I have unusual tastes. Not just in dodgy decor, of course, but in food. I have unusual food tastes.
Take today. At lunch my colleagues looked at me strangely when I got out my meal. I had a Diet Coke, a thick lettuce-y salad with chopped peppers, smoked salmon, and sprouts, all of which my colleagues were ok with but the eyebrows went up when they discovered I had topped it all off with a healthy scoop of hummus. To quote that TV character from our bad haircut days: “Salmon? Good. Hummus? Good.”
My dinner tonight was no different. I had some chicken I needed to cook up, so Alastair had shredded ginger and peppercorn chicken. This may sound unfair, me cooking it up for him, however I offered and it had the hidden background of allowing me to eat a meal there was no chance in hell that he would want – I had a toasted wholewheat tortilla with a light layer of Mexican cheese…and sag aloo (an Indian dish made of potatoes, spinach, and roasted spices).
Like I said.
I bring all of this up because our village fete is this weekend. A village fete in small villages like ours is a place for all the neighbors and community to get together, bring food and produce from the garden and vegetable patch…and judge the shit out of each other.
It’s basically a harvest festival, wherein people bring fruits and vegetables, flowers, baked goods, homemade crafts, and a category that’s best described as “The organizers may or may not have been smoking crack while creating the list of possible entires”. It includes things like: “Name plaque for a shed”, “A model made out of Sticky Bricks”, and “Your favorite sandwich”.
Oh hang on now. My favorite sandwich? Yes please. As I’ve said, there is little in life that cannot be aided by a good sandwich. But my tastes in sandwiches is rather like my taste in films – I tell people that my favorite film is “Lost in Translation”, because it is one of my faves and it sounds intelligent and considered. The truth is, my very favorite film is, of course, the incomparable “Elf”. To be honest about this is to bring shame upon oneself, so better to go highbrow. While my (public) favorite sandwich is of course a wholegrain baguette with lite Edam and Dijon, my private favorite sandwich features that anathema to British sensitivities – peanut butter. Not that Sun Pat shit they sell here, that’s not peanut butter. I mean a heavy layer of something like Peter Pan or Skippy (not crunchy, never crunchy). The jam can only be strawberry or blackberry, don’t even debate chucking that nasty marmalade crap in there. And it needs a middle layer of Doritos. I mean original Doritos, not extra spicy and for Christ’s sake, none of that Cool Ranch bullshit. Cool Ranch is a crime against humanity.
I looked at the guide with great interest last night. Yes, this is the kind of thing you saw on “Calendar Girls”, where people’s Victoria sponges are under great scrutiny. I went through the brochure and, well, I was drinking, so the ideas got quite interesting. The categories made me struggle – “Five types of plum on a tray”. “Four sweet pea heads on a plate” – quite graphic there, but ok. Then I felt they got discriminatory – “Courgette – must not be over 8 inches”.
Man jokes at the “8 inches” part aside, what’s wrong with a courgette over 8 inches? What did a courgette ever do to them? Are there lone tall courgettes wandering the earth, debating a career in basketball as they mourn their exclusion from a village festival?
I poured a glass of wine and pondered about the produce (you know, as you do). What happens to those vegetables’ self-esteem when they don’t qualify? Like this category – “Onion, must not be over 250g”?
Or “Pepper – firm, one color only”?
My thoughts raced, alongside the quantity of alcohol in my system (don’t judge – yesterday was our last bank holiday until Christmas and we’ve been working like donkeys all weekend. DIY – don’t start it. Really.) Why would we limit ourselves like this? Why would we be so exclusionary? Why must we be so stiff about it? Wouldn’t the world really benefit from looking at our produce in a different light?
(There is also an element of me and my mild level of inebriation starting to find my photo editing skills in Picnik to be prohibitive, ergo introducing whole categories seemed wise. I’m not calling it “skillz” either, not even for you.)
For example, why not take “Five runner beans”
And make them “Five runner beans with an air of royalty”?
(The one with the mustache is the crazy old Duke. There must always be one.)
Or “New potato most capable of saving lives”:
And who could resist “Mutant-sized cucumber which repels lamb populations”?
My favorite by far, though, is this one, which I suggested to Alastair:
I call it “Closed cup mushroom seance”.
I thought it would fly, Alastair’s not so sure.
I’m never going to fit in.
-S.
But I’d hunt you down and buy you a drink if I’d've been judging that village fete. The onion and pepper photos made me howl with laughter.
My Mum’s village has a fete. We call it the ‘fete worse than death’, and second prize is 20p. In a little brown envelope. (I won it one year for my knitting. The first prize went to a MACHINE-KNITTED sweater. I had to be taken home and dosed with gin). And a sense of humour got you disqualified, unless you were running the cow-pat lottery. And a man would bring his bees. And there’d be three antique cars in a corner of the field you could go and stroke, and a pony opposite you couldn’t. And a cider-stall that no one approved of ut always made the most money. And then they’d auction off the cakes from the baking competition, and the resultant price-discrepancies would have grown women in blue rinses threatening never to speak to each other again. And it would either rain, or someone would get sunburn and be sick in the marquee. Ah, rural bliss.
You crack me up, and I adore your twisted tastes (I, too, love Elf. And quote it much too much. Also? PB&J, hummus and salmon, and cream cheese and olive. Not all at once. Well, maybe.)
May, ours is similar. We went last year and they auction off the goods. Those that don’t sell tend to make the village fete-guy (is it our mayor? I don’t think we even have one) fairly cross. By about the twentieth marrow that went up for auction I swear he was red in the face and nearing shouty levels “Who will give me a pound for the marrow? How about 5p? For god’s sake, I’ll pay you to take it, just take the damn marrow!”
Good times.
And oooh – cream cheese and olive! I’m thinking black olive…
Cream cheese, garlic, green olives stuffed with pimiento, thinned with milk makes the best potato chip (and crudites, I suppose) dip ever. Yum.
Fete-worse-than-death is probably the funniest thing I’ve heard today.
I love your bean illustration but I believe my favorite is the mushroom seance.
Am I to understand that courgette = zucchini? (Don’t eat ‘em, don’t need to know alternative names)
Oh god you are like a tonic for me right now! Thank you, thank you. And I challenge you to take all of the above, type out the titles and just insert them into the regular displays when no one is looking! Please!
For whatever reason, the “this image is not available” cracked me up. I know it was probably not supposed to be unavailable, but the concept of not being able to find runner beans (which I’m assuming are what we call string beans?) without an air of royalty is extremely amusing. Which I suspect also means I’d enjoy a vegetable harvest festival organized to suit your preferences.
And may I just say, I love Europe and most of its inhabitants, but people who don’t like peanut butter are not fit to be called people. It’s delicious peanuts and salty goodness. It makes the simplest and most unappetizing things – ahem, celery – delicious. It makes having nothing but crackers and some little shit jelly packets stolen from the break room an amusing lunchtime (tiny sandwiches are fun, okay?). You should submit twenty different sorts of peanut butter-related sandwiches to the festival, just to prove a point – banana and peanut butter, honey and peanut butter, fluffernutter, peanut butter and potato chips (which I find disgusting but sure, whatever)…the whole shebang. Vive le peanut butter!
I agree – nothing better than peanut butter!
In NZ we have 3 kinds of peanut butter. Some brands that add sugar (disgusting and shouldn’t even be called peanut butter) then there’s the stuff with added salt and emulsifiers (tastes more like peanut butter but the texture is all wrong). Then there is the REAL peanut butter that is only peanuts. This is the best kind! It’s the stuff where all the oil separates at the top so you have to stir it through and it has quite a sticky texture. Its expensive but well worth the cost.
And it can only go with strawberry or blackberry jam! Definitely no apricot jam or marmalade :-)
I want some of what you had last night Please!
You totally made me think of this:
Ross: Rachel claims this is her favorite movie.
Chandler: Dangerous Liaisons.
Ross: Correct. Her actual favorite movie is?
Joey: Weekend at Bernie’s.
Personally, I say you should enter your favorite sandwich. Shake things up a bit in the village. I mean, it’s not as if it’s a Cap’n Crunch and Pixie Stix sandwich.
If those mushrooms actually start contacting the beyond, I am so there.
Dear God Girl! Please pre-warn all of us when you’ve been drinking and are about to do a post like this. Wetting my pants was not in my schedule when I first opened this up. Now I have to add things to my schedule and we all know it’s busy enough as it is. I did however laugh hysterically – the beans are my favorite. And the “fete worse than death” – we’re a very punny family.
Thanks for the laugh!
mmmm…. crunchy peanut butter with marmalade…
(I assume that, like lamb becomes mutton, courgettes become marrows).
When I read what your true favorite sandwich is I felt like I found my sandwich mate! Minus the strawberry jam and add in grape and we will be two happy sandwich people. I discovered it in elementary school and have loved ever since. With a cold glass of milk and my happiness is restored. I know whats for dinner tonight! Leftovers for the boys and memories for mommy!
I love your sense of humor about things. The pity is that you could do quite well at my city’s Harvest Festival in the straw man competition—the prizes generally go to the most clever take on the theme, and humor is DEFINITELY encouraged.
The thing about zucchini—aka courgettes— is that they get out of control quite readily, and balloon up to insane sizes. They also are much sweeter when they’re small. An eight-inch limit means you’re paying attention to your plant and not turning around and OH GOD WHERE DID THAT MONSTROSITY COME FROM.
This is why there’s jokes about sneaking zucchini onto your neighbor’s porch.