Doom, gloom and asparagus

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1488655367?bctid=1568084747

I fell asleep to The World Tonight telling me that all the major newspapers were leading today (or tomorrow, as it was yesterday) with the news that oil prices have gone mental and we’re all doooooomed. The media seems to have gone from, ‘Gosh, high oil prices, something should be done!’ to, ‘Holy cr*p, sky-rocketing oil prices, nothing to be done!’ in a few short weeks. The above is a rather funky little cartoon the Telegraph had about it, although I’m a bit concerned that the people using their car as a greenhouse looked a bit like Roald Dahl’s The Twits. This is not good marketing for the post-oil era.

The most priceless is the Mail’s take on it – yesterday they ran an article about how we’d all confused ‘need’ and ‘want’ and spent far too much money on stuff we didn’t need and should learn how to budget and make do, going without if necessary, (and this is all a direct consequence of women being allowed to be autonomous beings instead of staying at home darning socks and making sure their husbands didn’t drink all the housekeeping money – I’m not saying there’s no truth in this, but the patronising way they phrased it got right under my fingernails), and today, we have a front-page article which includes quotes like, ‘People have to be able to afford to use the car,’ and, ‘It’s getting more expensive to keep warm, put food on the table and… buy holiday flights.’

My asparagus last night was lovely, though as there was far too much and I was beginning to find it rather sickly, some of it found its way into the Bokashi bin (I know, I know, peak oil and wasting food in the same post, terrible). I did a recipe from the River Cafe Green book, asparagus carbonara – basically, cook asparagus, toss in hot butter, mix up egg yolks with Parmesan, add to cooked pasta and grate on LOADS more Parmesan – which was yummy. That book is full of very clever recipes and lovely pictures, but I’ve never used it much, largely because I got it at the end of last summer and most of the winter recipes are for things like chickpeas or dried mushrooms, which I do eat, but I feel it will come into its own more now we’re getting into summer and there’s more fresh veg. The tomato and courgette recipes are much more inspiring!

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