If you’re one of those people who has guffawed at Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop.com lifestyle blog but has secretly spent hours hunting around it, I’ll bet you’ve read this week’s perfect guide to Sunday cooking. Let me take you away from the sublime life of a Hollywood A-lister – complete with dark turkey meat-meatballs and spaghetti – to the ridiculous life of the Nixdminx and my Sunday lunch Kitchen Nightmare…
I’m always waxing lyrical about cooking and it’s never a hassle to have people over for a meal – it’s such a nice way to relax. And so, I was looking forward to catering for my closest friends tomorrow until yesterday, when I sent a round robin text to confirm my guests and was agog at the dietary requirements that came back in big capital letters; no beef or pork from one camp, vegetarian from another, no fish or potatoes from another and of course, there’s little old me; no wheat, no orange. And that’s without even having to coax the under 4s into eating anything resembling a vegetable.
Damn and blast, there goes my own special meat chilli for the grown ups and spag bol for the kids…it was the perfect solution, I’ve already made a base sauce which I blend for the kids to hide all the veg (onions, mushrooms, roasted peppers, tomatoes) and just add kidney beans and the hot spicy stuff for oldies. So I could have casually cooked the rice and spaghetti et voila…
On to Plan B. I perked myself up with a Caffe Nero latte (the strongest legal variety available on the high street) and was hyperventilating outside Sainsbury’s, hastily scribbling my shopping list. Sod it, I thought, I’ll just cater for the whole lot of those pesky blighters.
iPods are great for shopping and I danced around the aisles in a complete Bee Gees funk. £200 later and I’ve bought a rack of lamb, nut cutlets, salmon steaks – I even found wheat free Yorkshire puds – and will be on the hunt for some chicken today. I completely forgot to buy any vegetables but we’ve got loads and loads of juice, hundreds of real juice ice pops, plenty of exotic stinky cheese and lots of wine.
I’ll definitely be playing Happy Families tomorrow as it will be a case of match-the-face-to-the-dish, which will be quite a challenge after quaffing a Bloody Mary or two (the only way to cook on Sunday!).
Bye, I’m off to marinade everything, make the Bloody Mary Mix and hope and work out the complex cooking schedule.
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