Raspberry Debacle

My problem with ice-cream has always been the drips, more virulent than any other foodstuff (except maybe tomato sauce on spaghetti, flung out in all directions as the strands are slurped up). It was years before I could eat an ice-cream without getting at least a few drops on my clothes; I’d hide beneath paper napkins while I ate and — if it was really nice ice-cream — surreptitiously suck the drips out of the paper when I was done.

I find it surprising that there isn’t (unless I’ve missed something) a bigger overlap between “food” and “clothes”. Obviously food-clothes wouldn’t last very well, but surely that means they’d be ideal for an ostentatious display of wealth, something that food and clothes individually have always been used for: “look, I have so much food I can dress in it, such vast resources I can afford clothes that I’ll want to throw out in a day or two”. But instead, food in clothes is generally fake, made from plastic or fabric.

There’s Adam and Eve and their (traditional) fig leaves, which you can stir-fry and eat. There’s Carmen Miranda, and other more muted versions of the “fruit on a hat” idea. But apart from that, there’s just occasional “look at those zany scientists/artists/bakers, making dresses out of wine/chocolate/cream-puffs” news stories, though to be fair the news stories wouldn’t exist if the zany scientists/artists/bakers themselves didn’t. The cream puffs were
for a wedding; the chocolate for a fund-raising fasion-show (”then there were those who feared it would melt, fall off and embarrass us and the model wearing it”), the wine for the causes of art. It was “inspired by the skin-like layer covering a vat of wine that had been contaminated with bacteria and gone “off”", it breaks easily, it tastes like “a kind of chewy, slightly alcoholic sludge”, and apparently further research could make it a “viable option” for commercial use (I’m beginning to understand better why food-clothes are uncommon; perhaps “further research” will involve replacing it with, eg, cotton).

Back in the realms of folklore, Scottish brownie-critter Aiken Drum started out as the Brownie of Blednoch, wearing a kilt of rushes; he worked hard on a farm until they tried to give him a pair or normal trousers, at which point he ran away in a panic. Alternatively, he was an aspiring soldier:

An’ his coat was o’ the guid saut meat,
The guid saut meat, the guid saut meat,
An’ a waistcoat o’ the haggis bag,
Ay wore Aiken Drum.

Nowadays, his children’s-song appearances have him wearing nothing but food: “his coat was made of good roast beef” and he played upon a ladle. In more recent variants he’s even given spaghetti hair, fish-stick pants (I don’t see how these would work), pizza eyes (ditto), and whatever other foodstuff the singer feels like adding in.

Beyond this, there’s nothing: bracelets with tiny candy beads, coconut shell bras, occasional flippant edible dresses or comedy underwear, rice-paper hats to eat and astonish your friends. And this, from a Scottish parish newsletter:

Tea and cakes were then served and the competition for ‘an edible brooch’ was judged as follows: 1 Barbara Robertson, 2 Maureen Simpson, 3 Margaret Leslie. Mrs Jean Morrison gave a comprehensive vote of thanks ending a very pleasant evening. Anyone wishing to join the guild, should go along on the first Thursday of each month.

Vegan chocolate-banana-coffee ice-cream (requires food processor and icecream machine.)

This recipe is vaguer than usual; I lost the piece of paper I noted it down on so it’s from possibly-unreliable memory. I’ll try making it again later in the week and be able to remove this note, I hope.)

1 cup cashews
1/2 cup hot coffee
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 cup cocoa
2 tablespoons dark (vegan-edible, eg Lindt 70%) chocolate, broken into little pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1 ripe or overripe banana
Pinch salt

Grind the cashews small in a food processor; it should be mealy rather than lumpy in texture.

Dissolve the cocoa and the sugar in the hot water. Put the chocolate in the coffee and leave it for a minute or two, and then stir until the mixture is relatively homogenous. Add to the cocoa and hot water.

Put the banana in the food processor and reduce it to a pulp, then mix it together with the cashews and the chocolate-coffee liquid. Add the salt and keep mixing.

Freeze in ice-cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Best eaten within a day or two, and it gets very hard so remember to take it out of the freezer a good half-hour or so before you’re planning to serve it.