Chocolate Pudding and Clotted Cream

My Monday night dinner of vegetable soup required pudding.

I can not stand Monday night, it's just nothing. It doesn't have that loathsome feeling of Sunday night that it's followed by Monday or that light anticipation of Thursday night, when I contest the weekend actually begins.

Monday night just happens, you watch some crap and then wake up and it's just that bloody workhorse of the week, Tuesday.

Monday night is always my excuse for eating something diabolically rich or getting favourite take away.

Last night was half a chocolate pudding and Cornish clotted cream from the Co-op. Yes I got a bit of indigestion and frankly a blood sugar crash before bed isn't that great, but totally worth it. 

I enjoyed every second of it with that satisfaction that only saying piss off to something that had it coming brings.

A vengeful pudding.

The Enduring Charm of Fairly Shit Chinese Food

I like to consider my tastes as fairly well developed through dedicated and adventurous eating. I couldn't tell you the last time I ate at a chain restaurant and I am rather fond of offal. Anthony Bourdain I am not but nor am I a supporter of Mister McDonald's work.


The one glaring oversight of my otherwise flawlessly pretentious tastes is an absolute weakness for shit Chinese food. I have never seen a prawn cracker I didn't want to eat and if you want to see something pretty impressive ask me to prove that I can eat half my weight in spring rolls. And no I don't mean the nice fragrant ones with the freshly shredded fillings and served with a nice vinegar. I mean the over fried ones about the size of my pinky filled with something that I presume is meat only as it is clearly not a vegetable. on the side I like that neon red sauce that tastes mainly of neon. Beef with, what's this? Blackbean sauce! Inspired.


Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I do appreciate that Chinese food in all of its complexity is a thing of joy and beauty resembling not at all the westernised sweet n' sour muck to which I am referring. I adore the fiery and numbing flavours of Szechuan cuisine and I thrill at the very mention of Xi'an noodles. 


I can mark on an atlas the provinces of my favourite Chinese dishes but the lure of such revered and time honoured dishes such as 'Spicy Chicken Wings' remain. 


I never crave soggy pizza or crappy pho, but for some reason that must emerge from the reptilian and uncritical part of my brain I have days which just have to involve chow mein.


I am a mystery to myself.