Reflections on this and that.

I hear that culottes are back in fashion. They do keep on coming around. I have a question: When are culottes not culottes? Surely the answer must be, "When they are just rather too short trousers". Reading a fashion item about culottes, I came across this fashion tip, "Always coordinate tailoring to create a streamlined silhouette and mind the gap between hemline and bootie; no more than three inches". Surely a divided skirt that comes close, but not close enough, to your ankle boots is not a pair of culottes but a sign that you have put on your shorter friend's or sister's trousers by mistake this morning. 

I should stop reading fashion magazines and articles. They just annoy and frustrate me. 

In fact, maybe I should stop reading newspapers as well. 

Today it was another thing about the Mediterranean diet, which apparently slows down the ageing of the brain by up to five years, according to the latest research. I have no arguments with that. I love the Mediterranean diet. One article I read defined it as follows:- 

"The Mediterranean diet typically consists of large amounts of vegetables, pulses, fruit, cereal, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as olive oil. It also includes small amounts of meat, poultry, dairy products and saturated fatty acids, plus mild to moderate alcohol consumption." 

And all of that sounds wonderful. Lentil soup, fabada (a kind of bean stew), dishes with chickpeas and all sorts of stuff like that. Then I stop and think about the times we have commented on the wonderful displays of fruits and veg in the shops in Spain and wondered at the fact that so few restaurants serve much in the way of vegetables apart from potatoes and occasionally a bit of salad. 

We must not, of course, forget greens, a staple part of that lovely broth, "caldo gallego". But what happens to all the other vegetables that are on sale in the shops? 

And yes, a lot of wonderful fish is served. We really appreciate it. But I stop and think about the number of people I know in Spain who feel that a meal is not really a meal without copious amounts of meat, good red meat. Perhaps it's all the returnees from Argentina, still craving some Argentinean beef. 

I suppose I will just have to carry on serving up a range of peppers and courgettes and other veg and plenty of fish. Red meat I can pretty well do without. The fish dishes bring their own problems, of course. There's the smell. Getting ahead of myself late this morning, I pre-prepared a fish risotto ready for teatime. All it would need would be the finishing touches. I knew I would be pressed for time as I was going to collect our grandson from school and then feed everyone before Phil went rushing out to chess club. So what happened? A certain amount of moaning about the smell of fish happened! A certain amount of opening windows nice and wide happened! 

You just can't win!!But the risotto was appreciated!