ‘got’. For example, when you’re playing It or Tag and someone runs close by to ‘get’ you, you just say ‘Vaynites!’ and they can’t get you. Genius.

You can also say ‘Injections!’ and it has the same effect, so I’m told. It often gets shortened so saying ‘Jections!’ also guarantees you immunity.

I remember saying ‘Bagzee’ when I was younger, to get extra immunity from stuff. Like if you’re picking who’s going to be It, you could say ‘Bagzee not It!’ and that would be fine. You were immune then, cause you’d said the sacred word, Bagzee.

My brother and I made up our own word, which was a slight variation on Bagzee. We said Begznee. For some reason, I remember really clearly being on holiday somewhere, and we were sharing a bunk bed and there was a little sink in the room and my brother was saying everything with Begznee before it and I was a mess, I couldn’t stop laughing! He said “You take take your Begznee toothbrush and you put the Begznee tap on….” It was the funniest thing I had ever heard anyone say in my entire life!

Wouldn’t it be good if you could still get immunity from things as an adult by saying the immunity word?

“Laura, I did the dinner, do you mind washing up?”
“VAYNITES! Vaynites not doing the dishes! Yesssss! I said vaynites! In YOUR face! Don’t have to do them! Woooooo! I’m off to watch TV, enjoy doing the dishes!”