Smokey the Magnificent

Today, in view of the impending house-move, I cleaned out the pantry. This is an event filled with wonder and horror at the best of times, but this time it was particularly exciting. For one thing, Flatmate Man had left behind a number of items, allowing me to play the little game of “Did I buy this two years ago and forget, or did Flatmate Man leave it here as a long-game practical joke?”

For another, I cleaned out my vitamins. I was just going to biff them, but then I thought they might do some good on the garden, returning much-needed if slightly stale nutrients to the soil. I’m not entirely sure what effect breastfeeding-incompatible women’s multis, expired St John’s Wort and thermogenic slimming tablets (it was an angstier epoch) will have on a tomato plant, but I watered them in well and added some four-year-old sheets of nori by way of a mulch, and we shall see. My plants get a fair dollop of human food as it is - coffee, swished-out cream cartons, the odd bit of breastmilk I left in the fridge. I was tempted this year to dig placenta powder under one of my pumpkin seedlings, just to see if it would outperform its fellows, but it seemed like a waste.

Yesterday I went to the new house with Father and sundry aunts. We explored the orchard a little further than I had before. It is pretty awesome. There is a bath lying dead by a tree, and an old green wringer-type washing machine, and what looks like the fuselage of a small plane but presumably isn’t. There is a shed full of awesome apple crates that I want to pinch and make into a bookshelf, only I can’t because they’re used for, you know, storing apples. There is a fig tree in the back yard, and the beginnings of a fence put conveniently close to the veggie garden, so I can grow my runner beans up it. There are plum trees and apple trees and a white lamb and a brown one. It will be nice, I think.

What colour would you want to be, if you were a lounge in an open-plan area next to a kitchen in a cottage? We have to paint over a very bright green, and the only thing Helpdesk Man and I have come up with is cream, which is hardly going to set the Thames on fire. Thoughts? And does anyone know of any really nice posters based on either typography or classic literature, to go on the wall?

Also: tempest prognosticators. I want one.

Helpdesk Man and I have been experiencing a bout of penury. Ever the helpful spouse, I got out Living Off the Smell of an Oily Rag in New Zealand from the library and read a bunch of thrift blogs. The results have been largely unhelpful.

I don’t know what I expected, really. There are only so many variations on the save-more spend-less theme, and I’ve been baking my own bread and using cloth nappies (not personally, you understand; for the pigs) since the dawn of time anyway. I think I was secretly hoping to find a website that suggested “Look in the linen cupboard; I popped a tenner in it last time I was around”; but nope.

Tips, I have found, can be categorised thusly:

The Privileged: “Go out for lunch instead of dinner. Share an entree. If you’re really worried about paying your beach house decorator, order water”. Any helpful suggestions to sell one’s boat or to eliminate 200 or so television channels also come under this category.

The Naive: “Maybe your mother could watch the children while you take on a part-time job”. “Try asking your landlord for a reduction in the rent”. (I’ve considered ringing mine and saying “Will you charge us half-rent if we actually keep the place clean?”; the pig sometimes bargains this way and, while it shouldn’t work, sometimes it does.) “Knit potholders to sell at craft fairs”. “Perhaps a friend will let you house-sit for a few months”. “Why not dust off that novel you’ve been working on?” “Start a blog. You can make a lot of money, like Pioneer Woman!” Etc.

The Bleedin’ Obvious: “Buy cheaper cuts of meat”. Well, by gum. You mean to say they cost less than the expensive cuts?

The Frankly Sad: “To save on water, stand in the shower and turn it on for 10 seconds to wet yourself; better yet, dampen up by using the dregs of water from glasses people have left lying around the lounge. Turn shower off. Tip a packet of Borax over your head and rub in vigorously; this way if you lie around the kitchen at night you can also deter roaches. Borax doesn’t clean body odour very effectively, so you’ll need to use a little elbow grease, but that’s okay; it will save that costly gym membership! Turn the shower on again for 20 seconds to wash off the blood and Borax. If you keep a bucket over the plughole, you can use the runoff as a nutritious soup. Turn the shower off again. Using this method, my husband was able to save 60 gallons of water a day, before he shot himself.”

I also found a tip by a woman who swore you could make stew by putting boiling water, chopped veggies and bits of meat into a thermos. I doubt it.

The Vaguely Illegal: These tips involve saving pennies at the expense of by-laws or one’s fellow-man: in other words, cheating. One should, apparently, check the stamps on all one’s mail, so that if the cancellation stamp missed its mark, one can cackle with glee and go write a letter to one’s aunt, on The Man. Similar tips include dumpster diving (which I would totally do, incidentally); selling home-baked goods in defiance of food health and safety laws; pretending to one’s electricity provider that a rival electricity provider offered one a better deal, and if the first electricity provider does not top that deal one will pack one’s toaster and be gone; and contesting perfectly valid speeding tickets.

The Stanky: I probably shouldn’t get too precious about these ones, because let’s face it, I do use homemade deodorant and haven’t looked shampoo in the face in years. But I did come across one tip in which a lady told us how she collects roadkill, places it on a rack in her yard with a tray underneath, and as the maggots drop off, feeds them to her chickens. And well, for the record, I don’t do that.

The Brag: These are not in fact tips. These are unreproducible, jealousy-inducing anecdotes about someone’s sweet haul from the thrift store/dump/wealthy neighbor. “I enter competitions, and the other day I won $500 worth of free skincare products just by writing a sonnet to the T-zone”. “I found a $50 bill in the carpark”. “Today in the Salvation Army I found a set of limited-edition Disneyland teaspoons, a Moby wrap that was only slightly puked on, and a ten-dollar bill in the pocket of an old fur coat”. “I attended a taxidermy closing-down auction and got all my Christmas presents for a steal”.

The Ideological: Sometimes the tips themselves aren’t bad, but one is left with the distinct impression that the tipster isn’t so much wanting to save you money as make you a better person. “I became a vegetarian for financial reasons and my colon has never been lither. Best of all, I’m not participating in the brutal slaughter of our cloven-footed friends; their blood does not spurt in my dreams. You too can be murder-free for the price of a cube of tofurkey”. “Cloth diapering isn’t just better for my wallet; every child in disposables creates a pile of dirty nappies as tall as the Empire State Building, which will stand tall long after his meagre achievements have been forgotten and his phthlate-ridden corpse has festered under a parking lot”. “I started eating only rice on Mondays to empathise with the plight of the Haitians. Not only do I save a ton, but it gives me a spiritual connection to these people who I bet you don’t care about, because you don’t eat rice on Mondays. Do you? Do you care about the Haitians? Say it with RICE!”

There are doubtless other categories. After perusing these for a few days, we were still not rich. I decided to write my own list of frugality tips. Of course, just like building your own home (which the Oily Rag book blithely suggests you do if you are, and I quote, “handy with a hammer”), it turns out it’s not as easy as it looks. After much thought, I have come up with only one tip, and I give it to you now.

CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT: Arson.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Donations gratefully accepted.

1. A month or so ago I was downing my hideous fermented cod liver oil tablets, while my sister-in-law watched with great interest. Then she said “Man, those are big, no wonder you swallow them one at a time”. And my brain went “?!”, and I realised that in several years of swallowing supplements designed to make me clever and sleekit, swallowing more than one at a time had never occurred to me. Since then my life has changed dramatically.

2. As of Tuesday, the Auxiliary Pig is no longer tangled up in his umbilical cord. This is a Good Thing. Better yet was the ultrasound tech, who upon seeing “3x nuchal cord” as the reason for re-scanning snorted loudly and kept up a muttered commentary through the proceedings, along the lines of “Never in all my years working here have I seen such a frivolous reason for re-scanning; I don’t know what these people are thinking; too much information, I call it, just causes needless stress, she should have just kept her mouth shut; ridiculous!”, which endeared her to me greatly. Better yet, she had to take a bunch of photos of the Auxiliary Pig’s face and neck to prove that it was unobstructed, and she let us keep them. A bit chinless in a few pics, but promising; he looks a bit like the snortlepig, if she had a more transluscent skull.

3. I am being totally productive. Upon realising I could have fewer than ten weeks to go I flew into a panic and started actually sewing some of the fabric which has been sitting smugly in my sewing niche; which, as it turns out, is the way to get things done. I have currently completed a winter pinafore for the pig, a pair of rather dishy Ottobre rompers for the Auxiliary Pig, a knitted baby hat I made up myself, and a small, short-sleeved shirt. I am now in the process of sewing another pair of rompers from a pair of hand-me-down trou, some winter pyjamas for the pig, a knitted kimono top, and a mei tai. (Yes, all at once; apparently completing one project before starting another is beyond my level of cunning.) After that will come another winter dress for the pig, a ring sling, a sleep sack, a knitted aviator cap, a coat for the pig, and as many more baby clothes as I can churn out before the Auxiliary Pig arrives and demands to be dressed.

Unfortunately our camera is lost, so I cannot show you the gorgeousness of the things I have made. Here’s a water buffalo, though. Just imagine I have harvested its wool and made it into a cunning little vest.

4. Helpdesk Man has officially started the Atkins diet. We have now spent our life savings on slabs of meat and surprising quantities of produce, and he has taken to hoarding his Vitamin C tablet to eat after dinner as a truly pitiful substitute for dessert. Tonight he and Flatmate are out, so I am taking the opportunity to make a Lime Marshmallow Pie in their absence. Ha. (It’s classier than it sounds. Not only do you make the marshmallow topping yourself, from scratch, but you also make the graham crackers for the biscuit base. Also, it has limes in it.)

Helpdesk Man and Flatmate Man have been discussing little else but the carb content of mustard and Brussels sprouts for the last week, and yesterday Helpdesk Man announced he was going to spend his birthday voucher on a set of bathroom scales. I am clearly the manliest person currently living in our house…. not counting the pig, who it turns out can do the splits. How? She certainly didn’t get it from me. I could never do so much as a handstand or cartwheel, and my childhood suffered accordingly.

5. I have discovered the most awesome blog. I read it all. I Am Baker. Lookit that hydrangea cake.

6. It is surprisingly hard to find good, free knitting patterns for baby vests online. Anyone? I want one that buttons on at least one shoulder and down one side, so I do not have to pull it over the head of the pig and give it flashbacks to the childbirth experience and stunt its tiny psyche; also one that is appropriately manly, attractive, easy to knit, and did I mention free? No luck so far; very annoying. I’m tempted to wing it, but last time I did that I ended up with a hat I should probably donate to the preemie ward, if it has a box for spectacularly un-fussy preemies with no dress sense; and I knit so slowly that an unwearable item is no small matter.

7. This may reveal unfortunate things as regards my character, but I have come to the realisation that people who blog about loving their husbands freak me all the way out. Mother pointed me in the direction of a crafty person with a blog she thought I might like; said person lives in our town and Mother feels we might Get Along. I thought so too, until I read her blog, and what is it filled with? “I love my husband”. Like, every third post. And now I can never meet her, because she’s my age (and indeed, her husband used to be in my class at school), and all I’ll be able to think when I look at her is “Heh. You love your husband”.

I mean, naturally I am glad that she does; and had she stuck to discussions of weaving and sewing, I would have probably assumed that it was the case. But come on, people. A little reticence. A little dignity. A slight sneer when the love of your life enters the room, to prove to the world that you are still your own man and not some moonstruck dingbat. Perhaps an occasional well-deserved critique regarding his face. Is it so much to ask? Must you spew newlywed bliss all over the internet like so much rainbow upchuck? It’s unseemly.

Right. I am going to go sew some straps on that mei tai snugly enough that the Auxiliary Pig won’t be able to plummet to his doom, no matter how hard he tries. And he will, if he inherits a healthy sense of nihilism. And I’m pretty sure I’m on a supplement for that.

I have not updated this blog for some time. According to all good bloggers, this is very bad practice. Regular content is key. Flee to the south of France for a week without your laptop, and you’ll come back to find all your readers have died of lupus or defected to Steve Pavlina or summat.

The trouble is, things have been happening. And when one thing happens and I fail to record it, something else goes and happens too, and the psychological pressure of writing up a mega-long post doing full literaru justice to both events begins to weigh on the brain like a large, smallish brick. Add a few more eventful days and what do you get? A vicious cycle of sulking and resentment. So I have been grumpily ignoring this-here platform to the wider world for weeks, and only return now because a) I’m cleaning out the freezer, an event which demands publicity and b) I’m bored.

I used to sulk at my diaries too. Also at the freezer. This is why Steve Pavlina is mega-successful and I can’t afford olives. On the bright side, I found some oldish Kapiti double cookies and cream in the freezer. Who said virtue wasn’t its own reward?

Anyway. Events. Yus. Firstly, we now have a flatmate, who for consistency’s sake I shall refer to as Flatmate Man. He has brought with him a rather nice bookshelf filled with graphic novels, DVDs and Terry Pratchetts I haven’t read; also a copy of Nourishing Traditions. So life could be worse, even if I have to wear more clothes around the house. Plus, he reads this blog, so what can I say?

Secondly, my practically only small sister and I went to Rainbow’s End, New Zealand’s fanciest and also least fancy theme park. It was an interesting experience. The trip was largely to determine if my small sister is keen on rides, so she can save up to come with us to Disneyland next year (reliant on Helpdesk Man’s successful pursuit of lucre). As such, having Disneyland on the brain, it was diffcult to avoid noticing that Rainbow’s End lacks a certain lustre in comparison to the Happiest Place on Earth. The throoms were set into a fake rock wall, yes, presumably in an effort to make us feel excitingly like King Saul; but the stromgly-worded laminated list of instructions for cleaning said throoms rather spoilt the effect - particularly as they hadn’t been followed. There were a couple of new, shiny rides called the Invader and Power Surge; but also the Gold Rush ride, whose queue was twice as long as the ride as a pathetic homage to many years ago when the ride first opened and was actually popular. Being a Friday, there were approximately twenty people in the park and four staff members. This was good for queues but bad for motion sickness… it turned out riding the Invader three times running is less efficient a use of time than you might think. And it’s a little awkward riding seven rides with the same two guests - I don’t believe Miss Manners ever adequately delineated the nuances of such a relationship, particularly when much of it is conducted at high G-forces. Nevertheless, as long as we avoided the peeling arcade section and derelict hot dog stands we managed to keep the crippling depression at bay and have a rollicking time. The general atmosphere of the park can be summed up by the website’s description of the Cinema 180 attraction. Clearly worrying that the name Rainbow’s End might conjure up inappropriately fantastical images of joy and splendour, the website tempts would-be revellers thusly:

A more mundane feature of the design is the drain in the centre of the dished floor, which is carpeted with polyester swimming pool carpet. This is so the floor can be hosed down after the inevitable motion sickness felt by some patrons when watching Cinema 180°!

As it turned out, I very nearly availed myself of this technological wizardry during the film. But still though. And in other news, why is it that I can ride the Fear Fall five times without blinching and the Power surge with only a manic giggle, yet become paralysed with terror while floating past animatronic gnomes in an artificial log? The Log Flume is smegging creepy. I eschew it.

It’s Easter Saturday - that strange, lonesome day in the middle of a bunch of public holidays, presumably designed to prevent teenage girls who work at the ice cream shop from spending those public holidays sunning themselves in Raratonga. But I haven’t worked at the ice cream shop for years. The situation, then, currently runs thusly:

• Helpdesk Man is at a friend’s house playing a violent computer game for the second day straight. He will probably stagger in at midnight, have nightmares about psionic monkeys and pull the blankets over his head in the morning, plaintively declaring he doesn’t want to go to church.
• My dear friend April was gonna come by and watch movies, but is sleepy after her sister’s wedding so changed her mind.
• I am home alone with the snortlepig.

On occasions this sort of situation depresses me, but on others - like when, as now, I have nearly half a large jam tart in the fridge - the thrill of possibility runs through my veins. Because anything could happen. I could, if I had the oomph, walk the pig down to the public gardens and feed stale hot cross buns to the duckies. I could concoct a ridiculously elaborate dinner and leave the dishes. I could begin a new sewing project. I could start a novel. I could dance around to the Beatles in my smalls. I could rag-curl my hair and smear kaolin clay on my face, and then quote lines from Restless. I could watch old episodes of Lois and Clark. Or I could clean a small, insignificant part of the house impeccably so that Helpdesk Man would notice in a week or two and make a comment and I could be all smug - I get a kick out of that, sometimes. I cleaned a wall the other day, and it made an astonishing difference. I recommend this.

Or I might watch Monty Python clips on YouTube. Or go through the hand-me-downs in the glory box to see if anything fits the snortlepig for next season. Or, ooh, make popcorn. Or something for church lunch tomorrow, which would be more to the point.

Or, I could get distracted googling the top 10 food blogs while writing this post, and suddenly find it’s 7PM and the piggie has been asleep on my arm for so long it’s gone numb. Still, though. Things could happen.

As some of you may know, I’m a vague, lazy adherent to Traditional Foodism, aka the Weston A Price Foundation system of nutrition. Of late I have decided to step it up a notch, and thus rashly made a pledge in the presence of my online peers to:

• eat fish twice a week
• eat organ meats once a week (and a tablespoon of liver hidden in a largeish lasagna counts - what am I, Wonder Woman?)
• eat yoghurt five times a week
• and consume chicken broth in some form three times a week.

Fish twice a week is a tad pesky, as I don’t drive and only go to the supermarket once a week. I might have to buy frozen, which is problematic because Helpdesk Man once violently hurled after eating some frozen fish - and even though I’m pretty sure it was coincidental, it causes him to view all iced seafood with a rheumy and skittish eye. I cannot blame him, really. I ate a kebab once with little bits of carrot in, and - well, we shall not speak of it. Anyway, apparently fish roe is the most nutrient-dense form of seafood, followed by shellfish, but I simply cannot bring myself to look a mussel in the eye, and the snortlepig made friends with some at the supermarket the other day (”Bath! A having a bath!”), so fish it is. Fissssssh.

So, yup. Tomorrow the lawn-mowing man will be upon us with his claw outstretched for the taking of lucre, so I have to get up early in the morning and walk the piggie to the butcher’s (not as terrible as it sounds). Helpdesk Man is away on Monday nights, so… let’s see here…

Monday: Pasta for dinner, go to butcher’s in morning, get cash out for lawn-mowing man, make hot cross buns for in-laws. Yoghurt for breakfast. Get Helpdesk Man to charm the chappie at work into putting free bus credits on my bus card, which is running out (he thinks the snortlepig is cute in the face - v handy, thrift-wise). Chicken soup for lunch. Try to finish knitting the snortlepig’s other wristlet.

Tuesday:  Yoghurt for breakfast. Go into town and buy wool to knit this top for the snortlepig. Get library books. Stop in at supermarket on the way home and buy fissssh. Fissssh for dinner. Wait, smeg. Mum’s homeschool choir is having its first performance at a rest home, and I am expected to attend for reasons of dubious usefulness. Do the shopping in the afternoon, then. Or whenever the performance isn’t. When is it? Then my choir practice at night. Gotta make something. Something bananoid, gotta use them up. Yus. Defrost gravy beef and liver.

Wednesday: Yoghurt again. Make something crockpoid with the gravy beef, incorporating a minute, token amount of liver. Soak rice. Chicken soup for lunch.

Thursday: Shopping with sister-in-law. Buy fish! Eat fish. Red fish. Blue fish. Have rice with the fish, cooked in chicken stock.

Friday: Date night with Helpdesk Man, a concept that has become laughably meaningless of late, but which will probably involve eating steak on the couch and watching the A-Team while the snortlepig kicks us in the face. Must ask Helpdesk Man what he wishes to eat sometime before Thursday, so as to buy it from the supermarket again. Yoghurt again - by this time, gut is teeming with iridescent life to the point where we will probably cancel Saturday altogether in order to sprint a half-marathon.

Wait. On Friday my practically-nearly-only-brother-in-law will be staying the night in honour of Easter. I shall have to ask my sister what he eats. It better not be fisssh.

At some point during this whole protein-laden debacle, I should also finish sewing the snortlepig’s spotty winter top, query a couple of print articles and write a few more for the web. And clean the light shades, on which flies have rudely throomed. Also experiment with a sugar-salt-water syrup, which tonight I used on my hair admixed with henna as a moisturising agent, but which needs to be more scientifically tested next time I wash it.

K.

To all those who are wont to ring me up for solace and chitchat: don’t bother. The snortlepig put the phone through the dishwasher, and we suspect it don’t sing no more. Clean, though.

Right. After much deep thought I have finalised my list of New Year’s Resolutions. Here they do am.

• Get learner’s and restricted licence
• Spend one solid hour a day (Monday to Friday) doing housework and/or food preparation. Counting up the random minutes of domesticity during the day and hoping they came to an hour does not count.
• Have nine articles accepted for print
• Get singing group ready and worthy to busk by November
• Write one hour’s worth of fiction a week
• Learn to make ferments a la Traditional Foods
• Increase my Suite101 income from *ahem* dollars a month to *cough* dollars a month by December

Now I need to figure out some kind of spreadsheet dealio to put on the fridge and tick things offa, because we all know ticking things off is the essence of success. (Or crossing things out, if you swing that way.)

I also need to hunt up my old road codes. I’ve been taking this test several times a day with increasing levels of success, but I’m still a bit fuzzy about the colour-coding of cats’-eyes and tbe exact applications of the Give Way rule. Once I figure out the soonest time I can go in to take the test, I’ll make a plan of study. (Does anyone know? Do you have to book, or can you just show up?)

Last night we had a successful if sparsely attended braai in order to celebrate the New Year. We drank peach-flavoured grape juice (forbidden under Levitical law, but extremely nommy), watched Zombieland and got sat on by the snortlepig.

• Nobody is going to come to the baby shower-cum-Tupperware party tomorrow. I can’t blame them. I’m tempted to ditch it, and I’m hosting. I did finally get hold of the Tupperware lady, and she assured me she’d “only speak for half an hour”. Half an hour? How much is there to say? What if I bring up bisphenol-A in a fit of rebellion? What if I panic when nobody buys anything and end up with microwaveable jelly moulds? What if the woman gives me a Look to indicate scorn and hatred for my having dragged her out on a Saturday? Only one person has RSVPed, and she made very sure to say she couldn’t stay long - presumably so she could scarper at the first sight of a pourable cereal container.
• I have no idea how to structure this article of mine that’s due on Monday. None. And it’s 800 words too short.
• I also have 6000 more words to go on NaNoWriMo. Most of them will probably be rewrites of the article. Feh.
• I was supposed to go shopping for groceries with Sister-in-Law today. She is not online and has not shown up. How am I to get the ingredients to make the lemon slice, the chocolate cornflake slice, the focaccia, the puff pastry cheese straws, the pecan tarts, the forgotten cookies and the cupcakes? And how will I have time to make them?
• Also, the baby quilt. It is Not Done. Not remotely done. It is barely even a flimsy. I can chain-stitch the stems this evening in theory, but only if the snortlepig isn’t climbing all over me. Hah.
• And I have to tidy up the garden, otherwise the church ladies will turn up and want to investigate every nook and cranny of it. And there’s a dead bird on the back lawn. Helpdesk Man, informed of this in panic-stricken tones, says consolingly “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere”.

Ha! Word from Sister-in-Law. Am still in PJs. Half an hour, she says. This is OK. Will give the pig more time to nap. I will think of calming things, but not the ocean because that makes me nervy. Maybe the sky, although I had a horrible dream last night that - oh, never mind. I am clearly wibbling. Into the breach!

Occasionally when the dreary futility of life gets me down and I find myself pondering how wizened my knees will look at eighty, I go to TipNut and laugh at the tips.

To soften butter, for instance, it is recommended to take a butter curler or grater to it in order to increase its surface area and susceptibility to atmospheric variation. To which I say: Dude. Fling it in the microwave if you were dim enough not to get it out ahead of time (don’t feel bad, I never remember).

And to soften hard brown sugar, all a harried housewife has to do is this:

Buy a clay disc or if you have a pottery piece on hand (from a broken clay pot, etc.), set it in water for about 30 minutes. Dry the piece so it isn’t dripping wet. Put the clay piece in a container with the sugar and seal. Check after a few days. Keep the piece in with your sugar for months if you’d like–will keep it soft.

Am I just ridiculously lucky, or is hard brown sugar less of a global pandemic than TipNut’s 15 tips on the matter would suggest? Can anyone raise her hand if she’s ever actually found rock-hard brown sugar to be an issue? And keep it up if she’d rather go through the above process than simply stab the stuff with a fork? I didn’t think so.

And then there’s the recipe for “Real Whipped Cream”. “Recipe?” thunk Smokey upon reading this, being the kind of domestic cherub who whips up marinades with a slosh of this and that, all but twirling the pepper grinder. (Helpdesk Man was once impressed by this to the point of imitation, and gave Smokey the Magnificent’s husband-made morning sickness scrambled eggs a dash of red wine vinegar just to be arty. Friends, do not do this thing.) It turns out “Real Whipped Cream” has gelatine in it. Yummers. Better, however, than the imitation variety, made with sugar, egg whites and “2 large ripe bananas, sliced”. The mind reels.

TipNut also provides its readers with various recipes for homemade veggie washing solution. As opposed to buying it, presumably. That way lies madness.

I feel better already.