Rumours of toilet paper hoarding reached me as talk of a lockdown began and I actually laughed. I thought it was so ridiculous that I took no notice. If shortages were going to happen then my first thought was of food, so I bought carrots, mushrooms, celery, pale ale and made a gigantic stew – casserole if you’re going to be posh – and froze it in handy portions. I felt smug; I was being the sort of efficient housewife I’d always hoped to be, but never was.
Encouraged by this success I went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients I needed to make a vaguely-Italian sauce that would be the base for all sorts of savoury dishes, but other people had had the same idea and tinned tomatoes had gone the same way as the Yeti, always searched for, sometimes glimpsed, but never found. Jars and cartons of pesto vanished at the same time as pasta, and flour followed hard on its heels so the hopes I had of making cakes Mary Berry would approve of disappeared – yet again, others had been more organised, more prepared.
I wasn’t going to be vanquished for I had seen an article in a magazine, ‘Making the most of Nature’s Bounty’ and I had a light-bulb moment – I would forage like our grandparents had done and make my own pesto.
I pushed aside the thought that my grandparents would never, ever have eaten such a thing, labelling it ‘foreign muck’ and pulling disgusted faces at the smell. I set off to the bottom of the garden and picked the wild garlic leaves that flourish there. I washed them, blanched them, found some ancient pine nuts, ground it all up and you can see the result. It doesn’t look too bad. It has a rustic, authentic look. The only problem is that it tastes … not very nice. I should have remembered the nettle soup I made a couple of years ago – that had the same sort of grassy taste to it.
I’m going to stop all this housewifely stuff and stick to what I’m good at, gathering words, polishing them, making them – if not good enough to eat – good enough to want a second helping.
