Sunday 5 December 2010

Angel of Delight



My parents visited yesterday. They gazed, vaguely nonplussed, at their middle child, once a cheerful and jolly sort, now a hardened husk of medieval knowledge, ready to unleash a stream of Malorian wisdom at the slightest provocation. Or something. Noticing a spot on my face - well, not so much a spot as an hideous canker - my mother dared to ask me about my level of fruit and vegetable consumption. Recognising that she probably wouldn't accept Appletiser as an acceptable substitute for my 5-a-day (does a can of Appletiser contribute? The can is very misleading. Answers on a postcard to the usual address), I muttered something about carrots and formal hall. But, thinking about it last night, I realised that I have in fact eating strawberries in the form of....ANGEL DELIGHT!

Ah, Angel Delight. I've always liked it, not because of the taste, which is just pink, but because of the strange mystery of how it becomes. One adds a quantity of milk to a packet, bashes it up a bit, and then suddenly a strange solid is born, still part-liquid, a mousse but not quite a mousse. I've always imagined that ambrosia - the food of the gods, rather than the custard variety - is a little like Angel Delight, retaining some its mysterious allure. The packet provides no clue as to how Angel Delight is formed, merely providing an inane series of energetic things one can do whilst waiting for the transubstantiation to occur (well, not quite, but you know what I mean). Upon this occasion, Emma and I found an even better way of making it amazing, by adding cake-sprinkles to the top. Delicious.


Tastiness -8/10 - The pink flavour tastes pink, and the chocolate one tastes brown. The butterscotch one is a hitherto-untested entity.
Likeliness to set off a fire alarm -0/10 - It's just  milk and powder. You'd have to be seriously skilled to cause a fire with that.
Likeliness to cause a fatal coronary, 20 years down the line - 5/10 - Surely all those e-numbers can't be good for you. But the pleasure, ah, the pleasure...


So, it's the end of term. I write this sitting in my disturbingly empty room. I can, for the first time since the beginning of term, see the carpet, and, disconcertingly, it is not the colour that I thought it was. Obviously, the fact that I'm going home to lovely Norfolk tomorrow does threaten to throw a spanner in the works, cooking-wise; however, I am going to attempt to gain some knowledge of the arcane art of cooking from my mother over Christmas, and will document that as and when it occurs. Thanks for reading this, you loons. Next year will bring guestblogs from people like Duncan and Lana who have OVENS. But for now, I'm off to play a dangerous game involving other people's milk (they've gone home for Christmas, so it's fair game), and the remnants of three boxes of cereal which have been in my cupboard all term. Adieu.

No comments:

Post a Comment