Dinner on the hop

E was upset her parents were going to be late, but her little eyes lit up when I said this meant she could eat dinner a couple of hours earlier than usual. And so, one of my standard no time, no ingredients, no recipe meals popped into my head. Spaghetti bolognaise. Wonderful. We’ll go past the tiny mini mart on the way home and buy what I need.

This idea was somewhat altered by their lack of spaghetti, mince, tomato paste, garlic…you get the picture. Spag bol became tuna penne. This was, of course, assuming they had tuna. Which, if I could just remember the French word for tuna I’m sure I could find…

The Arabic guys running the store were lovely and very helpful. It was the same shop I dropped past after the first Monday night, to purchase some wine (and chocolate biscuits) from. On the Monday night, I had arrived teary and became worse when I came across a tin of cat food with a dead-ringer for my own cat on it. She’s so pretty, with long white fur, deep green eyes and a purr that’ll blow your house down. That Monday, while watching me sniffling and packing my wine, biscuits and tin of cat food into a bag he had slipped an extra chocolate bar in there and I am eternally grateful for his thoughtfulness.

So I have no doubt he remembered me, when on Wednesday I did my crazy dash around the shop, asking him for “fish in a tin in olive oil.” (Thon, I finally remember, is French for tuna.)
Being able to wrap up the evening according to my own schedule suited me much better. Children’s natural clocks are early, so being able to bathe, feed and bed baby by 7pm, and E by 8.30pm was more my style. In the week since I have struggled a little to cope with the elongated evening home-stretch. If the French have a reputation for being rude, and for being food-obsessed, it’s because the two go hand-in-hand. If you only ate twice a day, 7 hours apart, no snacking, you’d be rude and bloody hungry too! (I would like to add that this is a vicious stereotype, that I have seen disproved more than I have experienced.)