Clean Sweep

Today

We decided that our tonight's dinner was going to have a Grecian theme. To Paul that meant including houmous. "What type would you like?" I asked, offering him plain, caramelised onion, lemon and coriander, roasted pepper, etc. Caramelised onion was decided upon.

Now, caramelising onions takes a while if you're going to get that lovely yummy sticky taste so I started to cook them at lunchtime, allowing them to simmer gently in the butter and olive oil. Eventually I asked Paul to turn off the stove, satisfied that they would add that special something to tonight's feasting.

Later, I was just finishing drying up a few things that Paul had washed, I noticed that the stove was clear and cleaned. "Where are my caramelised onions?" I demanded. It seems that Paul, in the middle of a kitchen cleaning frenzy had come upon them and decided that this brownish sticky stuff represented something either failed or gone off and chucked the lot away.

In My Day

One of Mamma's specialities each Christmas would be the manufacture of "cinnamon stars". These gloriously chewy cookies are made out of egg white, cinnamon and vanilla sugar. To make vanilla sugar Mamma would purchase, at a hideous cost, a vanilla pod, fill a large jar with caster sugar and immerse the pod therein. After a few months the intense flavour of the pod would have permeated the sugar. This wasn't something to be rushed.

I think it was in the year that Daddy had built a kitchen extension while Mamma was away, because I can't imagine why else he would have gone to the store cupboards. Christmas approached; Mamma had saved up enough egg-white and she started to make the cinnamon stars. She reached up for the precious sugar, and couldn't find the jar. After much searching she thought to ask Daddy.

"Oh that", he replied "It had a great big worm in it". "Worm!" cried Mamma "That was my vanilla pod." You've guessed it: Daddy had chucked the lot out, "worm" and all. I can't remember now whether Mamma managed to make the stars some other way or whether we just went without but feel sure that Daddy was confirmed in his view that the kitchen was a woman's domain.

We'll just have to have roasted pepper houmous tonight instead, which, come to think of it, is actually what Paul asked for in the first place.