Make a mighty ocean and a bounteous land

Courtesy: Hereford Times

A burst water-main on the Hoarwithy Road had me questioning the way I'd previously run my life.

Suddenly I had to force three different types of pill down my reluctant throat. I shuffled downstairs and returned with a bottle of fizzy water from the fridge. Should I swallow the pills individually, as normal, or en masse? Foolishly I decided on the latter. As I raised the bottle to my lips the pills seemed to be swelling. Fizz added, I sensed the pills now as big as golf balls in my mouth. Got to get them down! They passed under my epiglottis as the combined volume of a medium-sized mammal, say a Canadian beaver. At least there would be no wood down below to gnaw on.

Using the tooth-brush I asked: where to spit? The large bowl of the loo seemed obvious. And yet the water in the loo's cistern would need husbanding. Which meant the spit would... hang around. Uh.

We have three loos and one had already been flushed before we knew its water would not be immediately replaced. This raised delicate questions. Loos are in receipt of two different forms of waste product. This would need planning. I'll go no further.

One thing I wasn't short of was information. Welsh Water is the only mutually owned water company in Britain, thus it concentrates on customers not share-holders. I signed on with WW's website and got breathless emails every hour describing progress on the Hoarwithy Road (“challenging work… a nearby high-voltage cable… team working hard”).

WW predicted the repair would be finished within the day. My supply, at lower pressure, resumed at 13.30 though emails remained cautious. Always better to go for a worst-case prediction and give everyone an unexpected treat.

Loo used with complete abandon this morning.

The memory lingers on

Leftovers. I’m the Papal Nuncio of leftovers. Very much in favour. Unlike Edna, my late mother-in-law, who threw ‘em all away. But she’d had a hard life and, having married a chef, didn’t see the point, saw them as reminders of the hard life.

A week ago we had streaky pork slices, marinaded, then deep grilled along one edge. There were a few left. Mrs RR cut them into cubes, cubed and boiled a large potato along with a chopped onion, added a skinned tomato, wrapped the lot in a flap of short pastry and – through the Neff’s magic – turned it into a pasty. Pasty-ising adds subtle flavour to these simple ingredients. Mrs RR’s been doing it for decades. Time to recognise it as a family classic, I said.

A cylinder of brisket becomes a sort of calendar. Day one, eaten hot with vegetables, day two, the cylinder shrinks as we have cold slices with a baked potato, day three, sandwich filling to go with a mug of soup.

My invention. I microwave a small bowl of leftover meat-thick stew and ooze it over two slices of buttered toast. Eat with knife and fork.

Remainder of pork joint is cubed. Cubed potato, grated carrot, and chopped onion are boiled in same pan, mashed, mixed herbs added. Meat and veg combined, wavy design imposed on top with a fork. Into the Neff for shepherds pie.

None of this is haute cuisine. Merely eating what we ate earlier in a different form. But there’s a (possibly West Riding) frisson about not being wasteful.

When we have sausages (Herefordshire is sausage rich) Mrs RR puts one of hers to one side. They taste best eaten cold, she says. Often she shares the cold one with unworthy me.