The social awkwardness of not liking cake

After several years of expressing the opinion that I'm an over-sensitive flower of a person who should just suck it up, the Boy Wonder has recently conceded that it is socially awkward not to like cake. I just don't like it, never have and probably never will. It's not as though it makes me want to throw up, but of all the ways to ingest an unhealthy number of calories that exist in the world, cake is a long way down my preferred list.

We went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago at the end of which was produced an incredible looking cake. Three layers, three types of filling/icing and a host of exquisite decorations made from two types of chocolate.  The sight of it left everyone entranced, but I had a sinking feeling which was only shaken when the chef realised that it contained nuts. I was relieved that I wouldn't have to eat any, and surprised that for once my nut allergy had actually helped me out a little.

Unfortunately, the moments when I am glad of my allergies are few and far between as I have often been confronted with a cake specially acquired to accommodate my dietary needs, making it even more impossible to refuse a slice. That night, after we had returned from the party, the Boy Wonder and I were talking about the incident and how he had been pleased on my behalf when the cake was revealed to be a potential killer, at which point (having apparently stored up some degree of resentment for his offhand treatment of my mental anguish over the cake situation) I triumphantly pounced on him and forced him to admit that his previous stance was only possible to maintain if you genuinely don't mind offending people.

It is a fairly hollow victory - although it will be nice to have someone to commiserate with when these cake-tastrophes occur, there is no way to avoid them cropping up occasionally (although not working in an office helps) and I have never managed to work out a way of handling them which is genuinely foolproof. Even claiming to be on a diet is inappropriately pious when someone has actually procured a cake for your birthday, so although it does occasionally work (admittedly only on people who have never seen me hoover up a family pack of crisps) there are some situations where you just have to eat some cake and try not to pull a face.

My guilty pleasure

One of the reasons that I used to like helping my Mum with the family grocery shopping is because it gave me an opportunity to indulge my guilty pleasure of touching food. Not in a perverted way, although I'm guessing Freud would have plenty to say about it, but just in an inappropriate way for food which I have no intention of buying. The first memory I have of enjoying touching food was when I was little and I used to beg to be in charge of getting the mushrooms. I never actually liked mushrooms as a child but I really liked the feel of them and enjoyed ferreting out the littlest ones, even though my Mum always tried to encourage me not to.

Since then, the variety of foods that I like to touch has broadened and now includes things like Scotch eggs, vacuum packed meats, bread, pies and cheeses. Pre-packed snacks are also a treat as they are generally soft and pliable and something about pressing them makes me happy. I know it's wrong - I wouldn't necessarily want to eat something that someone else had poked, although I always poke through wrappers, never with my naked finger - but I don't even care because I'm just going to carry on doing it whenever the urge takes me.

Cereal dreams

I have always loved cereal. When I was younger, I didn't even give any other breakfast food a look in, always preferring a bowl of cereal and on one memorable occasion eating 12 Weetabix in a row at the age of around 7. A couple of years ago, my doctor recommended that I stop eating breakfast (on the grounds that I was throwing it straight back up almost every morning), which I did despite having it ingrained in my consciousness that I was relinquishing the most important meal of the day.

However, our return from the country where eggs seem only to occur in threes combined with a new working regime means that I am now firmly back in the camp of breakfast and the last delivery of shopping I received fulfilled a dream I had been having since deciding to revert back to my well trusted cereal lifestyle - a wall of cereal. That's not a metaphor - I literally had a recurring dream over the course of around 5 nights in which I owned a seemingly limitless supply of all kinds of cereal. Given the uplifting nature of this dream, I decided to make it a reality and I now have that wall of cereal adorning the top of the fridge which makes me happy just to see it.

I am a little saddened that Grape Nuts have bowed under the pressure of the modern world of breakfast snacks and instead of a small opening in the cardboard on the side of the box, they have now fallen in line with an inner bag and top opening system, but they taste just how I remember them so I can overlook their transgression. The other bonus is that cereal is a good way to up my calcium intake - I have never been able to drink milk neat, but my reignited love of cereal might also be the thing that stops be from crumbling from the insides like an ancient scroll when I reach the golden age at which these things start to happen.

Little did I realise that a wall of cereal could make me so happy, but clearly I am either a lot deeper or a lot more shallow than I ever realised.

Everybody loves toast

One of the topics that elicits most conversation in our house is the Boy Wonder's toast stand. I think it was around the time that he was made redundant that the Boy Wonder started coming up with ideas for new businesses he could start, which included such well-formed ideas as 'Let's have a shop full of cool stuff' and 'We should open a record shop where we only sell funky records' (which is pretty much the same as the 'cool stuff' idea, only a little more targetted). However, the idea that will not die is the toast stand. The concept is pretty simple - a toast stand at the station where you can buy hot, buttered toast to eat either while you wait for your train, or indeed on the train if your timing's right. The major flaw in the plan, as I see it, is that start-up would require the business owner to get up and be at the station by around 6 every morning for the beginning of rush hour and the commuter trains. There is nothing about the Boy Wonder, the last 10 years I have spend with him or his stated plans for the future which makes me think that he is capable of such early morning endeavour, and if by some miracle of circadian rythms he actually managed to get himself there in time, the resultant personality failure which occurs when he is low on caffeine is completely inappropriate for customer-facing purposes. Having said that, we have discussed the potential for this venture with several people (the very nature of our conversations being cyclical at best, plus the Boy Wonder feels much maligned at my unerring disbelief in his capacity for early rising)and to date we have not had a single detractor. I put this down largely to great marketing - the slogan 'Everybody Loves Toast' seems to be almost universally accepted as both a snappy advertising message and a universal truth - and the enthusiasm that the Boy Wonder conveys when holding forth on this topic. Unfortunately, said enthusiasm is not limited to the setting-up of such an endeavour (in fact, it pretty much skirts ronud the edge of anything useful like that) and instead is allowed to roam freely amongst all toast related subjects, resulting in plans for the invention (requiring a not-inconsiderable R&D budget) of a bread pen which could be used to write marketing messages on toast and several 'specialist' breads and spreads which would require a fleet of bakers and specialist spread manufacturers to be on hand at all times to provide exotic alternatives to white sliced and jam. I have been accused, mostly by the Boy Wonder, of being insuficiently excited by this project, which is probably true but is also probably down to the fact that it's not quite a pipe dream and therefore because it's vaguely within reach, I feel as though discussing the best design for the patent pending Boy Wonder Toast corners (for holding the toast so that it doesn't get your fingers greasy but also doesn't re-absorb its own sweat and go soggy) is probably best done once you actually have a business to use them. Also, I suspect it's because it's a pretty good idea which would have relatively low start-up and running costs and could actually become a profitable franchise, but it's neither the kind of thing we're cut out for nor the kind of thing we would actually want to do, so it's been relegated to the level of amusing after dinner conversation where I'm sure it will stay.

The World Famous Comfort Cafe

Staffed by a selection of triads and Eastern European mafia members who work together to create the most spectacular (or certainly closest in proximity) fry up you can find, the World Famous Comfort Cafe have gone to the trouble of including their rather lofty claim of international renown right up front so you can see it on the approach. The car park is an awesome expanse of space, with areas allocated to vehicles of any size, from coaches (which we presume all arrive shortly after we leave for decadent lunches and glamorous dinners) to the bikers that we often see revving their engines incessantly outside the place in case nobody has noticed that lurking under their beer guts are some kind of bike which is presumably terribly impressive if you are a fellow biker, but turns out to be less so when you are hungover, sleep deprived and trying to enjoy your breakfast through the fug of exhaust fumes. To further their claims of being World Famous, there are a series of improbable clocks on the back wall displaying the time in Ulan Bator, Montevideo, Casablanca and other far flung places that sound familiar, and then you realise that you have no idea where most of them are and start trying to fight off the hangover fog to work out whether time goes forward or backward as you travel east. There is also the stunning 'garden room' which is a peculiarly constructed extension with massive folding glass doors which we have never seen open in summer, but which house large gaps which let in a lot of chilly air in the winter. At some point, somebody clearly decided that the view should be softened with a lot of creeping plant life, meaning that currently the windows are pretty much covered with vegetation which makes for an odd view but a strangely secluded feel when eating in there (as is our preference when it's too chilly to eat outside). A glance at the clientele that the World Famous Comfort Cafe attracts serves as yet another reminder that you are in a deeply special place - from young families with screeching children to doddery old folks enjoying a nice early lunch (or sometimes afternoon tea by the time we rock up for breakfast) and an assorted array of people who clearly had no idea that the place was there, making you wonder what on earth they were doing on that particular stretch of disused former A road ('the gateway to East Anglia' according to their own website) which is home to a Little Chef (surely the most pointlessly positioned eatery ever) and a petrol station manned by a man in a Ferrari jumpsuit who has trouble distinguishing between genders. Every time we have been we have taken note of the fact that people are enjoying items from the World Famous Comfort Cafe's extensive lunch and dinner menus as well as the classic breakfast fare that keeps us coming back time and time again, including the tiny bottles of wine which they place strategically on top of the counter as you approach to place your order to remind you of why you need so much comforting starch and grease. People unlike me who aren't faddy and set in their culinary ways probably find the process of ordering food very difficult - if you aren't going to order the same thing you had last time, there are a dazzling array of tempting treats all of which follow an apparently random pricing structure (£2.95 for a bowl of cereal and milk, £3.95 for a massive fry up) which is sure to have you gazing up in rapture at the many menus whilst the dark-haired eastern European girl looks at you with the same blanket contempt that people who have been up since 5 always have for those who order breakfast at 2pm. Once you have chosen, you then have to force your brain not to immediately lose your receipt on which is written your order number and without which you will be desperately trying to identify your particular combination of food items as they make their way round in the hands of the triad chef with other diners all peering at it to see if it's theirs too. The food is incredible - it's not so much that there's anything special about the ingredients or how they cook it so much as the fact that they cook it (as opposed to having to cook it yourself), it comes quickly, and it always tastes the same, which is a definite prerequisite for hangover food. The sole fly in the ointment is their slight tendency to run out of orange juice (a must when preserving the sanctity of a hangover breakfast) but this is more than made up with by the fact that they sometimes have Blood Orange juice (it tastes pretty much the same but looks much more dramatic) and the opportunity to taste weird and wonderful combinations of fruit and vegetable juice as a substitute. All in all, the World Famous Comfort Cafe is one of the most extraordinary places I have ever been, and is definitely my favourite venue for eating out (we will have dinner there one day, possibly with the Gift and/or the World Famous Comfort Cafe's newest fanboy, Uptown PJ) plus their faultless dedication to serving breakfast at whatever time you want a la Ken Walker is not only admirable, but demonstrates unfailing dedication to personal freedom.

Rules for eating three dinners

Last week, our friend The Gift came over for dinner along with our singer friend Uptown PJ, and over the course of the evening The Gift took it upon himself to offer advice on the rules for eating three dinners. There are only two rules: 1. Don't make curry your last meal 2. If you're going to eat lasagne, chicken and potatoes, and curry have the curry as your second dinner as (and I quote) 'Chicken's refreshing as far as I'm concerned'.

Food shame

There are two food related things that make me ashamed of myself: Eating crisp sandwiches (which I have re-christened Chav-wiches to demonstrate that I know this is not an acceptable way to eat)which must be salt and vinegar crisps and nearly always feature when I am ill. It's as though I am anti-nourishing my body! Dropping food on my chest and then eating it - makes me feel like Bart Simpson in the future when he washes himself with a rag on a stick. Wholesome - mmmmmm!

More food weirdness

There are certain meals which I have to eat in specific ways: Fry-ups - these have to be carefully divided up to ensure that there is a piece of every item in every mouthful. I can estimate the number of pieces any given ingredient will be split into, and plan ahead accordingly. Meals with peas/sweetcorn/beans/carrots - vegetables must be consumed first - strays must be hunted down, lurkers must be wheedled out from their crannies, and nothing can be consumed until the veg is eaten. Spag Bol - this must be eaten with spoon and fork with evenly distributed sauce to pasta ratios. Sometimes I wonder whether I have some deep seated issues, and then I speak to other people about food and realise I am actually quite low-maintenance in comparison, so I should just shut up and be grateful!

The mystery of Clamato juice

What is wrong with people? I simply cannot fathom the kind of mind that either drinks a glass of tomato juice and thinks 'Hmm, this is a tasty and strangely filling drink - what would really enhance it is something fishy' or eats a clam and thinks 'there's something a little too solid about this - and once you have realised it needs to be runnier, the natural choice of thinning agent would be something like tomato juice.' It is an unholy combination - clams and tomatoes may well go together in a bisque or soup, but a drink? Really? I mean, I'm not really a fan of tomato juice as a drink, despite an enduring love for tomatoes in almost any other form, but I can envisage how it could be enjoyed - I don't have to like something to understand what others see in it, but clamato juice is where I draw the line. One of the worst things about it (apart from the concept, the taste, the unforgivable lack of respect for both clams and tomatoes and the possibly apocalyptic nature of the horrific combination) is the 'Red Eye' which consists of a beer with a shot of clamato juice in it - I genuinely cannot imagine a less appealing beverage. I can't really drink beer much now due to being old and incapable, but when I did drink it I loved the beeriness of it. I never ever grasped a nice cold Heineken, sipped of the froth off the top, and then thought to myself 'If only this had a fishy-tomato aftertaste it would really add something to the deliciousness'. But it seems that this is just what someone has done, and quite honestly, why the first person who tried this actually bothered to tell anyone else what they'd been up to is beyond me. I can only assume that this was some kind of 'Jackass' style stunt whereby those involved were actively trying to concoct a drink which would make their friends throw up. Or possibly someone trying to poison a person allergic to shellfish by sneaking it into their tomato juice onthe grounds that you would be less likely to notice clams in tomato juice than you would in, say, a gin adn tonic. Either way, there seem to be no redeeming features of this drink - the Boy Wonder and I tried it when we were in Canada after asking a waiter what the hell it was, and three years later, the memory of it still haunts me, as does the look on the waiter's face. It reminded me of the look of smugness my brother used to get when he had oversalted his chips - he didn't like them either, but tricking me into eating them amused him greatly, and I can only assume that the phenomenon of Clamato juice is a similarly juvenile prank which has really got out of hand.

The tragedy of disappearing food - update

My last post on this topic inspired me to embark on another of my periodical and depressing searches for two of my favourite snacks - rice paper and unflavoured/salted Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Technically the main problem with the Goldfish is that not one of availability so much as location. I am personally aware of several shops where I could theoretically purchase as many bags of Goldfish as I want, they're just all in the US. Rice paper is quite another matter - I know that if it is available, I should be able to get it in this country. So a quick search of EBay revealed not only a distributor of Goldfish, but also some angel who has stocks of rice paper! No sooner had I lamented the lack of these items than a solution is found! Like a flash, I e-mailed the links to the Boy Wonder who had been badgering me for Christmas present ideas, and lo and behold, Christmas day came around and I was presented with a large box containing all the rice paper and goldfish I could ask for! The rice paper was interesting - instead of the normal four coloured packs (featuring orange, pink, yellow and white) these were two coloured packs including such unexplored colours as green and blue and, more importantly, printed with Euro note markings so it's like eating money. I have had monetary rice paper before, but it wasn't quite right as it always had too much flavouring and I am a big fan of the bland. I could tell these ones were different, but the proof was in the tasting, which proved that they are indeed made to the same exacting standards as the stuff I am used to. The only slight downside is the tenacious nature of the ink, which I won't explain further, but even this downside has an upside as it means that I can only eat a limited amount at a time, thus rationing my provisions and avoiding the gluttony I have exhibited in the past. The stuff doesn't even have a 'Nutritional Information' sticker telling me how bad they are for me, but what they lack in substance they certainly make up for in potato starch and colourings, so I think my insides will benefit from a more restricted intake. The Goldfish have only been broken out today - in a display of inhuman strength of will, I have managed to keep them untouched for two weeks, mostly by keeping them upstairs and keeping a range of other easily available snacks within reaching distance to avoid temptation. But today, in the absence of anything more suitable for a work snack, I brought one in and although I resisted their lure until around 10.30 once I opened the bag, there was (almost) no stopping me. They are just as delicious as I remember and I can't believe I have lived without them for so long. Things are going to have to change - either we need to have more holidays when a person can reasonably request hard to come-by snack foods as a gift, or we will have to find a house in between Pepperidge Farm and the press where they print the paper money...

The tragedy of disappearing food

I have a slightly compulsive approach to food. Despite the fact that my mother is eminently sensible and would encourage my brother and me to eat a wide variety of foodstuffs, never really allowed snacking and was in control of our sugar intake, the more devil-may-care attitude of my father towards our health included allowing us to eat/drink condensed milk straight from the tin, serving 'experimental' dishes based loosely on recipes he had cut out of the paper and a completely unfathomable love of faggots and lardy cake which he tried (unsuccessfully I might note) to imbue us with. These contrary approaches somehow combined to form a bit of a monster - I have incredibly faddy eating habits, often falling in love with a product for weeks on end, only to abandon the industrial quantities I have purchased when a new treat takes my fancy. As a child I used to go into raptures when allowed to eat frozen peas, raw dried pasta and whole cucumbers. As an adult, with full editorial control over what I eat, recent food affairs have included tapenade (consumed with every meal at the height of its popularity), chav-wiches (a salt-and-vinegar crisp filled savoury muffin which makes me feel wrong, yet right all at once) and the current favourite, Belgian waffles with a dusting of icing sugar (our tolerance of dust is surprisingly high, so this is more generous than it might otherwise be). Despite the fact that the Boy Wonder mocks me mercilessly for the manner in which I acquire favourite foods, he is often the originator of a particular fad, but where he revisits a long-neglected foodstuff with interest and nostalgia, I will sample it already knowing that it wouldn't take much to make it onto my food-of-the-month list. The only problem (as far as I can see - if other people have a problem with the way I conduct my faddery then it's no concern of mine) with the way I fall in love with certain products is that there is a distinct correlation between the ease of procurement of a certain food item and the amount I love it. Unfortunately, the correlation is inverse, and so I often find myself fruitlessly searching for foodstuff which my brain and stomach are telling me must be there, but my eyes are putting up arguments like 'Seriously - if they were going to be anywhere, they'd be here, and they're not, so just try somewhere else. No, you haven't forgotten what they look like, this shop just doesn't sell them.' The most calamitous example of this phenomenon is without doubt rice paper. My love of rice paper began when I was younger, probably about six, and would be given money to go to the shop round the corner from my Dad's to buy sweets. Even at that age, I would regularly clear the shop of their rice paper stocks, buying 50 sheets at a time, occasionally accompanied by some sherbet to make my own version of flying saucers. Then, as adulthood encroached, I kind of forgot about rice paper, writing it off as a treat from my past. So when the Co-op round the corner from our old flat started selling it, I was entranced. I would regularly go and buy 10 packets of perhaps 40 or 50 sheets each, polishing them all off within days, and guarding them jealously, despite the Boy Wonder's palpable lack of desire to steal them. When the Co-op suddenly changed sweet supplier and stopped stocking them, I was sad, but once again I came to terms with the fact. Then, when we moved to The Village, I was delighted to discover that the newsagent a mere 200 meters from our house sold rice paper. I was overcome with excitement, and cleaned them out on the first occasion I spotted them. The nice lady behind the counter looked at me as though I had a problem, so I told her that I did, impressing on her at the time my excitement at having discovered an outlet of this near-forgotten foodstuff so close to our new home. So, imagine my disappointment when the shop closed temporarily for refitting (and apparently installing a tardis as it is about twice the size now, and that can't just be down to the clever positioning of everything next to everything else, regardless of whether there is room for customers to actually move around) and re-opened in a blaze of glory, but with a new generic sweet supplier and no room at the inn for the brightly coloured sweets of which I had almost got used to having a regular supply. That was it - the last time I came across rice paper was in a shop somewhere in the middle of nowhere and when I bought their entire stock, I was told that even they wouldn't be ordering it again, being as I was the only person to even consider purchasing the stuff, let alone demonstrating any enthusiasm. So, whilst I can accept that I am in a minority (my brother will eat rice paper, but I don't think he dreams about it like I do), I cannot accept that someone willing to buy copious amounts of the stuff cannot find anywhere which will sell it - I can't promise that I will eat enough to sustain an entire factory, but I could easily promise that you would only need two or three more like me to achieve that goal...