Sweaty? I'm throwing in the towel, Juan.

 

‘I’m sweating like a fat lass in a club…’

Now, I’m not sure where I heard that, I think it might be a Peter Kay line, but I’ll stand corrected. We do like to make jokes to cover up emissions of a personal nature be they from armpits or twixt buttocks.  It’s the former that is taxing me at the moment.

 I’ve been quiet on here for a while mainly because I’m several thousand miles away in Northern Cyprus – the Turkish side.  I also had to miss the PChef annual conference which happens every year in Birmingham for various reasons, so I have no insider gossip on that front to reveal.

This isn’t to say that I am in a non PChef zone right now, because I’m not, as I shall jabber about in a minute.

The temperature here bounces around 40 degrees, give or take. We are staying at a friend’s house equipped with all the usuals – fridge, freezer, blah etc. And this is kit that really has to put its back into it to keep anything from rotting within hours of purchase.  And you want to buy.  As with some many other countries the markets are amazing.  I’ve shifted more fruit and veg in the last few days than within six months at home – water melons the size of unfurnished flats; and water, gallons of the stuff.  But we’ve been coming here for a few years now so we knew – or at least I knew – that bodily functions would be put to the test.

I’ve been cooking. Apparently that’s my job on holiday.  In 40 degree heat.  So here’s one example.  I’m (loosely) cooking a PChef recipe of chicken, chick peas, chorizo (Turkish sausage) pepper, chicken stock , tomatoes etc, all bunged into one pot and served with rice.

Dear Lord.  There are cooler blast furnaces.  The sweat after five mins or so of chopping reached crisis levels and I’d not cooked a damn thing yet. That snake-hipped lad and his kitchen towels – Juan Sheet – or whatever he’s called would  need a pack of rolls never mind one flaming sheet.  In fact I wish he’d been here because I wouldn’t mind slapping his smug little face.  Anyone who can wear trousers like that needs to be treated with caution. As the pathetic kitchen towels available to me dissolved on impact with my forehead I had to engage some serious support.

With the start of cooking in progress, fighting for oxygen and with a T shirt that now looked as though it had been taken out before a fast spin, I went to the bathroom and got a hand towel which I plonked on my head and wrapped around me ala Lawrence of Arabia. To cut a long story short, I managed the meal but needed two such towels to cope with the onslaught of moisty bits. 

Pampered Chef note:  I have been using a selection of knives, pink and green versions, stoneware etc all resident in the island.

‘A bit hot…?’ says my wife after a gruelling shower plus sit down for half an hour with a white wine and soda, as her meal is presented.

I think I mentioned something about never feeling dry at any stage and knowing now what a slug feels like.

‘You need to wipe your face,’ said wife or friend Bridget, I can’t remember, I was hallucinating I think; I’d got locked in the Lawrence zone by this stage  and I think I saw camels in the garden. Either way I plonked down in a chair looking I’d just finished the 100 meters backstroke.

‘I have been wiping my face…I’ve been using the hand towels…done it before’

‘You did WHAT!’

‘I used the hand towels to…’

‘I’VE BEEN DRYING MY HAIR ON THOSE..!’

I won’t go on, you can guess the rest.

Tensions were a little raised before because we’d not long finished a chat on Skype via this very laptop with the middle son who was about to head off to Italy for a couple of days of work.

My wife is very big on sun.  Loves the stuff.  A tan – whilst not an obsession - is a summer must-have in her book.

‘Do I look brown then Tom…?’ she asked eager for confirmation.

‘Yeah, you look like Lennox Lewis’

Now, whether it was son suggesting that his mother closely resembled a boxer or my comment about Fatima Whitbread, or my snort of laughter, I don’t know, but it set a tone for the evening that climaxed in the towel incident.

There are other tales to tell from here, but while I’m on this theme, we went to a market which sold just about anything you’d like from clothes and accessories to dodgy rip-offs.  Tucked away was a small booth-come stall that housed two young girls plus an older woman who was turning out what at first glance appeared to be pancakes or crepes – except they can’t have been. That’s because I watched the older lady roll out a ball of - I have no idea what – with what looked like an inch thick piece of dowel rod.  These now ‘pancake’ sized discs were lightly filled with potato or cheese or meat or aubergine or any combo.  They were folded and lightly rolled again with the filling inside, placed on a hot plate which the girls cooked.  Naturally these, whatever they were, were blisteringly hot and tasted fantastic.

However…on the board behind the girls, written in white chalk, that listed the options of meat, cheese etc., there was a ‘Sweat’ version.  Even in this heat it didn’t take much working out that the poor girls meant ‘Sweet’ and not the more unconventional ‘Sweat’.  Look, I’ll try most things – I like faggots and gravy and I’ve eaten snails, but sweat flavoured ‘pancakes’ are a whole new departure for me and not one I’m keen to explore.

Bridget pointed this out and had to visually explain the error by pointing at her armpits.  An urgent search for chalk and the ‘A’ became’ an ’E’.

Anyway…must dash, more later.  There are some towels to wash, apparently.  Some people are so picky.