Consuming Interest
By LESLIE ADRIAN THERE is one form of price increasing current just now which I particularly dislike. This is the practice some firms adopt of keeping the price the same although the quantity is reduced, My complaint is that this is often done stir' reptitiously, and it is only when one gets home and examines the goods more closely that one discovers with annoyance that the packet is , smaller. It has happened to me three times in the past few weeks : with a bottle, of cleaning fluid' a packet of potato powder and—most infuriating of all—with a Cellophane bag of eggs from a supermarket. Last week it contained half a dozen : this week, at the same price, it contained five. Most of us shop for these ordinary household requirements in a fairly casual way and one cannot help thinking that the firms concerned are well aware of this and hope to pull a fast one. From their point of view this seems to Me t° be a senselessly shortsighted move for I now have a beautiful built-in grudge against the firms.
I ate a sirloin steak, salad, pickled walnuts and coffee for under ten shillings at the new Crorn' well Road Air Terminal the other evening an found the restaurant a definite improvement on the old one at Waterloo. For one thing, the sorry ritual of self-service trays has gone. One eats from stools at high counters round an efficient central service bay similar to the 'Wimpy' bars. Catering is by Fortes and there are good and reasonable hot meals at all hours of the day, in- cluding such un-British surprises as `porkie' hot dog and 'beefie' hamburgers with gherkins.
But the bar, hidden away and is de- pressing, and so, I am Sorry to say, is the coffee.
AlthOugh I am quite sure that somewhere in the unused collection of blowers, suckers and brushes which came along with the vacuum cleaner there must be the right gadget for clean- ing dusty curtain pelmets, I have decided instead to get rid of the pelmets. Their swathes, frills and bobbles have suddenly begun to look sad and dated, For, whether we realise it or not, the constant coveting and rejection which, in our choice of clothes, adds up to fashion, works just as potently 'in our attitude to our surroundings.
But what to do with the ungarnished curtains? One solution is to have an odd-job man fit per- manent wooden box pelmets to be painted to match the ceiling. This is a reasonable proposition in one's own house, but uneconomic in a flat..
A recent idea from America is to fix the cur- tain by a long hook which holds the top frill high enough to cover the metal rail. No pelmet is necessary, although the rail is, of course, visible when the curtains are 'undrawn. These 'giraffe hooks,' as they are called, are to use with 'Rufflette' tape and are now on sale in this country in the big stores. They cost is. lid, a dozen.
Newer still is a ,combined prefabricated wooden pelmet and curtain runner from Sweden. Each curtain hook is suspended from a small wooden bead which slides along a groove in the roof of the pelmet. The visible facing of the pelmet is in either light elm, mahogany or walnut veneer. It comes in lengths of four to eight feet. The corners are rounded. Cost : from 37s. to 66s. These pelmets are not yet on sale in the shops, but are available from Masters and Andren Limited, 4 Drapers Gardens, Throgmorton Avenue, London, EC2, who can supply price list and brochure.
The third of Barbara Worsley-Gough's week- end recipes is : COLD PORK CHOPS I rubbed salt and black pepper and plenty of finely chopped fresh sage into both sides of the well-flattened chdps and turned them in foaming butter in a sauté pan until their fat was crisp. Then I put in a glass of white wine and a crushed clove of garlic, put the lid on the pan, and sim- mered the choPs most gently for half an hour, turning them over at half-time. They were drained on a sieve, and served cold with stoned cooked prunes, raw tomatoes peeled and quar- tered and dressed with the de-greased sauce from the pan,. and cold peas that had been cooked with butter; chopped shallot, and a pinch of sugar. The rest of the sauce from the pan was used to dress some very small cold new potatoes which had been cooked with mint.
When packing cooked food to take away in the car, I fasten the lids on to the dishes with Sellotape, and, if it is very hot weather, wrap the dishes in thick folds of newSpaper, which keeps them cool.
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