Icy Blasts

I’m making a rhubarb crumble. As I don’t have a sweet tooth, I’ve never really got much good at cooking puddings, but any fool can make a crumble. In fact, it’s so boringly easy that I usually have to make it more exciting by adding all sorts of interesting things that I find lying around the kitchen. Suitable things, obviously; I don’t mean bits of soap and breadcrumbs, although there is quite a lot of that sort of stuff lying around the kitchen.

I bought the rhubarb because the veg man didn’t have any aubergines. I have this vague idea that we need to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, but also this other vague idea that it’s slightly unethical to buy things that are out of season. Well, aubergines and rhubarb are both very much the fruits et legumes du jour, so I don’t feel bad about consuming them. Did you know that air-freighting kiwi fruits to the UK causes the release of FIVE TIMES the weight of each kiwi fruit in carbon dioxide?

Then we waited in the queue at the post office for absolutely ages. The thing is, our letterbox is too small for anything larger than a gas bill, and our doorbell doesn’t work. We’ve never bothered to fix the doorbell, because we don’t really know anyone who would need to use it, except the postie, and she usually comes when we’re not in. She was here at 9.30 this morning, but as our bedroom is on the second floor, and we were sleeping, we didn’t hear her feeble tap at the door. She left us a little card, which meant that we had to get to the p’off by 12.30, along with almost the entire population of the town.

The p’off used to open until 7pm on weekdays for the collection of parcels, but their new years resolution was to reduce their customer service to the lowest possible level without actually closing for good. Every single person in that long, long queue was grumbling, and what with the bitter cold wind and the inconvenience of having to wait half an hour for a parcel that could probably squeezed through even our unsuitable letterbox, if the postie had only tried, one really can’t blame them.

We were so cold by the time we got home that we couldn’t tell our pasties apart. This was most unhelpful, since Pete’s contained stilton, which I’m currently not allowed to eat. He ate most of mine before identifying it as the cheese & mushroom one and handing it over. To get my own back, I opened all the windows in the entire house, to give it a good airing. You know there’s never enough fresh air during winter, so I like to let the breeze through every now and then. Sulking, he went to bed with all his clothes on, and refused to get out until I shut the windows.

However, every icy blast has its silver lining, and he soon worked out that the best way to warm up would be to wash up, and started cleaning up the kitchen. This inspired me to empty the freezer, which has needed defrosting for weeks. It doesn’t work properly, you see, and the drawers get stuck in clumps of ice so that you can’t open them.

At the bottom of the freezer I found a bag of mixed summer fruits, so I threw that into a pan, chopped up the rhubarb and some ginger root that has been in the fridge since the morning sickness stopped (it’s a good remedy, made into tea). Then I finished up a jar of honey that had gone all solid and fudge-like, which may have made the whole thing too sweet, but it will be okay. The topping is half plain flour, half wholemeal, sugar, butter, and the end of a packet of flaked almonds. It’s nearly ready.