cravings

My husband seems very pleased that I have not acted as some pregnant women he has heard of. The kind who – though perhaps living only in myth – order their husbands out in the middle of the night to fetch ice cream or pickles or some other food substance to satisfy some craving.

He’s been bragging to all and sundry that the worst I’ve made him do is help me on with my socks (and in that only for the left foot as I can still reach the right).

But as there is really only a month and a half to go – I feel I might be depriving my spouse of the experience of catering to the crazy whims of a pregnant woman. So perhaps I need to cook up some cravings.

Things I’d quite like:
Krystals
SunDrop
Catfish & hushpuppies
Tasty Tennessee BBQ (slight preference for Middle TN style)
Biscuits
A sausage biscuit
fried okra
squash casserole (extra cheesy)
grits
ice tea

Truth be told – I can make the casserole (substituting zucchini for yellow squash) and the grits and the tea and I’ve even made the fried okra from scratch (trouble to do, but divine!). I can make biscuits – but they’re only OK.

The rest of it absolutely unobtainable here. And these are more like homesick cravings than pregnancy cravings – I’ve craved these before without such an excuse.

But anyway, I couldn’t send my husband out for this since there’s no way that he’d actually get it – and if I can make it myself, how can I make him suffer to procure it.

So beyond the cliched what can I send him out for in the middle of the night?

Blue

I’ve never managed to get these to grow in my own garden.

Hogarthian

On Friday, the Vol-in-Law and I went to see the Hogarth exhibit at the Tate Britain. It’ll be on for almost another month, but judging by the crowds on a wet, non-holiday, Friday afternoon, you might be well advised to go before the last weekend it’s open.

William Hogarth is often remembered as a cartoonist, a spoofer of London life, using charactitures and copper plate etchings to jab at the depravity of the city. He’s famous for The Harlot’s Progress (a sweet country lass comes to London, is corrupted, becomes a prostitute, catches the pox and dies) and The Rake’s Progress (a young country gentleman comes into his fortune, goes to London, becomes depraved, loses his money and ends up in a lunatic asylum) and etchings like Gin Lane. But Hogarth was also a splendid portraitist and painter of historical scenes and the street scene of London, too. (Like The Shrimp Girl – below).

Hogarth is often remembered as a moralist – capturing the inevitability of decline once one has partaken of sin. But like many moralists, he seemed to be praising virtue in the abstract but found it dull in practice. Hence, many of his images are interesting because they revel in the depravity – and his “secret” attraction to the slimy underbelly of London becomes all to readily apparent. And despite highlighting London’s many faults, you can see he loved the city – just like I have oft found myself excited by my return to the city – “Ahhh, London – welcome me back into your loving arms, ya dirty old whore.”

The exhibit itself was fantastic and seemed to capture the breadth of Hogarth’s work in room after room. (In contrast to another exhibit currently on – Renoir’s Landscapes which was so brief it seemed a bit of an expensive cheek). In fact, there was so much, I really couldn’t take it all in – particulary because you actually need to stop and take in the rich detail of his work.

Hogarth was particularly obsessed by the fallen woman – and I felt rather conspicuous with my pregnant belly, especially since I have just taken off my wedding ring (it still fits, but it’s a little tight now and I have a fear of having to cut it off should my hands swell more).

Since visiting the exhibit – the Vol-in-Law has been describing things as Hogarthian. For example, I tried on a rather unfortunate shade of lipstick yesterday – which the ViL said made me look “a bit Hogarthian” – and I don’t think he meant the country lass before the fall or the earthy vibrancy of the shrimp girl, above.

To have and to hold

Yesterday the Vol-in-Law and I went to the wedding of a friend of mine. I worked very closely with him on a project for over two years and I had known him before we started working together on the same thing. During that time, I can’t remember how many gals he cycled through. But quite a few, and usually inappropriate. Then he started dating this new girl – and in looks and personality she couldn’t have been more different than her predecessors – but more different still – my friend actually seemed happy.

Their wedding was lovely. After nearly a week of bad weather, cold and grey and wet and blustery, I was really worried for their day. But the sun started to shine, and the flowers were blooming – and it was a beautiful day (if perhaps still a little windy).

They got married in an old country church by an exuberant country vicar. Their reception was in a real village hall.

country church

They had done some really nifty touches for their reception, including homemade bunting in green and pink calico and gingham – and they had placed crackers at every place setting. If you haven’t seen crackers before – they’ re basically a cardboard tube filled with little party favours, including little paper crowns and a joke and wrapped with decorative paper. But best of all, they have a little explosive charge. You pull them with your neighbour – they “bang” (only a little bit, not so much as to be scary) and then if you get the tube – you win the prize. (But there’s enough to go around, so everyone shares).

Crackers are more of a Christmas thing – not a wedding thing – but it worked really, really well. They’d chosen the musical kind – each cracker contained a numbered whistle tuned to a specific note (there was a full scale represented on the table). There was also a sheet with numbers printed on them – enabling you to play (if you followed the order and blew on time) Love, Love Me Do, Here Comes the Bride, and other such romantic favorites. Our table was dreadful! Really dreadful! We didn’t produce one single tune effectively, and we did try.

This saddened me, because I had brought crackers with these same favors to Genderist’s big Christmas breakfast morning that her parents throw each year when I was in Tennessee two Christmases ago. They took to them very well indeed and were able to blow out recognizable Christmas carols. At the time, it seemed just what you should be able to do, but I look back on that episode now with a new-found admiration.

They also had bubbles…

and love hearts