A few glasses of wine and a ride in a taxi ....

You have to hand it to Nigella .... none of this fiddling around with low carb this and half fat that as she clambers out of the nice solid black cab after what passes for a night on the hoy Chez Lawson ( or insert whatever other name she goes by when not cooking up a storm in that faux kitchen of hers with the glam fairy lights still up long after Christmas, and that we do have in common , my feathery Paperchase lights being in residence until the cat finally picked them all bald and brought the mirror down with them one sultry June day ) .

My plans for a spot of blackberry picking across the fields at Backworth thwarted as the evening crept on , the light fading and the dog's head disappearing ever deeper into the cushion . It seemed pointless to push . The entire household was wiped out , apparently , by a picnic at Tyne Green , Hexham , food purchased at Brockbushes coffee shop ( who would not permit us to eat at an outside table even with dog in tow , pah ! ) . Admittedly I missed the highlight of the afternoon , a slow walk up a steep hill with a three year old insisting on leading the dog , and eating ice cream at the same time , as I was taking five ( or was it fifteen ? ) on the bookshop tracking down the latest Kate Morton novel and watching with an air of detachment as three others dropped into my bag .

Instead I sank into my seat and there was Nigella Expressing it for England .... producing her mustard chops and at the end of her endeavours eating 2 , all to herself .... curled up on the sofa . And this is where we differ . Finding myself alone , I would eat a piece of cheese and a ryevita and so I believe would the majority of women , whilst men would crack open a pizza , congratulating themselves on having learned to cook as they open the box and stick on the oven .
If I were to cook the chops , and cooked two , it would be one for tonight and one for tomorrow . I may well eat them both , but by that one first , then staring longingly at the second then eating it later , slightly cold .

And I was just so filled with admiration for the foxy lady as she piled home in the cab plotting her supper of caramel croissant pudding . Out of the fridge came the milk, the cream , the eggs , all slung over the bashed up croissant pleasantly stale but not before she produced the most outrageously calorific and carb laden caramel without so much as a reference to guilt , fat , her hips , a*se, or any other part of her anatomy . How does she do it ? Put any other woman I know in a room with such ingredients and she will mix them together , ( particularly late at night after a few glasses of wine and a ride in a taxi ) , usually with her friends , and she will bake them and relish them and enjoy them more than life itself . But the experience will be tinged with guilt , thoughts of the need to atone in the morning , next week . The debates may go full circle , the enjoyment will be no less .
But Nigella really appears to have no truck with such nonsense. I wish I could do it .