Wok Disposal

I moved house last weekend. My modest rented accommodation seems to have generated enough useless stuff to whip car boot sellers into an excited frenzy.

The local Oxfam now looks spookily familiar, but there are only so many woks, fondue sets and Dan Brown books that even a charity shop can handle.

Ken Hom has a lot to answer for. Maybe there is a wok graveyard somewhere, in fact I am surprised there isn't a dedicated wok recycle bin outside every house. Perhaps UFOs are just woks flamboyantly discarded by frustrated owners, who's wok cupboards are bulging with unwanted duplication. They might come in useful with the flash floods this country seems to be experiencing at the moment. Attach one to each foot and run quickly across the water.
There should be a public wok register to stop unwanted presents for those that already posses one, which I bet you do. It would work a bit like TV licensing in this country, everyone is presumed to have a wok unless they give notification otherwise, and even then they are disbelieved.

Don't get me wrong I love wok cooking, I just don't need ten of them.

Why do we insist on having lots of stuff around us? Well I suppose stuff is a sort of memory map of your life, like an interactive diary. Its hard to get rid of memories, no matter how reassuring your Buzz Lightyear looks standing proud in your corner cupboard boldly surveying the premises.

After some digging around I eventually assembled my wine, a modest, eclectic bunch of bottles.

One bottle of Moet (calmly and patiently waiting for a celebration), one Vin Santo (never tastes quite the same in the wet UK), one quite extraordinary Italian wine, the bottle extravagantly heavy, label undecipherable, a cheap M&S chardonnay, an excellent Medoc Bordeaux, a bottle of Prosecco and a bottle of fino sherry.

Each bottle of my rather limp collection is still a wonderful memory map of the vintage, a time capsule subtly massaged by various chemicals over the years (months in the cheap chardonnay case), all designed to ease your mind from the trials and tribulations of wok disposal.

Most of the wine I drink is bought and drunk within a few days. I would like to join a wine club to boost my ailing collection. Any suggestions welcome.

Buzz and I, together with endless boxes, are now happily rehoused.

The Madness of Packaging

I live in the university town of Cambridge where exams are drawing to a close. I went out to purchase a lunchtime sandwich, fully aware that the majority of the filling would end up residing in my capacious keyboard. I am convinced the more I feed it the smoother the typing, like a well oiled engine. I dare not turn it upside down.
I noticed a group of students with shopping trolleys, covertly herded out of the confines of a supermarket. The first chariot was crammed with plastic punnets of strawberries (about two per carton), the second with sugar, cream and Champagne. They were locked in a Ben-Hur type tussle. The sun was out, so punting on the river Cam was most probably their objective. Very civilised. I hoped that the beautiful river would not suffer the normal watery grave of shopping trolleys.
There is a lot in the media about over packaging, this being a prime example. There was enough plastic around those poor sweaty strawberries to create a G-Wiz electric car.

Bottle packaging is more interesting. If those students chose to recycle just two from their Moet nest, they would save enough energy to boil five cups of tea.

Apparently the foil around the top of a wine bottle used to be made out of lead (banned in 1993). This is why sommeliers wiped the top of a bottle before pouring to avoid poisoning.
A victim of wine drinking plumbism was Beethoven. Unfortunately for him bottles had lead foils, lead acetate was used to sweeten wine (some might say the cause of the decline of the Roman Empire) and he enjoyed drinking copious amounts from his favourite lead goblet. The genius had numerous 'heavy metal' related health complaints, including deafness and died early at 57 in 1827. I guess the odds were stacked against him.

A good tip for wine pouring is to cut the foil low so as to avoid giving the wine a metallic tang. Years ago, a foils purpose was to prevent weevils and rodents attacking the corks in damp dusky wine cellars. Now, like so much packaging, aesthetics are the name of the game.

The Great Escape

It was early morning, the patio doors were wide open displaying a scene of sunny tranquility. I had my head in the Saturday papers, munching on some toast and sipping tea.

A loud noise broke the silence, the resulting tea slick progressively giving Tony Blair 5 o'clock shadow.

I looked up and was confronted by a flurry of feathers, which translated into a small bird attacking something. The bird spied me. I instinctively did not move a muscle and it too froze. I am not a 'bird fancier' so all I can say is that it was elegant and brown. It was proudly presiding over a small snail which was covered in a froth of bubbles, as though perfectly dressed for service by a Michelin star chef.
The once hectic scene was now intensely static, like a rubber band at breaking point. The birds beady eye drilled into mine asking lots of questions. These were all answered at once when I took a sip of my depleted tea reserve. The bird flew to the other side of the patio, escaping the perceived threat.

The peace once more established, I carried on reading my mulchy paper. Several minutes passed and I glanced up again. The snail had performed a Lazareth, and was casually sliding
away from the scene. A very slow but miraculous escape. The bird did not dare approach, the tea loving scarecrow obliviously taking care of that.

I was watching the 'Great British Menu' the other day and noted that someone had decided to cook 'wild' snails from his garden. The traditional French 'escargot' cooking method involves Court Bouillon which is typically a heady mixture of white wine, water, shallots and many herbs. Once cooked they are then served with a garlic/herb butter mix.
I am not sure whats worse, being boiled alive by a cursing chef or eaten alive by our feathered friends. I have never sampled snail, and certainly did not want to eat this creature after it had so bravely won its freedom. I was quite happy with Marmite on my toast.