Sweets For My Sweet

5 Things About Sugar

A prominent ingredient of my weekend, in different forms.

Baklava I
I had a strangely pleasant hour in Camberwell yesterday, while I was waiting for my car to be MOT’d. I didn’t expect to enjoy wandering the streets of SE5, particularly after a random Nigerian called Chris insisted on accompanying me. He was actually very nice, and we talked about London and travelling, and he didn’t get upset when I refused to give him my phone number. After he’d departed on a bus to Lewisham, I discovered a food market on Camberwell Green where they were so desperate for customers that they insisted I try their baklava, olives, bread, and feta cheese even though I protested that I only had £4. I bought a stack of sticky sweet baklava, with the intention of taking it to cousin Izzy’s on Sunday for lunch.

I had eaten most of it by 6pm.

Black Sambucca
Last night was Andy Young’s (ssshhh) 30th birthday party at Cargo. I love the way Andy so effortlessly mixes his friends and colleagues, so that there were very few people there that I didn’t know. Social cross-pollination; it made for a great evening. At 3am, after two ciders, a glass of champagne, five vodka tonics and a black sambucca, we drunkenly piled a cab back to south London. The driver stopped at a 24-hour garage and bought us each a bottle of water. My saviour.

Baklava II
I didn’t have any food in the house when I crawled out of bed at 11am this morning. Instead of trekking the, oooh, fifty yards over the road to the Costcutter, I ate the last of the baklava for breakfast while watching old episodes of Sex and the City. Isn’t that disgusting? The sugar set my teeth on edge, but I couldn’t help myself.

Fondue
Cousin-tastic in Hither Green. Izzy and Jon hosted and Tom, Ruth, Alice and JohnB were all there. Lovely Andyroo came along as well. As usual, the food was delicious and abundant. After home-made pizzas, potato salad, olives, cheese and biscuits we ate:
Mini-muffins
Chocolate brownie bites
Pink wafer biscuits
Green & Black’s dark chocolate with ginger fondue with:
Marshmallows
Cherries
Sugar shrimps
Pineapple
Grapes
Jelly beans

I have realised that the reason so many cousin affairs disintegrate into giggling silliness after a couple of hours is not that we all share an infantile sense of humour, but that we consume so much sugar we are all high.

Need more evidence? After lunch we all played a game where we had to think of a cheese that started with every letter of the alphabet and Izzy sang a song about making her neighbour’s dog eat superglue.

Overdose...
Ruth gave me some nougat that she bought for me in Italy. I wonder if I might just have a little bit now...