Tasty Morsel

Today

An exchange on Facebook today with David about artichokes. He mentioned that he'd just eaten the first one of the season and it was really tough. I commented that there's so little on an artichoke I'm surprised we bother. David said that soon they'll be delicious.

Agreed, but still not a hearty meal.

In My Day

It's 2003, the year of "Diet Trials", so I'm pretty skinny. Becky had managed to book us into London's Ivy restaurant for her and Beatrice's birthday celebrations. (She later said that she was sure she'd seen Helena Bonham-Carter there, but that's another story.)

We glammed up and went off the the restaurant. Birthday time so we start with champagne. The menu was a mixture of schoolboy basics like steak and kidney pie, fancy modern dishes and meals designed to keep size zero stars happy.

I ordered a nice tomato and onion salad for starters. We also ordered more champagne. For my main course I chose a globe artichoke with a light port wine dip. Artichokes look impressively huge. This one was no exception. I started to peel off the leaves, dip and eat the fleshy bits. Delicious! We ordered some rose Sancerre.

Half an hour went by and I was still pulling off leaves. As I eventually unearthed the "choke" the others ordered another bottle of Sancerre. Because it took so long to eat this object my brain was fooled into thinking that I was having a proper meal, not about 60 calories' worth of main course.

Only later did it catch up with this idea and the fact that I'd had my fair share of celebratory wine. The rest, as they say, is history, except not really part of my history as I forgot everything after that (including the Helena Bonham-Carter moment). But I'm sure I kept everyone amused. And The Ivy must be used to teetering customers trying to get into taxis.

If theses artichokes are from your garden, David, I'd really like to taste one - but I'll team it with some potatoes or something.