2012. Twenty Twelve. Two thousand and twelve (no one says
that, it’s so unbrandable).
It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Well, not just any year but a
year with one extra day! It’s such a joy to be gifted with yet another day,
which doesn’t really mean anything at all when you remember that the mechanical
parts of our bodies don’t work in or take account of days or years. So you
haven’t really lived for another day at all; it was just another span of time
that was called something different.
What did you do with that extra non-day? I complained that I
had to be at work for another day with no thanks or praise and wondered whether
I should mention it to my boss so he could adjust my pay accordingly. A
colleague advised me against this and pointed out that, thanks to Queenie, we
would be getting an extra day off anyway. I couldn’t be arsed to work out
whether I would be better off, worse off or exactly the same, so I just shut up
and did some work.
In the middle section of the year, a miasma of happiness and
togetherness forcibly descended onto the UK
or maybe just London (I became very
London-centric at this point and often thought that “east, west” etc. on the
weather forecast was referring to Hackney and Shepherd’s Bush, not Norfolk and Cornwall ).
We all know what happened this year. Loads of big stuff;
stuff that everyone thought we would completely fuck up but actually
turned out rather well. When Jeremy Hunt had the bell ringing incident,
I thought that the Olympics had peaked before it had even begun but in actual
fact, the sports were really great too (and we were also treated to a second instance
of political-it-must-be-satire thanks to Boris dangling from a zip wire).
But forget about the Olympics and the Jubilee and the end of
the world that didn’t happen and the re-election of Obama and all that stuff
because none of it really matters. This wasn’t the year of Team GB (I bet
they’re really regretting their homage to Jimmy Savile now aren’t they?) or the Royals or the prank phone call or the president we
wish we had for ourselves; this was the year of….dum dum dum
Paul McCartney: the embarrassingly avuncular Beatle that
somebody (against the will of everyone in the UK )
expropriated for the benefit of, um, everyone in the UK .
I’m not going to slam him though because he is a brilliant,
brilliant musician and seems (as far as you can tell, which you never really
can) to be an okay kind of guy (not withstanding the Heather Mills years).
Caveat, caveat.
Finally, I should say that my basis for thinking Paul might
be a nice guy is thanks to his cameo in The Simpsons episode called “Lisa The
Vegetarian”.
It’s really, really good and I like the fact he takes a
realistic view of a meat-free life, rather than just bulldozing meat-eaters
with PETA pictures. The book is broken down into seasons (always helpful, so
you can incorporate the most plentiful and therefore, cheapest vegetables into
your meals), weeks (for each Monday) and meals (breakfast, packed lunch, lunch,
snack/side, dinner and dessert).
One such packed lunch caught my eye: the cheese and onion
sandwich. It uses goats’ cheese and cream cheese mixed together and sandwiched,
with caramelised red onion and rocket, between two slices of granary bread.
Caramelissssssanything makes me drool and I was craving a cheese toastie, so I
decided to sack off the goats cheese etc. and make a good old toastie with the
addition of caramelised onion.
 |
| Something so "sweaty" has never looked or tasted this good. |
Heat some oil in a frying pan and add half a sliced red
onion. Allow the onion to sweat. When it begins to wilt, add a quarter of a
teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and a little seasoning. Cook
for another 3 – 4 minutes.
 |
| I used edam cheese and made these in a normal toastie maker. |
It was divine. So, so lovely and I can still smell the
onions in the kitchen, which is a bloody good thing. So Paul, you are forgiven
and will be allowed to return to our screens limitlessly in 2013.
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