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!