Friday Night Takeaway

 I do a bit more cooking these days than I used to, but sometimes it still feels like an awful lot of bother.

I often cook vegetarian meals at home, often because meat is just so much more difficult.  Meat is all slimy to cut up, it can be difficult to cook without making it too dry or too tough, but if you don’t cook it enough it’ll make you sick.  There’s cross contamination concerns, best before dates and all those times I wish I’d separated the pile of chicken breasts before bunging them all in the freezer. 

Recently however I thought I’d try a new recipe for chicken curry.  Now it was a bit late in the evening, I was a bit tired, but really how hard could it be? [Click link below to read more....]

Grate a knob of ginger, the recipe said.  Now surely if I’m grating a small thing I should use the side of the grater with the smallest holes.  No, apparently that doesn’t work - the ginger got all mashed up around the grater and I couldn’t get it off of the grater and into the curry. 

I left the curry to simmer and started to wash the ginger out of the grater.  The grater slipped and suddenly I was grating the top of my little finger.  Who ever knew so much blood could come out of a little finger - blood all over the tea towel, blood all over the kitchen.  I put my finger under the cold tap and watched the force of the water separate all the little strands of grated little finger.    

About half an hour later and I’d finally got my little finger secured in a band aid.  The only band aid that would wrap tight enough was non-waterproof, I know that’s probably not hygienic in the kitchen but I was only cooking for myself.  I’d cleaned up all the blood I could see, although there’s bound to be one last splatter that a guest will find in six months from now.

Just as I was giving the curry a final stir something splashed up into my face.  Actually, something splashed up into my eye.  Actually, a speck of something I assume was chilli had landed on my eyeball and was stinging like hell!  The next fifteen minutes were spent in the bathroom desperately trying to splash cold water into my left eye without disturbing the non-waterproof band aid on my left little finger.
 
I’d gone right off the idea of curry by that time so I decided to stick it in the fridge and think about it again later.  It was time to admit defeat and get a takeaway.  I mean really, why do I even bother trying to cook when I’ve got Mr Crackles just round the corner?

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