Cookingm humor: Teats and sweets

Teats and sweets

Never let it be said that I am a culinary Philistine. I nearly bought my wife Katherine a cow for Christmas.

I didn't. But only because I could not bear the thought of trying to conceal it under the Christmas tree. Has anyone here actually ever tried to gift-wrap a cow?

I got the idea of the cow from glancing at one of Katherine's cook books while she went about her work in the kitchen.
Katherine had it open on a dessert page.
She was making Knickerbocker Glories, which, with the benefit of hindsight and a larger belly than I used to have, I have to say were particularly delicious.

In my pre-Knickerbocker Glory state though, my eyes fell upon a recipe for a pudding called Syllabub.

"What a funny name for a dessert," I said to Katherine.

"What, Knickerbocker Glory?" she replied.

"No, Syllabub," I said.
"Who, apart from the English, would call a dessert Syllabub? Spotted Dick, I know. Sticky Date Pudding, I know. But Syllabub? What the heck is Syllabub?"

As Katherine can attest, it is a very rare occasion I actually read a recipe.

In fact, although I visit the kitchen a fair bit I rarely make myself very useful there at all - unless you can call licking the cake mixing bowl useful.
Once in a while, I am pressed into service dicing onions or peeling potatoes or sweeping the floor.
But mostly I hang around the kitchen to give Katherine moral support.

And, like the moral support I used to provide in 1996 when I got up with her in the middle of the night when she had to breast-feed our baby son, there's not a whole lot I can do but sit there and chat - or, in this case, laugh at recipes for Syllabub.
"This old English sweet was traditionally made with milk straight from the cow," I read aloud from the book as Katherine diced fruit for the Knickerbocker Glories.
"The milk was poured from a height over wine, cider or ale; this gave it a frothy mixture, which was sweetened to taste and flavoured with spices and spirit."

"How would they do that?" I said, trying to get a mental picture of the preparation process.
"Do you think they they would bring the cow to the kitchen or take the ingredients to the dairy?
"From what height would they pour the milk? Would the cow be at normal standing height or would they have to winch it up a few yards to get the best effect?"

I don't think Katherine was listening.

I suspect she has some kind of bullshit - or in this case, cow - meter that tells her to switch off when I am babbling.

When she was breast-feeding, she used to just look at me with a pained expression and insist that I go back to bed.

I guess she has learnt not to get her Knickerbocker Glories in a knot in the kitchen.

Whatever, it was at this precise moment I resolved to get her a cow of her own for Christmas.
I thought it would be terribly convenient to have a live cow in the kitchen, at the ready, alongside the assorted mixers, spoons, whirly things, slicing things, pots, pans and odds and sods.

Need some fresh milk for the Syllabub?
No problem.
Just saunter up to the cow fixed to the bench and squeeze a teat over your bowl .... sssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Alas, it was about this time I had a reality check.

I am not a practical man.

My handyman skills rarely climb higher than replacing the toilet roll once in a while, and even then I have been known to give up in frustration.

How on earth would I attach a cow to a kitchen bench, especially a English Mad Cow which obviously would be best suited to an eccentric English pudding recipe?

And how on earth would I gift-wrap it?

I have trouble gift-wrapping square boxes. How would I go about trying to keep the paper around four legs, a tail, an udder and a head which went mooooo?

You know what this means, don't you?

It means that I am unlikely ever to sample the delights of Syllabub now.

It also means that I am unlikely ever to have to clean up cow pats from the kitchen floor.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it