Imperative cooking: to have and to hold
VEGETARIANS are twice as likely to be liars as carnivores. Taylor Nelson AGB, a marketing company, reported recently that while 7 per cent of Britons describe them- selves as vegetarians, only 4 per cent eat a meat-free diet. Put another way, nearly half of 'vegetarians' are liars. It does not explain whether these people are liars because they are 'vegetarians' or 'vegetarians' because they are liars. But obviously vegetarians should never trust other vegetarians. How they lie to each other, however, is of no concern to us. What is important to carni- vores is that vegetarians should not lie When inviting us to meatless dinners. When invited to dinner you need to know what 'dinner' means, so that you can tactfully decline and refuse in advance, rather than turn up, be deceived and have to leave unfed.
Carnivores also lie. Another report com- missioned by Somerfield stores found that a fifth of dinner party hosts confess to pass- ing off ready-made meals as their own: We should be warned about these too. Most of these cooks, 96 per cent, we may assume from the Taylor Nelson Report, are not vegetarians, and 93 per cent do not even describe themselves as vegetarians. So among actual and avowed meat-eaters, nearly 20 per cent are liars. The carnivores may not have as many liars as the vegetari- ans, but they have other unredeeming qual- ities. They are quarrelsome: 29 per cent row over who should do the cooking. They are ill-mannered: 25 per cent row in front of their guests. They whine too, especially the women: 74 per cent whine about lack of help from their husbands. The men — 34 per cent — whine about the quality of their wives' cooking. And the Scotch are very mean on what they spend on dinner parties.
People, reports on the reports confirm, do all sorts of things at dinner parties as well as lie, whinge, display bad manners and quarrel. They flirt, eat bison, take off their clothes (and cover their chests with Pudding) and, in Scotland, 34 per cent attack each other with their fists. The cause of all this unpleasantness, it is alleged, is the stress of holding the dinner party and doing the cooling. The key term here is holding a dinner party'. These deceitful, querulous, affected louts are a sub-branch of that category known in these columns as Special Occasionists. They spend their days Popping pizzas in a microwave, grabbing salads or going to restaurants they have been told are fashionable. Then, once in a while, they 'hold a dinner party'. They can- not cook, and the stress of the highly staged special occasion makes them fight, whine and undress.
Sensible cooks cook and eat well every day. They do not 'hold' dinner parties. They simply ask friends regularly and often round for dinner. The food is much the same on any other day, for in this sort of household all dinners are good. The only difference is that no Imperative cook would try out a new dish on friends. And it is friends who are invited, not people one wishes to impress. Far from complaining that the husband does not do his fair share, in the Imperative household the couple compete for the kitchen, unless they sensi- bly have one each. There is no stress; per- haps too little. In general, unexpected events are not encouraged. The most excit- ing thing that occurs is that someone will occasionally fall asleep, although once Bill, who is a capital trencherman, did sit down too hard on a Cuban mahogany chair and they both collapsed. There is one last rule for having a pleasant dinner with friends, as distinct from holding a dinner party: it should not end too late. Even decent, peaceable people and good cooks can become difficult after too long. All good dinners should start around 8 to 9 p.m. and finish by 10.45 p.m. If chaps have not eaten, drunk, said and heard what they want by then, they clearly aren't the sort of chaps one wants.
I have no wish to offend the whining and fighting till dawn brigade. What they do among themselves is their own affair. But decent cooks and diners should be told, as with the vegetarians, what they are letting themselves in for. We don't want to turn up expecting good grub, decent claret and a pleasant evening, our taxis ordered for 10.45, only to have to wait for our char- grilled asparagus till midnight and then be attacked by Scotchmen. The 'Holders' would presumably find excellent traditional 'Haver' food and drink unleavened by a striptease and marital row frightfully dull. So let's agree to a policy of at least limited honesty and a clear distinction between Holders and Havers. Invitations, both writ- ten and oral, should make it clear which sort the dinner will be. Invitations from Holder vegetarians should come with a double warning label.
'It's getting so hard to find decent help these days.'
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