elections, husbands, Monday night suppers

2010-05-08, 8:57 p.m.
My weeks just get stranger and stranger.
This week, we were all gripped by Election Fever as the various candidates vied for the top positions. Floating voters were door-stepped, palms were greased and mud was slung in the desperation to get the right people doing the right jobs, for the good of all.
NO! I don�t mean some piffling General Election!!! I�m talking about things MUCH more important than that, like the elections for the new Workies Committee, silly!
L had been nominated for Vice President again and remained unopposed until the 11th hour when Gerry decided to stand against him, despite never having actually served on the general committee, not being particularly well-liked in the club and generally being a bit of a twat. L took this VERY personally and spent most of the week electioneering like mad and pointing out to anyone who would listen (and quite a few who wouldn�t) all the marvellous things that would stop if he, L The Magnificent, were not re-elected. Actually, this is pretty much true as there is no way Gerry could run the Open Mic nights, nor the Quiz nights nor set up the disco equipment nor any of the other entertainment-based stuff that L does. Oh, and, Gerry is a twat whom nobody likes.
I was nominated for General Committee again � there were eleven candidates for 10 posts so I was pretty much certain that I�d get re-elected and, as I said to L, if I didn�t then I would just stand at the bar on Friday nights, getting drunk and being amusing rather than touting Meat-Draw tickets and making tannoy announcements about Sunday night bingo and how important it is to not let your children slide on their backsides on the dancefloor (it makes the floor really slippery. I fell over once. It hurt quite a lot. And was very embarrassing as the dancefloor is in the middle of the room and therefore in full view of everyone!).
Needless to say, I was hoist by the petard of my own wish to do bugger-all and was re-elected with the second highest vote count. Damn! Now I have to deal with all that crud for another year.
L was re-elected as Vice President. His relief was palpable. He needs to be liked too much, that boy. Gerry got less than half the votes that L got. Possibly because he is a twat that nobody likes. Don�t get me wrong, L is a twat, too. But at least he�s a loveable twat.


Elections aside, L has been experiencing some kind of mental anguish these last couple of weeks. Not sure what it is but he�s definitely not been himself. The person that he HAS been has been mostly annoying, selfish, often drunk, listless, whiny and about as much use as a sponge leg in the rain.
We�ve had words. Some of the words we�ve had included �what the fucking hell is the matter with you?�
Eventually, we did get to sit down and have a chat. He was a bit wobbly-lipped at first (I can be a bit scary, I know. I also know that he loves me and that I love him, so he was in no real danger). Between us we managed to tick off most of the boxes on the list of �symptoms of mild depression�. Because I deal with that sort of shit all day long at work I managed to come up with a solution we could try that might mean I wont have to send him to the doctors. His diet has been appalling lately � he cant be bothered to eat and will happily drink several pints of beer at lunchtime, on an empty stomach. He then feels like crap all afternoon and picks at his dinner in the evening, before going out and having another skinful of beer.
Dr Stepfie diagnoses a Vit B deficiency (and an all other Vit deficiency, along with a mineral deficiency and a deficiency of just about everything else, too. Apart from beer.). I bought a nice selection of dietary supplements and he has been taking them for about a week now. I asked him yesterday and he said he did think he was feeling a bit better. It might be placebo effect, but it might not be.


It squeaks and it bubbles! Be afraid! Be very afraid!!!
My dear friend lapintornade expressed horror in my comments box that we �Brits eat something called bubble and squeak! WTF?�. Well, my friend, we certainly do, and very delicious it is, too.
In theory, it sounds like a disgusting, unpalatable mess of reheated vegetables � presumably smelling faintly of sewers due to the high proportion of cabbage. In reality it is something quite different, and an excellent accompaniment to sausages, pork chops or, what you Johnny Foreigners quaintly call �cold cuts�.
In an attempt to assuage your anguish, here is my �recipe� for bubble and squeak. The inverted commas are there because bubble and squeak doesn�t really have a recipe, just a method.
Bubble and squeak is traditionally served on a Monday as, following the traditional English Sunday Roast, there are likely to be leftover vegetables in the fridge. If you are a good cook, there will be nothing revolting about the leftover vegetables that you have. In my house, we�d take some leftover crispy roast potatoes and some leftover green vegetables (Savoy cabbage is best but broccoli or Brussels sprouts work pretty well too � or a mixture of any of the above). When I cook cabbage, I shred it fairly finely (cutting a whole cabbage as though it were a loaf of bread, rather than pulling off the leaves) and steam it for only a minute or two, so it doesn�t really get a chance to get soggy.
I roughly chop the potatoes and mix it with the cabbage. Some people mash the potatoes, but I like to have a few crispy chunky bits so I tend to just hack them up. If we�ve had roast beef, there will usually be a leftover roasted onion or two, and I�ll chop that up and mix it into the potato/cabbage mixture.
Then, because I am quite posh, I use one of those metal cooking rings (you could use a hamburger mould if you have one) and form the vegetable mixture into patties, about �� thick, pressing the mixture down well so that it sticks together � there should be enough moisture in the vegetables, you wont need to add any liquid or anything like that.
I dust the tops with flour and turn the patties out onto a board so that I can flour the other side too. Put a little oil in a frying pan (or, if you are serving the bubble and squeak as part of a big fry-up breakfast, fry the bacon and sausage first and then use the fat from those to fry the bubble and squeak) and, when its nice and hot, slide the patties gently into the pan and fry them until the undersides are brown and crisp. Don�t be tempted to move them around too much in the pan or they may break up. Carefully flip the patties over and fry the other side, too. When the second side is crispy and brown, you can drain them gently on kitchen paper if you need to. Serve hot.
If you can lay your hands on it (an international store might be able to help) a squirt of brown/HP sauce is great on the side, as are pickles of any kind, particularly Branston or piccalilli.
Other vegetables can be added/substituted according to your likes and dislikes but the green veg/potato combo is the basis for great bubble and squeak.
Incidentally, the name probably comes from the various cooking processes involved � �bubble� from the initial boiling of the vegetables (its an old fashioned dish � veg was boiled. For ages. We don�t do that any more, here. We don�t call policemen �coppers�, either) and �squeak� from the occasional interesting noise from the frying pan, possibly caused by moisture in the veg escaping.
Its perfectly acceptable (and possibly less alien to the non-English) to make bubble and squeak from scratch. Cook some potatoes until tender, steam the shredded cabbage, saut� a little onion, mix together and proceed as above. Somehow, though, its never quite as tasty as the �leftovers� version. I don�t know why.
Here�s a little picture of what they look like when they�re done.
Photobucket
See! Yummy!
Later
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