The Trickiness of Rice and My Life of Nuts

'Is Mrs Poo still alive?' I asked Andy as he brought me a cup of tea in bed this morning.

Saturdays are our only 'cup of tea in bed' days, as Monday to Friday we are up early and getting ready for work, and Sunday is our up early and down the allotment day. Thoughtfully, he had brought me peppermint tea, following the Mexican extravaganza we had for dinner last night. I don't do spicy food very well. I think I have a delicate constitution hidden beneath my stern exterior.

'Of course she's still alive,' Andy laughed. 'She's had a peck at some food and knocked over her water bowl.'
This is a good sign. When a chicken starts knocking over their water bowl, you know they're starting to get a bit of their previous feistiness back.

We spent a companionable hour putting the world to rights about various issues (including the meanings of two bizarre dreams about 'Mamma Mia' and 'Turner and Hooch' and a gorilla hitting Andy with a breadstick) before getting up for breakfast eggs and reading newspapers. Andy administered medication to Poo, and then I thought, I know, I'll give her some left-over rice from last night.

The chickens like cooked rice. Mrs Poo ate some rice. Well, she decanted it bit by bit from the bowl and spread it around the floor of the cage. She banged it about with her beak. I think she ate some. If she didn't, at least she got a bit of occupational therapy from it.

I always do too much rice. Last night's Mexican meal was a family do, with myself and Andy, Heather, Chris and Leane and grandchild-on-the-bake making her presence felt via the power of morning sickness. I did chilli con carne, chicken Fajitas, tacos, tortilla chips and dips. I did rice to go with the chilli. The rice packet said 'Allow 50g dry rice for each person.'

So 5 x 50= 250g rice. I weighed it out. I thought, as I always do, that doesn't look nearly enough rice, so I bunged in a bit extra. And then I didn't eat any rice, neither did Chris, so we ended up with a great bowl left over.

But as I said, the chickens like it so that's their dinner sorted for today.

When I was shopping for the meat for this meal, I started having the same 'Yuk, meat,' feelings that I developed when I was expecting Heather. Perhaps I'm having pseudo-morning sickness out of sympathy for Leane, I don't know. But as I looked at the beef and the chicken lined up in the butchers, I thought, I can feel a vegetarian urge coming on again.

We eat around three vegetarian meals a week already. I only started eating meat again because my GP wrote me a prescription for iron tablets a while back because he thought it possible I might be borderline anaemic. I thought his diagnosis sounded a bit vague, but then I didn't want to take iron tablets because of their constipatory effect. I looked up daily iron requirements and decided a pork chop and a dollop of spag bol a week would rectify my possible borderline anaemic effect.

But now? Well, I'm being drawn to the Complete Vegetarian Cookbook again.

It's funny how tastes change, isn't it? Sometimes you like something, and then you don't?

And that my only food constant in life has been nuts.