But recently, I've been flexing my culinary muscles. You may remember these at the beginning of this year? Whilst, we were perhaps a touch over enthusiastic and made too many, I've been enjoying popping the odd slice into a dish or two. I'm told they'll be good for awhile yet.
Last week, I had a dear friend over for dinner. I sorted out the mains and then scratched my head for the dessert. The next minute I'm throwing the fruit in my bowl into a pan with a good slosh of sherry and then suddenly, there's a crumble!
WTF?! Me? Made a dessert? From scratch!
I know. Who is this person in the Pink Fluffy Dressing Gown? I'm not sure I know her anymore.
I'm a bit perplexed at this. But I'm going with it. It feels quite fun really. The cooking part of it, if I'm honest, is made a lot easier by my new shiny toy - my dishwasher. This was a housewarming present by Dave (you see why I adore him so?). It's fantastic. I love it. It's like a magical cupboard - you putting dirty stuff in it and Hey Presto! they're clean! I knew how much I hated doing the dishes, but man, I never realised how much that hatred informed my cooking!
So, a couple of weeks ago I was in a large chain supermarket. It's a place I prefer not to go. I had to go for work purposes. While I was there, I noticed purple potatoes. Now, I like red-skinned potatoes like Desiree, best of all. I love the flavour and texture to the point where I don't peel said spuds. Granted, some of that is down to laziness. But given most of the nutrition in a spud is under the skin and I don't have enough roughage in my diet, I think there is a bit of sense there.
Anyway, yesterday, I worked up the courage to give these bad boys a go. It turns out they are indeed purple all the way through. With purple juice. I made wedges. Roasting them was interesting, it's hard to tell by just looking at them when dark purple goes crispy and isn't burning. To be honest, the eating of them wasn't that much to write home about. For all their purpleness, they tasted like normal spuds, but with the wrong colour.
I think they just mess with your head. They're purple, but don't taste purple. Or taste more...anything. It's just like a boring white potato...but purple. Dave poked the couple I left and refused to even try them. When I said that to him, he made an excellent point: we are programmed not to eat blue and purple food. Historically, they are a sign of foods that have become inedible or are poisonous.
I like blue berries and they're purple, so it's not that I can't or won't eat purple. Those spuds just didn't do it for me. Well, I tried them. But I won't be repeating the exercise any time soon.