Living to excess

I am smoking an inordinate quantity of extremely strong grass these days. A good pipe or two packed weekdays full of stinky sticky weed and effectively wiping out my brain as required of an evening. Sure you build a tolerance to it. But it’s not like drink, with which it was becoming impossible just before I stopped to actually get into any higher state than the hazy numbness and necessity of daily soaking. Green can, if you put a little effort in, transform your evening into one of soft edges and trippy detachment.

Food is plays a central role in this of course, and tonight was a case in point. The weather has definitely turned now, and I had walked an especially long walk home on account of the round trip I had to make to supply my weekend herbs. I was hungry. And we’ve had enough of the grilled meat + salad combos this week. No, this was a night for Carbs.

It turned out, in fact, that the Wife was in exactly the same mood, her day of battling with the razor sharp wits of a bright three year-old having left her in a similar state as would spending 10 hours sitting in a brightly lit, air-conditioned hallway with thirty three people of whom just five you have ever spoken to, so it seems. The fridge was looking decidedly bare on this chilly late October night, with little else but George’s diminished cheese and half a pot of decaying double cream amounting to about all that was fresh. So I mixed up a couple of eggs with the cream and some cheese, set a large pan of generously salted water on the stove, and sweated of a couple of small, finely chopped shallots, two cloves of garlic and a small amount of diced celery in my casserole. Later I tossed in some halved black olives and a few rinsed capers, and just before the spaghetti was cooked I tossed it all together retaining a good volume of the cooking water and mixed it briskly into a rich, creamy sauce with plenty of salt and pepper and a handful of chopped herbs from the garden – bits and pieces of sage, oregano and rosemary. A couple of dods of butter for good measure and onto hot deep plates, served with more cheese and freshly ground black pepper. Less than a pound a head, and filling a hole without any bullshit at all. And you can stuff all the Mars bars and Pringles in the world up your arse, munchies don’t get much better than that.