The Pork Pie Press

The Anniversary by Robin E. H. Ove

2012-02-22T03:48:00.005-08:00

Her Story:

After all this time, there have been plenty of been theres and done that. Special, romantic anniversaries carefully choreographed and orchestrated for just the two of us. This year, we wanted to remember our wedding day simply, and with no sitters available on that particular night, we ended up taking our youngest, Sam, to celebrate with us. We decided on a newish restaurant downtown, which boasted a reputation of having a flair for local ingredients.

We took our time reviewing the extensive wine list before choosing a French Pinot Noir from Bourgogne to pair with my lamb and my husband’s petite steak. As we waited for the main course, we indulged in sherried mussels with curry cream and crusty bread whilst talking a bit about our day, our lives together. Sam munched on bread, perusing the menu for something he might like. He can be a bit of a fussy eater but normally finds something that suits, although that night, he seemed more fidgety than usual. I gently placed my hand on his, “Be still.”

His Story:

Sigh. I can’t believe they made me come here. This restaurant is dark and has lots of old people in it. I am sure there is nothing for me to eat. I skipped soccer, had to get all washed and dressed up. Are you kidding? All this, just for dinner?

Ordering food takes Mom and Dad forever. “What about this? What about that?” It drives me crazy. What takes so much effort to decide? Do they have macaroni and cheese or not is all I need to know. I keep wiggling just to stay awake. “Be still,” they say. Yawn. At least I get a Shirley Temple, or they call it a Roy Rogers for boys. It's silly to have different names, but I really like the red cherry and bubbles. Finally, dinner comes out. It tastes pretty good. What a relief!

Mom and Dad do a lot of talking about weddings and anniversaries and I remember when my cousin got married. There was lots of dancing and fun music. I can’t see my parents being that young and partying like that.

The car is cozy and warm on the way home and I fall asleep in the back seat. Dad carries me upstairs to bed. As he kisses my cheek goodnight I tell him, “Happy Anniversary!” He smiles kind of funny, then he turns out the light and closes the door.

Robin grew up in coastal California and she says that her palette is derived from a lifetime of well prepared meals, fresh flavors and the pride of a "good fix." She writes a regular blog called What About The Food? where she shares her love of food, beautiful photographs, memories and recipes she holds dear.

Happy Valentines Day by Sam Day

2012-02-14T05:35:00.000-08:00

Dearest readers, did you know that you can submit cartoons and illustrations as well as poetry, films and of course, short stories?! You do now. This week's entry is from the Abraham Love blog and we are sharing it for no reason other than, we love you...

10 Kitchen Items I Love More Than My Husband by Anonymous

2012-02-10T02:22:00.000-08:00

I love the way my oven timer
Can always tell the time.
It's never late or burns my food
Giving a beep rather than a whine.

My linen dishcloth is soft to touch,
Stubble never scratches my face.
It keeps things dry, clean and tidy
Without walking mud all over the place.

The garlic crusher eats garlic too
But smells are easily wiped away.
It doesn't wake me in the middle of the night
With a stench of garlic-breath decay.

My meat mallet bashes at chicken breast,
It never stamps over my dreams,
It tenderises when I give it a whack
Without letting out little girl's screams.

Ok, so the toaster sometimes swallows my bread
But it never acts like an oaf,
It is warm and brings me a comforting snack
and it doesn't thieve the whole loaf.

My Henckels knife is never blunt,
It is never rude or crass.
It slices through, gets straight to the point
Without having to grab my ass.

I even love this wooden spoon,
It does some really hard graft.
It doesn't slob on the couch, grunting,
It doesn't embarrass me playing daft.

Then there's my whisk, my scales, a spatula
But what else should I pick?
It has got to be my skillet,
Its oiliness doesn't make me sick.

What I'm looking for is someone like my blender,
A man that's smooth and refined.
This one has reached its expiry date
And it gets stinkier all the time.

What I love most lives in my freezer,
Coming out when the moment is right.
Showing variety, depth and flavor,
They don't swill beer and start petty fights.
They bring me chocolate, escort me to movies,
They are the perfect [GENTLE]men.
They don't get awkward when I'm crying...
Come here Jerry, kiss me Ben!

Because she is still married, the author of this poem would understandably like to remain anonymous but you can contact her via the comments form below. If you would like permission to reprint the poem elsewhere, email us at theporkpiepress[at]gmail.com and we will ask her nicely for you.

For The Soul That Hungers by James Murphy

2012-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

For the soul that hungers,
Everything is food.

There is food for love,
Which may cook long and slow at low temperature;

Or there is food to fuel passion
Which may flare up like flame in the pan

To be quickly consumed
And as quickly forgotten.

Then there is food with which to poison one’s enemies,
Which may taste sweet at first,

But which, over time, proves indigestible,
Bitter, fatal as feigned friendship.

There is food that is private, intimate, healing,
That one eats alone on uneventful days,

That one sets before oneself upon an unsophisticated table,
Like a confession before a priest:

Such food is simple, has an honest bearing,
Wears no outward sign of show,

And yet, like the solitude in which one eats it,
Nourishes to the depths and makes one strong again.

Then there is food to feast one’s eyes upon,
And share with a host of one’s brothers and sisters;

Such food comes full of colour, spices and herbs,
Appearing in full sail, over the horizon of history,

In ships ancient and modern – above all, exotic -
From the Mediterranean and the East;

Such food arrives without warning on the palate,
Burns like a torch in the dark,

Or a new sun in an old sky;
Invades our shortest days and long funereal nights;

Such food re-ignites a fire in the eyes
And in the belly of those whose vitality it stokes anew,

And whose broken hearts it re-stocks like empty shelves,
And whose houses it transforms into grand reception rooms;

Such food spreads itself across the table
As if the heart itself were a market-place

On the first warm day of Spring -
A piazza buzzing with the sound of wit and earthly wisdom,

A meeting-place where towns and cities harmonised
And proud families held each other in high esteem.

And such food may taste dangerous;
May be like a visiting troupe whose daring acts outrage us,

Entertain us almost against our will,
Drag us onto the dance-floor:

Like a gypsy,
Such food dances upon the palate and makes the senses swoon.

….No, for the soul that hungers
Everything is food.

But all these foods begin with a plate:
An empty plate - which the soul is -

And which must needs be presented by an appetite
Earned by the hard work of love;

Must needs have ploughed its dark brown fields
And sowed its seeds in lonely rain,

Tilled its dull soil in dry, arid months
Tended and protected its fragile shoots against the frost;

Then waited, waited… waited upon as the constellations shift
And moons grow full and thin again;

Waited until its hunger is grown sharper than
The new moon’s blade that cuts a summer night.

For the soul to enjoy its food,
It must be hungry. No: more….

- It must be starving.
Only the starving soul is spurred to love.

Born in 1957, James Murphy grew up in the suburbs of South London. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of East Anglia at Norwich and since then has worked in literary fields such as teaching and journalism. During the 80s, he lived in Tuscany, which inspired a beautiful play about the romantic poets, Byron and Shelley. His two plays are called, 'The Poets' and 'Disposophobia' and he has also written two collections of poetry, 'The Misanthropist's Secret Love Life' and 'Wrongdoing'. He currently resides in Hampshire, UK and you can read an interview with him at The Heretic's Press.

Harry Potter Cooks - Foodie Fan Fiction by Jeanne Horak-Druiff

2012-01-25T03:50:00.000-08:00

Cory Ryan for Eye Candy Photography

“Come on, Harry!” exclaimed Hermoine. “I knew that going to Hagrid's cabin before afternoon classes was a mistake! We can’t possibly get back in time for the new professor’s class now.” There was a slightly manic glint in her eye that always made the boys uncomfortable. The last time they’d seen it was when Gilderoy Lockhart first came to teach at Hogwarts, which was hardly surprising as the new professor was rumoured to be even more swashbuckling that Lockhart. Harry looked at Ron, rolled his eyes, and they continued to dawdle along behind Hermoine, examining the box that Hagrid had given them. It was some sort of puzzle – nothing was ever simple with Hagrid – and he had carved into it the words Fry, poach, scramble or boil – but first to solve this you must toil!

“What do you think it means?” asked Ron. “I mean, ‘scramble’ could mean that we have to climb up somewhere high. And ‘poach’ means we might have to steal something from Slytherin or… or… I don't know.”

Harry didn't reply - his mind was focused on next week's Squidditch game. After the EU had declared Quidditch an unsafe game for anybody under the age of 25, Hogwarts had been forced to disband its Quidditch teams and Harry sorely missed the thrill of the game. The replacement, Squidditch, was safer but not nearly as much fun: teams of students competing to cook the most tender calamari, using only magic. Harry didn't like the smell or taste of calamari - not to mention the awful stench when things went wrong. He was just wondering what to make for the big match next week when he was cruelly yanked back to reality by a blow to the head, followed by some rather apologetic flapping and hooting.

“Pigwidgeon!!” yelled Ron, “You clumsy bird!! You nearly knocked Harry over!” Pigwidgeon hooted again, rather huffily, and made her weary way to the Owlery. Ron bent down to pick up the parcel. It contained the usual array of stuff - a hideous, chunky sweater knitted with a great deal of love my Mrs Weasley, a long letter, and some food - including a string of sausages. “What good are those?” lamented Ron. “I mean, we get food, we don't have to make our own!” Still grumbling, he proceeded to read the letter out loud. “Blah blah blah... ‘and don't forget Great-Aunt Winnifred's birthday - it's nearly the end of the month, you know!’ Where does she get this stuff from?” said Ron, shaking his head in despair as they entered the main Hogwarts building, just in time to meet their new Charms teacher.

Hermoine skipped into the classroom ahead of them. Skipped?? Clearly, something was up. What was up became apparent when their teacher entered the room. He was male. He was young. He was dressed in khakhi shorts and he was sporting a handsome tan. “Hello, class!” he boomed. “My name is Tertius Van der Toor. While Prof Flitwick is on sabbatical, I'll be taking your Charms classes!” Rather a lot of the girls in the class seemed to be rather flustered and blushing furiously. Harry turned to Hermoine to poke fun at them and was horrified to find her staring at Prof Van der Toor with the same adulation as the other girls. It was going to be a long class. “Right,” boomed the professor, “Let me tell you a bit about myself. I am a South African wizard and I'm going to start by teaching you some of the charms you need to live in the veldt in Africa.” All the girls began feverishly taking notes. Harry was still trying to figure out Hagrid's puzzle. “You must never forget that Africa is a harsh place. I remember well the times I'd go out hunting with my trusty Limpopo Ringtail, Jock, and we'd be out there for days with nothing but rocks for pillows, the stars for a ceiling and our, ahem, considerable skill as hunters to keep body and soul together.”

“What the heck's a Limpopo Ringtail?” asked Ron to no-one in particular.

“It's a kind of magical hunting crocodile,” hissed back Hermoine, “Don't you ever do any extra reading??”

Cory Ryan for Eye Candy Photography

“Let's start with this one, class. Picture the scene. You're tired and cold and hungry. You've been hunting all day with your trusty Ringtail, and finally you've managed to bag a springbok with your crossbow. But the last thing you want to do is prepare the damn thing. So what you need is a spell to get it from carcass to casserole without wasting too much time. That's why I perfected this little charm.” With this, Van der Toor spun around and yelled "carbonarum!!" in the general direction of a large chunk of wood that was doing duty as a doorstop. In an instant, the wood was a glowing chunk of charcoal - ashy on the outside and glowing red within. Just perfect to sizzle some steaks on. And as if on cue, Van der Toor produced some marshmallows and sticks and invited the class to enjoy the advantages of having an instant log fire in the classroom.

Everyone surged forward - everyone, that is, except Harry. Inspiration had suddenly struck. “Ron! What was that your mother said in the letter - about Aunt Winnipeg or something?”

“It's Winnifred, actually,” said Ron, “And she reminded me about her birthday at the end of the month.”

“Exactly! The end of the month! Don't you remember that spell that Hagrid taught us in our first year? Let me think now... get the pronounciation right... Eh - oh - meh - oh - teh...” And as if my magic (hah!) Hagrid's puzzle box opened up.

“What is it, what is it?” asked Ron as Harry slowly opened the lid.

“It's, well, an egg,” said Harry flatly.

“Maybe a phoenix egg? Or a dragon egg??”

“No, just a chicken egg,” said Hermoine, who had torn herself away from the professor to come and see what they were doing and was now peering over Harry's shoulder.

“All that drama - for an egg??” wailed Ron.

“You three back there!” boomed Van der Toor again, “What do you think you're doing?”

“We were just..." started Hermoine when he cut her off.

“Nobody plays the fool in my classes! All three of you - out! 50 demerits for Griffyndor and no dinner for the three of you! Off you go - get to your common room and stay there!”

“But professor, it was all my fault...” Harry began.

“Now, now Potter, I won't have you playing the martyr in front of your friends. Off you go - all three of you - before I unleash another bushveldt spell!”

Cory Ryan for Eye Candy Photography

Sitting in the common room, dejectedly, half an hour later while everyone else was trooping down to another fabulous Hogwarts dinner, Hermoine and Ron were still bickering about whose fault it was that Prof Van der Toor had noticed them at the back of the class. Harry was looking speculatively at Hagrid's egg. “Ron”, he asked, “did you say your mum sent you sausages?”

“Yes,” said Ron, “Why?”

“Well, I was just thinking... you have sausages, I have Hagrid's egg, and Hermoine, you always have some bread stashed away for toasting over the fire with tea. Maybe we could, you know, give Van der Toor's spell a try and get ourselves some dinner. Now let's see... if we put the bread down there, break the egg over it like this... yes, that's right Ron, the sausages over there... Now stand back!” The other two needed no further invitation and dived behind the largest of the sofas as Harry aimed his wand directly at the plate and yelled, "CARBONARUM!!"

There was rather a lot of smoke and some unsettling sizzling noises, but when the smoke cleared they were faced with a steaming plate of fried egg, toasted bread and ever-so-slightly blackened pork sausages. “Aaaaaah, just like dad used to make in the back garden on summer evenings,” said Ron as he munched happily on a sausage.

“Very nice, Harry” said Hermoine as she mopped up her perfectly runny yolk with a toast soldier, "But why does everything have that greenish-yellow hue to it?"

“Umm, I don't know,” admitted Harry, “I suspect that I still have to learn the PhotoShopicus spell if I really want to get the hang of this lot...”

Jeanne Horak-Druiff is a born-and-bred South African who has been living permanently in London since 2002. Her internationally recognised blog CookSister! has appeared on the Times Online's list of top 50 food blogs in the world and Saveur's 55 top global food blogs list. She is also a four-time winner of the Best South African Food Blog category in the South African Blog Awards. Her writing has been published in National Geographic’s 500 Food Journeys and 500 Secret Journeys, and Foodies of the World, as well as various magazines. She is also a regular speaker at blogging, writing and photography workshops and conferences in Europe and South Africa. Her blog grew out of a weekly newsletter home to friends and family but now encompasses her three obsessions: food, travel and photography.

No Reservations by Elizabeth Pizzinato

2012-01-18T05:47:00.000-08:00

Damn, it’s cold outside. And the last thing I want to do is go to the grocer and see what kind of meal I can eke out with my few remaining euros. Instead, I decide to walk past my favourite restaurant. It’s called Pandemonio and I know, without ever having slurped a single strand of pasta from the steaming plates I can see from the window, that it’s the best food I’ll never eat. How, you might wonder, am I so sure? So confident in my assessment? It comes from a carefully honed theory I have about restaurants, one that has been fine-tuned during these past few years of deprivation. My methodology is always the same. I begin by carefully examining the menu. It has to feature the foods I would love to eat, that I can remember from family dinners long past. Nothing fancy, mind you. Simple, fresh, traditional is best. Then I look at the prices. We’re not talking about bargain basement here; I understand the value of a good meal, though it’s been years since I’ve paid for one. Something mid-range, somewhere I could take a date and feel generous without being excessive. Then the final ingredient. The restaurant must have a park bench in very close proximity. Because, as far as I’m concerned, how you feel after the meal is just – no, strike that – even more important than how you feel during it. Satisfied, sure. But something more. Some kind of alchemy that turns your meal and all of its sum parts – the service, the setting, the food – into a memorable experience. And every person who leaves Pandemonio has that happy daze that tells me they do it right. Although I may not eat at Pandemonio tonight, my vantage point from the bench will nevertheless satisfy more than my few euros ever could.

Elizabeth Pizzinato is a Canadian food blogger with a fiery passion for cooking. She is the author of Roast Duck and a Big Gooey Cake, a blog liberally spiced with musings on local flavours, unusual ingredients, wacky and wonderful cookbooks, and the joy that gathering around a feast can bring. Find her on twitter @duckandcake

Granny's Doggy Bag by Hayley Harland

2012-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

Resting upon an antiqued chair in a ground floor flat in a chocolate box village, lives the smelliest bag in the world. The suede is golden, Christian Dior don’t you know, what can these fine aromas be? Surely, dipping your hand into it should resemble thumbing through the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair, revealing a posh perfumery donned by Kate Moss and the like. I wish this were the case. Among hearing aides and hairbrush, under wallet and keys, wrapped up in a napkin is the source of this sleaze.

A family in Crouch End has a similar problem emanating from somewhere unidentified within their Passat. Samantha unpacks using the kids’ fishing net, not yet dry from rock pooling to avoid any contamination of her fair, city-girl skin. With shallow breathing and clenched teeth, she makes very clear her regret for ever having agreed to go on this soggy holiday as she uses a bucket and spade to barbecue-tong over the larger items to her husband John, who then sniffs each one to check for the stench. Has one of the kids had an accident in their sleeping bag? Did packing up the tent in the rain galvanize it to an early death by virulent mould? John begins to curse the state-of-the-art grip on the soles of his wellington boot; one groove could easily be hiding a tiny yet pungent nugget of sheep’s poo on the sly. He simply can’t tell, the seven hours spent in this traveling cesspit was enough to melt anyone’s nostrils rendering them inaccurate.

Two weeks earlier, Edna is putting on the finishing touches to her outfit, a seed pearl necklace purchased by her then fiancé in Singapore, 1946. Her favourite way to spend an afternoon is in a restaurant, frittering away the remains of her pension on her grandchildren and excellent food. Today, the next generation are also coming for lunch, Maisy and the toddler, “Oh what is its name?”, she shrugs and won’t remember. She applies her lipstick so she can knowingly leave pink kisses on their little cheeks and pops it into the soft suede tote her neighbours so cruelly tutted when first acquired. “I’m 93,” She thinks out loud, “I’ve lived long enough, if I want a designer handbag, I’m jolly well allowed one.”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

“I’ll have the moules marinière please,” Edna requests with perfect pronunciation. She orders this only when she is feeling forgetful, as it is the one thing that can transport her back to the start of her life in Paris, the 1920s. She will see her mother’s soft fox stole draped across boney shoulders and smell the sweet Crème de Menthe breath of her mother’s intimidating lover, the artist Léger. She knows that if it is possible to go back to the beginning in her mind, she can compartmentalize these memories into the tubes and cubes of his paintings, like a museum, with the slippery linseed oil from his studio helping to lubricate her brain.

“I want mules mermaidair too!” Maisy pleads.

“I don’t think that’s really appropriate for a little girl, I mean, she could be allergic.” says her mother, the mousy in-law whose name Edna cannot remember. “How about bangers and mash instead, eh?”

“Nonsense! The girl must try!”, cries Edna, thwacking her walking stick to the ground so fiercely that Maisy felt the ground shake beneath her. The in-law recoils in shock. The restaurant chatter retreats under a hush. That settles that.

The mussels arrive for Edna and her favourite great-grandchild, marmite on toast for the toddler. John tucks into his bangers and mash straight away with no sign of grace whilst the in-law woman begins to pick at her fillet steak, tweezering out every synapse of fat.

Maisy picks up a hard dark shell with her little fingers, examining this strange creature close to the eye. Much to her surprise, it is orange on the inside and seems to have furry brownish-green lips running from corner to corner of its mouth. If it could talk to her, its head would probably flap open like someone from Sesame Street. It reminds her of Elmo wearing a shiny purple bonnet.

Maisy’s mother subversively slaps her on the wrist and in a harsh whisper says, “Only common people eat with their fingers.” Maisy picks up her knife and fork and within moments the molluscs are clack-clacking together and garlicky jus is splicking all over the tablecloth. Every time she attempts to plunge the fork into one of them, it just sinks below the others, pushing the rest over to the other side of the bowl as if they are seasick sailors following gravity when a wave rocks the boat. Then, in slow motion, a droplet of liquid rebounds from one mussel to the next – everyone can see where this is heading, half willing it to stop and half wanting it to carry on, just to see what might happen…

Maisy’s mother shrieks, “MY EYE!” and hyperventilates for a moment or two before she realises the sauce is only on her upper-cheek. As John leans forward with a napkin to wipe it away, her head darts back with a look of disapproving shock. No one is to ever touch her face, how unhygienic that would be, she wouldn’t even do that with her bare hands. So she heads to the bathroom to get cleaned up and Edna smiles, rather amused by it all.

With a nod Edna reassures, “It’s alright to use your hands now dear,” and Maisy is relieved she can finally start eating. She thinks that Granny Edna is kind and that she would rather live with her, even though she smells a bit like mothballs and stale bread. Maisy plucks the shellfish’s orange head from its bonnet and pops it straight into her mouth. She is delighted by how sweet it is and decides to see how many she can fit in her mouth before Mother comes back. She poises herself above the bowl, taking in all three of her favourite smells: the sea, then the starchy garlic and butter smell you get when you bake garlic bread in the oven and a new, unfamiliar sugary, metallic smell, a bit like when tinned crab meat has just been opened for sandwiches.

It does no good for Granny Edna to sniff at her food, she lost her sense of smell in 1958 when the first batch of avian flu hit England. She’s a tough old bird and puts her survival into very old age down to that deadly virus. She lives by the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. Of course, her daily hobble to Costcutter isn’t exactly rife with peril, but when death comes knocking, she swears she’s not going without a fight.

A lack of smell is not without its problems. For instance, she often doesn’t recognise when food goes off and because taste and smell are so intrinsically linked she never finds out. She sometimes gets a slightly dicky tummy but apart from that, no sign of food poisoning. Her immunity must be pretty built up by now but it’s not pleasant for anyone who delves into her Frigidaire.

There is one thing however that can excite Edna’s senses and that is black pepper. She risks irritating her arthritic wrists by grinding it tenfold and smothering her plate in grainy powder. John near has a sneezing fit as the pepper cloud reaches him and has to go out to get some fresh air for a minute because the in-law woman – “Samantha, that’s it!” – is worried he might frighten the toddler.

Edna may not be able to taste or smell but she enjoys the mushroomy texture of the moule, biting through each layer to the organic middle. As the hotness of the pepper buzzes and tingles on her tongue, memories start to flick behind her eyes like a picture book. She tells everyone around the table of the first time her mother took her to her favourite restaurant in Paris and how she accidentally drank the lemon water meant for cleaning your hands, a story her grandson John has heard a thousand times.

With every bite she closely clings to the memory of what it is like to smell sea air. She sees her husband’s kind face and the windswept day in the early ’50s when they picked mussels at low tide, escaping the confines of post war rationing. They were both so fed up of offal and rhubarb and always having to be so careful, never letting anything go to waste. They would have to reuse dish upon dish until the original ingredient was at least a week old. But with an unlimited supply of mussels from nature, that day they dined like kings. They were the lucky ones, the alive ones who survived the war, they had each other and they had a perfect beach in Devon from which they could pick these gems.

As the conversation drifts from the shores of Devon to the state of the toddler’s nappy, Maisy spots something. Granny Edna checks that no one is looking, then, with a deft and very deliberate flick, she slides a mussel out of her bowl and onto her lap. She repeats this until her bowl is empty and then wraps them all up in her napkin. As she places the parcel into a fine suede bag, her eyes meet Maisy’s under the table. Edna puts a wrinkled and knobbly finger to her lips. Maisy knows this means she will have to keep a secret. Maisy remembers that when Granny’s canary called Mr Trimble died recently, she had been really sad, and she has the curious idea that perhaps Granny was taking the moule home as a pet.

They each say their goodbyes, Samantha enjoyed her fillet steak but wasn’t too keen on the lemon posset, John thought the service was excellent and the toddler was pleased with his marmite toast. As Maisy puts her arms around her boney little granny squeezing her tight, she realises that they are just about as small as each other and she wonders whether granny has some ‘growing up to do’ also.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The family had stopped off to see Granny Edna on their way to Cornwall. Now, a few days into their seaside summer holiday, Maisy spots a rock with the same glistening dark amethyst shells clinging to its face, hundreds of them! She picks them with her father, so excited about being able to find and cook her own food.

The clouds turn grey and eventually it is too cold to stay at the beach. Maisy is not quite tall enough to step into the car with ease so as she jumps up, the bucket tips and one of the mussels falls out and into a crevice between the seats. All the way back to the campsite she really tries to get at it but her little fingers just can’t reach. She wonders what will happen to this mussel in the back of the Passat. Knowing that she isn’t allowed a pet and doesn’t want to get into trouble, she will have to keep this a secret too. She is gladdened by the thought that every time she gets into the car in future, her shellfish friend will be there to greet her and happy and that she has saved one, before cooking and eating the rest.

And so the story boils down to a lonely mussel, now inhabiting Crouch End … and its relative in Granny’s handbag. Which one would I rather be? I’m not so sure. But at least, in the luxury of a designer pouch, mussel number two will occasionally be able to rub cheeks with golden suede as well as a ditsy fruitcake from last week’s coffee morning and an orange, blackened with age and growing a green beard. Rather an avante-garde crowd, you could say.

Hayley Harland started the PPP and has a food blog called The Delectable Diary where you can find plenty of recipes, reviews and culinary adventures.