POST 5, PART I – HI HONEY, I’M HOME!

Positively thrilling news, folks – I have been summoned for jury duty. I hope I get a murder. But knowing my luck I’ll probably land a dreary case of credit card fraud or shoplifting at Lidl. Something very dull that won’t even make the local papers. In which case, I say hang ‘em.

Whenever anything vaguely out of the ordinary happens to me I become convinced that my life is about to dramatically change for the better. This is fate finally knocking on my door. Serendipity. How could this not lead to romance? Excitement? Danger? Or even just a meaningless shag.

See, when you’ve failed to meet a man through the conventional routes – school, university, work and friends – and aren’t entirely certain some forklift truck-driving townie or web-dork who hasn’t seen the light of day for several years really is your Match.com, such happenstances take on a new significance. If my life were a movie or TV show (and I believe mine should be) this is my inciting incident. The bit where boy meets girl. Or Obi-Wan Kenobi whisks you away from your aunty and uncle’s boring-ass farm to become a Jedi. I’m not fussed which.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore...”

I’m tempted to turn up to court in some ruby slippers, you know. Because I couldn’t give a crap about performing my civic duty and seeing justice done. No. This is all about me, me, me. And my starring role in some gritty courtroom drama adapted from a John Grisham novel... Where I fall for a fellow juror or a lawyer... Maybe get caught up in some crazy murder and crack the case myself. Like an episode of Murder She Wrote, but with really graphic sex scenes... Or I run off with the perp. Make my movie a thriller. Yeah, bust his bad ass outta prison and go on the run, holding up Lidl stores the length and breadth of the UK to survive. Like a poor man’s Bonnie & Clyde.

Told you I have a tendency to get carried away... My car broke down recently and the moment it came sputtering to a halt in front of a roundabout I thought, ‘This is it! The perfect premise for my real-life romcom. Boy meets girl. How can this not lead to romance?!’. So what’s a girl to do but sit there and wait for her knight in shining armour to show up? (No, seriously – what the hell else are you supposed to do?! I’m clueless when it comes to cars.)

But, as I watched car after car after car after bastard car simply pull around me and continue on their merry way to work, it finally occurred to me to call the breakdown company. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do, dumbass. And where were my breakdown details? Why, carefully filed in a folder at home, of course. So I did what any independent, grown woman of 29 would do in this situation. I called my mother. But she wasn’t answering, damn her! So I called again and again and again. I even got out of the car to call her from the pavement, just to fool all those bastard drivers glaring at me as they manoeuvred past into thinking I was doing something constructive. Instead of just sitting there, behind the wheel, frozen in fear. And sheer stupidity.

It took a full 15 minutes before a lone cyclist stopped to help, bless him. Chivalry is not dead. But a knight in head-to-toe illuminous lycra? I think not. He offered to push me closer to the pavement out the way. Well, he pushed and he pushed, but the car wouldn’t budge. So, yay!, White Van Man took pity on him and stopped to help. And they pushed and they pushed. “Have you got it in gear?” White Van Man enquired. “Yep,” I proudly replied, jiggling my gear stick to emphasise my car know-how. “No, love,” he sighed. “You need to take it out of gear.” Oh, the shame! I promptly put it in neutral, but by now the steering was on full lock – in my wisdom, I’d decided that turning the wheel really hard toward the pavement would aid our efforts to get there, presumably through sheer willpower. So we immediately hit the curb at a ridiculous angle. White Van Man despaired. “Just give it a try, love.” I turned the key in the ignition and, thank Christ, my Corsa started. I drove off with a little embarrassed wave in thanks. Couldn’t look either of them in the eye, so I’ll never know if White Van Man was The One. Probably not – ‘I don’t do the trades’, as a friend of mine has observed. And after successfully establishing myself as an incompetent twat of the highest order, I doubt even Bike Boy would have wanted me. So a decidedly un-romcom-like experience.

I was finally put out of my misery when my mother phoned back and sorted the whole mess out for me. I am 29 years of age. 30 in a couple of weeks. Soon she’ll have to start tying my shoelaces again.

Anyway... After a whopping 800-odd words, I have the pleasure of presenting you with – my point. So yes, I am about to reach the grand old age of 30, and in order to distract myself from the horrors of this I have booked a week-and-a-half off work to go to New York. Very exciting. But, see, I have been called for jury duty for the two weeks just before I go. So the prospect of my not working for most of the month of June went down about as well as a thing that (because I am crap at thinking of suitable analogies) doesn’t go down at all well with my boss. And hence I’ve had a shitty day at work.

When I come home from a shitty day at work I just want comfort food – something home-cooked and served with a smile. And a large glass of wine. The kind of meal I’ll lovingly cook for my husband in my dangerously idealised Doris Day marriage.

“Hi Honey, I’m home!”

“Dinner’s on the table, darling!”

I have a few cunningly quick and tasty weeknight meals I make that bring out the smug, 1950s all-American housewife in me, and the smoked salmon and pea burgers I’ll put up on my next post are one of my favourites. But there’s no such dinner waiting for me when I get home – because when you most need a home-cooked meal is when you’re least capable of making it. Nope, it’s an M&S microwave meal and the best part of a bottle of Jacob’s Creek for me. Oh, the glamour of it all.

Next post: recipe and conclusion...

Illustration by Bex Barrow.

POST 4, PART II: A FATAL CASE OF MAN FLU

So, my cheese and chive bread rolls... This isn’t so much a ‘recipe’ as a flavour combination – just adapt any bread roll recipe and throw in some cheese and chives. That’s what I did. Oh, and I use a bread machine so have no words of wisdom on how to successfully hand bake something. (Kinda makes you wonder why you’d bother to read this, doesn’t it?!)

I do, however, have some words of wisdom about bread machines... After several years experimenting with mine, I have discovered that the secret to baking decent bread in the damn thing is to just accept it as a glorified dough hook and cook in the oven instead. Seriously – just use the dough/pizza setting and be done with it.

INGREDIENTS

600g strong white bread flour
20g butter, cut into cubes
315ml water, room temperature
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp skimmed milk powder
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp white pepper
2 to 3 tbsp chives, chopped
100g strong cheddar cheese, grated (plus extra for topping)
1 egg, beaten

1) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

2) Dump everything bar the egg inside your misjudged kitchen purchase and set it to go on the dough/pizza programme for a 750g loaf. Some machines have a seed and nut dispenser, which releases extra ingredients midway through the mix so you could put your cheese and chives in there, but I really don’t think it makes a difference for ‘soft’ ingredients and don’t bother myself. I also tend to keep an eye on the mixing as sometimes it needs a dash more water and a bit of a poke round the sides where the flour gets stuck to help it along. When it’s all incorporated leave it to do its thing.

3) When the programme is complete, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide into eight. Gently roll them into balls and arrange on a baking tray. Word to the wise here – invest in some of this magic non-stick baking tray liner from Lakeland. It is a-mazing! I was forever chipping these rolls off the tray because of the cheese-content until I discovered this stuff. Everything just lifts straight off and it’s washable too, so lasts for ages. I resent having to oil baking trays because of the extra calories and fat, so never put enough on to make it truly non-stick, plus I don’t like the taste and texture of using loads of flour or semolina. I command you to buy it!

4) Brush the rolls with the beaten egg and sprinkle with some extra cheese. Pop them in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Don’t hold me to oven temperatures and times, by the way – I think it’s always best to monitor and adjust whatever you’re cooking as only you know your oven and its quirks.

5) These rolls are best served fresh and still warm. If you do freeze some, do warm them through first to freshen them up – with the cheese and without all those lovely preservatives and improvers in longer-lasting loaves, the texture can just be a bit dense when they’re cold is all.

Ed feebly finished his soup and roll, admitting – amid much prompting from myself – that he felt a bit better. Bless. He then promptly fell asleep. Confident that I’d cured him, I tended to the duvet and pillows for the umpteenth time (why do we women feel compelled to do that?!) and went to bed contemplating what a fucking awesome wife I would make someone someday...

Only to be woken a few hours later by him coughing. And I mean coughing. And coughing and coughing and coughing... If he had hacked up a shoe it wouldn’t have surprised me. Yes, his snotty nose had escalated into full-blown man flu. And, having fed him cheese and butter (dairy products only make you more mucusy – trust me, I’m a lifelong hay fever sufferer and dairy fan), I only had myself to blame for his deteriorating condition.

I tried my best to nurse him through the next day, really I did. But, sleep deprived and starting to feel pretty ropey myself, the novelty had well and truly worn off. Because, Christ, sick people are so surly and disagreeable, especially those of the male persuasion! I’ve decided that sick people have no business burdening themselves on anybody but their mother. So when I caught man flu – aka the common cold – come Monday, it was she who came to my aid (and cooked me chicken stew and dumplings, incidentally – gotta love my mum!).

Not Ed. No. Having made a full recovery, he’d buggered off back to work. But not before he’d polished off the last of the juice and drugs, the bastard. And did he return that night, as promised, with replacement provisions? Did he heck! Not that I wanted him by my bedside, mopping my brow, mind. But it’s the principal of thing... So you can add being an inconsiderate prick to the crumpled tissues thing. Our relationship never really recovered.

Thanks to superwoman Bex for the illustration!

POST 4, PART I: A FATAL CASE OF MAN FLU

Soup. Meh. I can take it or leave it, me.

I mean, sure, soup has its place, its purpose. And, for me, that’s on the Diet To End All Diets. I boil up vats of the stuff. Something punishingly bland and boring, and just, well... Yuck. Watercress broth à la Liz Hurley or, worse still, cabbage soup... I march triumphantly back from the supermarket, having stripped it all of things green and good, and stoically chop, slice and dice before setting my giant pan of hope to simmer on the hob.

But then there’s that smell, isn’t there? That stench..? Of noxious, no-calorie onions and vegetables and water. And an Oxo Cube. Boiled. That you’re supposed to survive on in order to shed two stone in as many weeks for a friend’s wedding, mouthful by boring mouthful. Two weeks! Two whole weeks – that’s 14 days, folks – of nothing but soup, soup, soup. In theory... Because I maybe manage a bowl or two before my good intentions go as limp as my cabbage. ‘I’ll go running,’ I resolve. ‘Every morning. At 6am. And still eat super healthy stuff. No carbs. Or booze.’

I wore Spanx and a maxi-dress to the last wedding I attended. There is no hope.

Yeah, I’m so done with soup.

Soup is for old people who can’t chew solids. Soup, when foisted upon you at a dinner party or something, is just about bearable when served with a hot, crusty roll and lashings of butter. But even then it’s superfluous to the bread and the spread. In conclusion, I hate soup.

Sick people tend to crave – correction, demand – soup when they’re unwell though. Take Ed... I’d been successfully dating Ed for a few months when he started to develop a serious case of the sniffles down the pub one Friday night. Of course, being all loved-up at the time, I thought his pouty, congested grumblings were adorable and so, taking him home for some tlc, plied him with sympathy and brandy (I’m a great believer, as is granny, that it’s best to drink through these things).

Come Saturday, his sniffles had turned into sneezes. In hindsight, I should have turfed him out at this point – not coz I’m some cold-hearted bitch (well, that too). But because there’s nothing quite like seeing the man you supposedly love all sweaty and sick, surrounded by used tissues, snot streaming from that snooter of his, which he just won’t stop bloody blowing and disgustingly dabbing with yet more tissues that he discards anywhere but the bin, to kill the passion in a relationship.

Seriously. Eeugh! Good on you if you’re a natural nurse. Or one of those weird couples who go to the loo in front of each another (ie, have no shame). If you welcome your man to your hospital bedside to watch – maybe even film – you squeezing something the size of a cantaloupe melon out your vagina, with all that mucus and mess, when you give birth. And you still find each other sexually attractive? Not for me, thanks. I find it difficult enough to accept someone could fancy me, with an arse the size of mine, when I’m feeling my best. Let alone when they’re having to wipe it when I’m ailing or elderly. I’d rather crawl away, somewhere quiet and dark... To die. Alone. Like an old dog.

But Ed? He was like a puppy with a poor sore paw at this stage. So I tucked him under a duvet on my sofa and fed him Nurofen Cold & Flu every four hours. Fetched him orange juice. Stroked his hair. Played nursey. By tea time, he barked for some soup – tomato soup, to be specific – to soothe his poor sore throat and fill him with vitamins to make him all better. I was only too happy to oblige. Funny what love does to you, isn’t it?

But, to paraphrase from Meat Loaf, I would do anything for love, but I won’t make soup, such is my hatred for the slop. So I instead popped to the shops for some good old Covent Garden Plum Tomato & Basil soup. It was then that I discovered my trusty cheese and chive rolls, which I try to keep stocked in my freezer, are the perfect accompaniment to tomato soup.

Next post: recipe and conclusion...

Illustration by Bex Barrow.

POST 3, PART II: THE VEGETARIAN OPTION

Right, risotto. Two things about risotto, in my book. ‘Secrets’, if you will. The first is to use the best-quality dried porcini or wild mushrooms you can get your mitts on. I swear I’m not being a food snob here – it really does make all the difference. Ideally some big, impressive ones imported from Italy that cost the earth from the deli blah, blah, blah, rather than chibbily little supermarket ones. And, assuming you don’t fess up, that way you’ll fool your diner into thinking you can make plain ole mushrooms and rice taste magnificent through your genius cooking skills alone. Do you see?

(Sorry, that was a crap secret, wasn’t it? A bit like when my granny revealed that the ‘secret’ to her famed asparagus soup was, erm, adding some fresh asparagus to a packet soup. Bless her. The second’s coming up and is better, I promise...)

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp dried mushrooms
100ml Madeira wine
100ml boiled water

Olive oil for frying

400g mushrooms, sliced (I like a mixture of chestnut, button and portobello)
1 tbsp fresh or dried thyme

1/2 onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
180g risotto rice

Dry white wine (see note)
1 pint vegetable stock

2 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated – plus extra to serve
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

METHOD

1) Soak the dried mushrooms in the Madeira and boiled water for at least half-an-hour until soft and rehydrated. The Madeira is optional, but it really does complement the nuttiness of the parmesan and mushrooms so I urge you to try it, but just double the water if you do want to omit it. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid and run a knife through them until they’re roughly chopped, just to make their flavour and texture go that bit further. Reserve the liquid, leaving it to settle as there’s often a bit of grit on the dried mushrooms that you don’t want in your risotto.

2) Soften the onion in some olive oil and salt in a large saucepan. Take your time to do this – by sweating them for a good 10 minutes until translucent and golden they’ll be melt-in-your-mouth rather than left with a bit of a crunch. I tend to add the garlic a couple of minutes in to prevent it from catching. Next, add the risotto rice and stir for a couple more minutes on a gentle heat.

3) So, here’s secret number two – drum roll, please... Open a decent bottle of dry white wine, pour a glassful and chuck it over the rice. Now – and here’s the really important part – refill your glass and drink. Maybe pour a glass for your guest if you’re feeling generous. Either way, having a glass of vino to-hand is vital to making a good risotto, I reckon, as you have to stand there over the hob for around half-an-hour, stirring, stirring, stirring. Which is extremely dull and quite sweaty.

4) When the wine has been absorbed by the rice, carefully add the mushroom liquid, being careful not to let the sediment at the bottom slide in too. Next, add the vegetable stock a ladle at a time. This is the point at which stupid people who think using jars of Dolmio and bags of Aunt Bessie’s constitutes cooking complain risottos are hard to make – well, they’re not. You just have to slowly add liquid, constantly stir until it’s absorbed and then add some more until it’s cooked. Der!

5) When you’re about half way through the stock, fry your fresh mushrooms in some olive oil with some fresh or dried thyme and seasoning. In theory, this should coincide with the precise moment your rice is cooked to perfection, but I am rubbish with timings so I won’t stake my life on it. Just set them aside if they’re done a little early.

6) Once all the stock is added, your rice should be pretty much there – taste to check. I don’t care whether you prefer it al dente or well-done – each to their own. Add a bit more boiled water if you need to cook it a little longer.

7) The moment you’re happy with your rice, stir through the mushrooms and parmesan. At this point, a TV chef (I’m talking to YOU James Martin!) would tell you to add buckets of butter, olive oil, maybe some mascarpone, etc... But if you’re at all like me and your muffin top is in constant danger of spilling over into a Yorkshire pudding, I figure why get used to food filled with those sorts of calories? This is delicious as it is, but go ahead if ye dare.

8) Oh, yeah – serve. With some cracked black pepper and parmesan shavings. And that’s it.

Adolf tentatively tucked into his risotto... In hindsight, I can see he was one of those boring, bland vegetarians surviving solely on macaroni cheese. Yawn. He even accused my mushrooms of being too mushroomy! But I consoled myself with the thought that I’d at least get a half-decent shag out of it. I say half-decent, because that’s all it had been to-date – but my worst fears were confirmed. Because there was something else Adolf wouldn’t eat, if you get my drift... And that’s just not cricket, as far as I’m concerned. One does develop a taste for these things, like coriander.

But if you’re not prepared to man-up and get down, then it’s bye-bye. So I dumped him.

Illustration by the marvellous Bex Barrow.

POST 3, PART I: THE VEGETARIAN OPTION

So I’d been seeing this vegetarian... I know, I know. Hitler was a vegetarian, right? This doesn’t bode well. But I’m a sucker for a pair of big, brown eyes. And he was an architect, which is one of my top five favourite professions for a potential husband. So bear with me.

Adolf (am I really going to nickname him Adolf? Yeah, I think I am...), Adolf was coming round mine for dinner for the first time. What to cook? Fish, obviously. But – gasp – upon checking, I discovered that he was a bona fide vegetarian and didn’t eat fish or even bacon sandwiches, which is just silly. It was then that I knew Adolf and me could never be, but seeing as I’d just been waxed to within an inch of my life I figured why waste it?

Fortunately, I have a few good veggie recipes up my sleeve. My mum was a strict vegetarian and sometime vegan right up until she got pregnant with me. She was in a restaurant with my dad when she had a sudden, overwhelming urge to stab her fork into the rare, bloodied steak he’d ordered and wolf it down that my very existence was confirmed. Says it all, doesn’t it?!

Crazy fool that she is, she tries to return to her non meat-eating ways every now and then, so I placate her with this gorgeous mushroom and Madeira risotto recipe I’m going to share with you as well as a few other favourites... Then bore her silly with chickpeas and lentils until she caves in and has a burger come the first barbeque of the summer, mwahaha!

Sorry, but I don’t have a lot of time for all this vegetarian rubbish, myself. Of course I care about animal welfare, so I’ve tried to cut out meat before but, for me, that just isn’t sustainable and I’m an all or nothing type of girl. It’s the special occasions that get me – nut roast come Christmas morning? No, thank you. A feast just isn’t a feast unless something has died. So I do my best to buy responsibly and only eat meat once or twice a week.

But what bugs me about many veggies is their pseudo-ethical philosophies for not eating meat... Skinny girls who are just on a perpetually tedious diet. Or take my mum, who subscribes to the 'it's mean to eat animals' philosophy, presumably working toward some crazy utopia where we all keep chickens and sheep just for the pleasure of their company. I ask you, have you ever met a chicken? They’re pretty dull and kinda dumb, so what the hell else are we going to do with them. “But think of the poor little lamb-ikins”, she implores me. Why, mother? Why? They’re full-grown sheep when they go to slaughter, not cute little balls of wool bouncing round a field.

I do get the pig thing though, what with them being all friendly and intelligent like dogs. Wagging their tails... And even though I did threaten to eat my ex-dog Jack (RIP) a few times when he was misbehaving, I probably never would have. So I figure so long as I don’t go off befriending swine willy-nilly, I should be able to enjoy my bacon sarnies in peace.

Anyway, I digress. Not sure why Adolf was a vegetarian – he did mumble something about it being greener once... My boyfriend – saving the world one cow fart at a time! Brilliant. I suspect it was actually because he was a fusspot as he claimed he didn’t like fish because it “tasted fishy” this one time, the massive baby. Clearly he had to go. After I'd got some.

Next post: recipe and conclusion...

Best picture yet from Bex! Thank you!

POST 2, PART II: HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS IN THE MORNING?

Don tried to make me this sandwich one day... Now, I confess to eating my fair share of cheap, convenience crap – I’ll happily hoover up the cruddiest of cakes, for instance – but I was (and still am, just) in my late 20s and so had the means to make and consume decent sandwiches. I don’t eat value white bread. I don’t eat cheap processed ham made from 17.7 percent meat. I don’t eat industrial marg. Don did. So I didn’t eat his sandwich. He was most displeased.

So when it was my turn to make Don a bacon sarnie, I wanted to see how he’d react to brown bread. I took my time to make sure the bacon was beautifully crisp. I used butter instead of spread because good, English butter is what real cooking is all about. It was a brilliant bacon sarnie, served to him in bed with a glass of orange juice after a particularly fine blowjob courtesy of my good self. And whaddya know, he whinged about the brown bread. The big baby!

The results of this test made me realise three things. 1) He would turn me into a mother-figure as I tried, in vain, to fool him into eating Mighty White or Hovis Best of Both. How about a yoghurt with bits? Yikes, I was dating a 12-year-old boy! 2) He was wholly unsuitable husband material because he would make our children fat by feeding them nothing by crappy white bread, before dying a horrible death of colon cancer himself. 3) He was a selfish fucker because he almost never returned the favour when it came to oral sex.

Yep, the writing was on the wall for that relationship. Shortly after the prawn debacle, I sat Don down and informed him that it wasn’t him, it was me, that I was super busy for the foreseeable future and all sorts of blah, blah, blah. Anything but confess I was breaking up because, no matter how much I wish life were more like the movies, I didn’t want my love life to mirror 80s Tom Hanks romcom ‘Big’. So it was so long, Don!

Moving swiftly on, here’s that recipe I promised you – oaty banana and date smoothie.

INGREDIENTS

30g porridge oats
1/2 pint milk
1 banana
3 Medjool dates
1 to 2 tsp honey

METHOD

1) Soak the oats in the milk overnight – this ensures the smoothie is super creamy, even if you’re using skimmed milk as I do. That said, you could probably get away with just an hour or two of soaking if you forget.

2) Plop everything in a food processor and blitz. This is where using good-quality Medjool dates pays off as cheaper, older ones tend to have that white husky bit inside that is a bastard to blend and leaves you with big lumps.

3) Divide between two glasses and serve. Maybe add a drizzle of honey for presentation. Simples.

Next post: Something to keep those crazy vegetarians happy...

Thanks again to the terrific Bex Barrow for the illustration!

POST 2, PART I: HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS IN THE MORNING?

Actually, I’m way too much of a coward to cook eggs for someone I’m attempting to impress. Boiled or fried, I have a knack for cocking up the apparently foolproof tasking of cooking an egg. Scrambled is always over-cooked. Soft-boiled is hardboiled. Fried ditto. Omelettes – see scrambled.

Poached is by far the worst. I’ve tried all the tricks – shallow pan versus deep saucepan of water, a dash of vinegar and/or swirling the liquid around before dropping the egg in. Whatever, I wind up with the white parting company with the yolk, leaving me fishing for a lonely yellow ball amidst the froth of white that I just know I’m gonna burst before I get it on my toast.

What is the secret to successfully poaching an egg?! Answers on a postcard please...

Still, the song seemed kind of apt... But my staple boyfriend breakfast is, in fact, the bacon sandwich. Now, while I believe a bona fide bacon sarnie should be made with perfectly fresh white bread – with that pleasingly crisp crust and preferably still slightly warm from the baker’s oven – if you’re buying the constituent parts the day before (as this is the morning after, remember) you are better off, in my humble opinion, investing in a nice, sliced brown bread. Something malted and seeded. Not just boring wholemeal.

A risky move, you might think – but hear me out...

The unusual choice of brown bread, you see, allows you to conduct a crucial boyfriend test – a little something I like to call The Bacon Sandwich Test. I developed this a few years ago when I was dating someone I can only loosely describe as a ‘man’ a couple of years younger than myself – well, four to be precise. ‘Getting some cash back’ as a mate of mine calls it. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, so I’ll refer to him as ‘Don’. (But as he’s not that innocent, I will tell you that ‘Don’ is only one vowel away from this real name. And since no one is called ‘Den’, ‘Din’ or ‘Dun’, you will doubtless deduce that his name is ‘Dan’. Well done, Sherlock.)

Now, I knew full-well Don, 24, was immature – that was a given. Boys lag a few years behind us girls, so I figured he’d be around the 19- or 20-mark in female years. I had my reservations, but I think I’d recently read a magazine article in the hairdressers – let’s blame Cosmo – about how refreshing and baggage-free younger men are. And I must admit I liked the idea of training someone up to suit my specific requirements. So when he asked me out after what I’d chalked up as yet another ill-advised one-night-stand, I decided to give him a go.

However, I soon started to suspect Don was especially childish. The fact that he didn’t have a bed when we first met was a dead giveaway, in hindsight. Just a broken futon, a duvet with no cover and an old sleeping bag. I really don’t know what I was thinking. Standards, Amy! Standards! There were also the World of Warcraft sessions that lasted late into the night (though not while I was there, I hasten to add). His grotty bathroom that never seemed to be stocked with items such as toilet roll, soap or towels. Oh, and the shower didn’t work either. Not that this bothered him, because personal hygiene is overrated. He was in a band, too. Yawn.

And then there was the food thing. I want to say he ate like a baby, but that’s not quite true. He liked to please me by taking me to fancy-ish restaurants and trying new things, but I suppose, to my mind, he put food together in a totally random and unrefined way. But what bugged me about this was the ballsy way he’d pass off his God-awful creations and combos as delicious and superior, subjecting me during the course of our five-month relationship to some of the worst meals I’ve ever ingested. In short, he believed he was a better cook and foodie than me, the cocky little sod.

This was war.

Cooking is my thing, see. It’s what I quite literally bring to the table. And, in this case, I’d clearly demonstrated to Don, time after time, that I’m a kick-ass cook while he, on the other hand, was not. But rather than roll over and accept defeat, dear obstinate Don kept on cooking for me. I can chart our relationship’s demise through three truly hideous meals he made for me, all of which I’ll share with you some day. But, for now, here’s by far the best/worst...

I turned up to Don’s one week night after work, tired and hungry. I’d been bugging him about what he planned to cook as the last time he’d had the genius idea of making lasagne, from scratch, at 7pm on a Wednesday... Which we didn’t eat until gone 11pm, and even then the pasta was still crunchy. But he was insistent it was a surprise. His treat.

“You can help me get it ready,” he told me on arrival. ‘Geez, thanks’, I thought, wondering why we couldn’t just get a takeaway if that was the case. “I’m making chilli prawns with mango and red onion salsa,” he boasted as I rolled up my sleeves.

Red onion..? For two people with a passing interest in kissing later on..? R-i-g-h-t... Another fine choice, Don. He gathered his ingredients – a packet of pre-cooked prawns and, um, that was about it. “I couldn’t get a mango,” he muttered. “Or a red onion,” he added, passing me an ordinary onion. An ordinary onion? There. Are. No. Words. Any rational person would have abandoned this recipe when they realised the shop was all out of mangos. But not our Don, no. Here was a man happy to chow down on raw – raw!­ – onion rather than admit he was a total halfwit when it came to cooking.

“So you’re planning on serving us pre-cooked prawns with some raw, white onion?” “Yeah.” “Raw onion?” “Yeah. It’s the same. They’re just different colours. They’re the same thing.” “No, they’re really not. You’re seriously telling me you’re going to eat raw onion? Really..? Where’s the chilli?” He presented me with some chilli powder. I scowled. “Maybe we could fry the onion?” he offered.

At which point I stormed to Tesco for a pizza. And that, boys and girls, was the last time Don was allowed to cook for me.

As I have spectacularly failed to get to the bleedin’ point, I will have to tell you how Don fared in the bacon sandwich test in my next post. And I also promise to put up a proper breakfast recipe for my favourite smoothie as my random thoughts on bacon sandwiches really don’t count. Sorry!

Next post: recipe and conclusion...

POST 1, PART II: HOW TO MARRY A MAN IN 11 EASY RECIPES

Like most things in life at the moment, a banker is to blame. Bloody bankers, eh? And my mother. Well, someone’s gotta take the rap for this shit – the weird way my mind seems to work – and I’d sooner it was them than me. See, the below recipe is the first my mother ever taught me. It was her dinner party dish, her ‘wow’ dish, my dad’s favourite. “If you ever want to impress a man,” she told my impressionable 12-year-old self, “this is the recipe you should cook.”

She’s always referred to said recipe as steak stroganoff. However, whenever we see a similarly titled recipe in a magazine or on a TV cookery show, she without fail pipes up, “That’s not how I make my stroganoff,” shaking her head in disapproval. This is because most recipes bar my mother’s seem to be made with tomato and paprika. And, having thoroughly researched the subject of stroganoff through the powers of Google, I have concluded that this is in fact the more common, accepted way of making stroganoff.

So maybe hers is more steak in a cream sauce or something. Sorry mum. Anyways, here it is:

INGREDIENTS

1/2 onion, finely diced
150g mushrooms (ie, chestnut and button), sliced
2 portions fillet steak (ie, 200g to 250g), cut into cubes

Butter

150g-ish sour cream (ie, one small tub)
2 to 3 tsp French mustard

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 portions long grain white rice (ie, 200g to 250g)

METHOD

1) Preheat the oven to 100 degrees celsius or equivalent. Prepare your onions, mushrooms and steak. Stir the mustard through the cream and season with black pepper, adjusting to taste.

2) Boil up a pan of water. Rinse the rice in a sieve and cook for the required time in the boiled water. Apparently, there are some geniuses out there who have nailed the precise rice-to-water ratio thing, resulting in perfect rice sans water at the end of the cooking time. Smart-asses. The Banker lectured me on the very same thing. But as I have never made a success of this without burning the rice to the bottom of the pan, I am quite happy to drain it. Suit yourself.

3) Right, you’re ready to cook. Sauté the onions in butter and salt until soft – a good 10 minutes should do it. Transfer to a heat-proof dish and leave in the oven to just keep warm. Next, sauté the mushrooms. When they’re done pop them in the dish with the onions.

4) Check that your rice is nearly there – it should be no more than a few minutes off. Because now it’s time to flash-fry the steak and you don’t want it overdone. Don’t crank the heat up too high either or the butter will burn. The moment the steak is sealed, pour on the creamy-mustard sauce and return the onions and mushroom to the pan. Turn the heat right down.

5) Drain the rice. A good tip is to pour boiling water from a kettle over it while it’s sitting in the sieve to stop it sticking together. Plate-up the rice, perhaps presenting it in a chef’s ring if you’re really keen to impress or just in a heap if not. Spoon the ‘stroganoff’ on top. Serve.

So I cooked this for The Banker at the tender age of 21. He was my first fancy-schmancy London boyfriend – he bought me roses, fed me strawberries in bed and made great pains to leave his hefty paycheques lying around his flat for me to find. On paper (hello, 10-grand bonus!) he was perfect husband material and, at nine years my senior, I suspected he quite liked the idea of appointing a little wifey. So I set out to impress with my stroganoff...

“That,” he concluded upon clearing his plate, “was so good... I might just have to marry you.”

And there you have it, folks. Proof that there is such a dish capable of inspiring a marriage proposal. The first time the thought of cooking my way into a man’s heart popped into my head. The reason for all these ridiculous flights of fantasy the moment I don my apron.

Only problem was, I didn’t want to marry The Banker. See, the reason I set out to impress is because he’d cooked for me the weekend before and, boy, did he make a fuss about it – reckoned he was the best thing since sliced bread. And I'm competitive like that, me. He’d only made pasta in a tomato and vodka sauce. Yeah, so you’ve set alcohol alight? And..? What do you want, a bloody medal?!

Probably. Because he did have a bit of a Napoleon complex, see, the jumped-up little sod. Lecturing me (and I really mean lecturing me – on and on he went!) on how to correctly cook rice! I was a good inch or so taller than him in heels... Hence, I also had a lecture or two on my inconsiderate choice of footwear. And I am quite the Contrary Mary when provoked – hardly a good combination.

Hmm... To love, honour and obey a bossy but filthy rich banker? Or go with the high-heels?

I chose shoes. I’d still choose shoes.

Next post: time for the science bit – The Bacon Sandwich Test...

Illustration by the wonderful Bex Barrow.

POST 1, PART I: HOW TO MARRY A MAN IN 11 EASY RECIPES

First up, an apology. No, let’s make that an explanation. (Coz this is no way to make a good first impression, Amy!) The title of this blog... I’m not seriously suggesting the ramblings and recipes I would like to share with you on here are a sure-fire way of eliciting a marriage proposal. That there’s some sort of magic Shepherd’s Pie method out there only I possess the secret to that’ll make a man drop down on one knee and whip out a diamond ring. That would be madness, even for me. So this isn’t one of those God-awful guides written by some uptight New Yorker instructing you ‘How To Marry A Man By Being Anybody But Yourself And Never, Ever – EVER! – Calling Him’ (or similarly depressing title). Promise.

No. The concept for this blog came when I found myself one Saturday, for no particular reason, whiling away the morning baking a massive key lime pie with meringue on top as seen on The Hairy Bikers’ ‘Mums Know Best’ show. Now, I have no business baking a pie of such proportions. Why? Well, because I am single and childless. I am fast-approaching 30 and, according to my doctor, am on the “upper end” of a medically normal weight. I live in a flat in London with a girl the size of my thigh who survives on nothing but Alpen bars and fat-free yoghurt. I consider cooking for three when my brother and I return home to my mum’s a real treat and sufficient grounds for a feast, consequently cooking enough grub to feed an army to feed my addiction.

Yep, I love – love – cooking. Proper cooking. I wish I could get excited about salads, sushi and nourishing Thai stuff, but I can’t. What does it for me is what I would consider good, old-fashioned British dishes – those staples, the childhood favourites and home-comforts, that come with gravy or custard. Roasts. Pies. Mash. Picnics. Scones. Puddings. Cakes. Stuff my mum and my granny taught me. Made with butter – the more the merrier.

And I suppose because these recipes and cooking rites of passage remind me of family, of cooking en masse and happy times, I can’t help but get swept away with fantasies of my future family. There’s no fighting it... The sizzle of steak and there I am, wondering how my hubby will like his (rare, btw – he’s no wuss). As I cream together butter and sugar to bake a cake? Children, of course. Two of ‘em, a boy and a girl – far more appropriate recipients of my cakey-cakes than me, myself and I. As I removed my key lime pie from the oven, there I was with those Hairy Beasts, Dave and Si, showing the world what a first-frikkin-rate wife I was. Sad? Yes. Very.

See, I do find this silly and slightly shameful – I aspire to far more than simply being someone’s wife, the 2.4 children, a mortgage on a semi-detached house somewhere in Kent and a people-carrier in the drive. As will become abundantly clear if you stick around, I’m worse than useless when it comes to men and relationships. And besides, I’m from a broken home – it’s only going to end in divorce anyway. Oh, and I can’t stand kids (though I hope I’ll eventually grow fond of my own)... But, by God, there are times when I’d gladly sell my soul to the devil to be shacked up for the rest of my days with a decent, dependable shag, a Smeg fridge, the full-set of Le Creuset cookware and an excuse to consume raw cake mixture on a regular basis (ie, children). It’s complicated. I’ve been single too long, maybe. Who knows what I want? Not me. So it’s just that ­– a fantasy, as frivolous and far-off as my plans for spending my lottery winnings or making my Oscar acceptance speech.

But you can see why a love of this kind of cooking causes a single girl such as myself a problem, right?! I’ve made a Battenberg cake, for fuck’s sake! Marzipan and all. I hoard recipes I’d never dare make, knowing they’d go to waste or, more probably, straight to my waist. Batches of gingerbread men, for example, or buckets of homemade jam – I drool over them like they’re food porn. Alas, I have no one to cook for! So I thought writing about it would be therapeutic and fun.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin...

Next post: recipe and conclusion...

FYI, the plan here is to post the start of a story on the Monday and the recipe and conclusion on a Thursday. And it's probably worth pointing out that the rest are stories rather than me just explaining myself, as per this first post. I'm a blog virgin, so bear with me!

Oh, and a huge thanks to Bex for the first of many fabulous illustrations – you can follow her blog, Bex Thorts, by clicking here.