return of tuna smash

So after the first week of this social experiment (as I have decided to call it), what have we learned? Well, not how to use the washing machine, at any rate. I have already taken a batch home. You have to understand that I lived with my parents until I was forty. So clearly I have no shame.

Alone in the house all day, Mat has taken to obsessively boiling things on the hob. I get back home at five-thirty and he’s right behind the front door, grinning maniacally: ‘Hello! I made a chicken!’ The other day he was out of the house, but texted me to tell me to put three pans of water on the boil. It turned out that there was a genuine reason for this: we were having haggis, with broccoli and swede. Haggis has always struck me as, at best, a joke, but this was a revelation: Mat, no slouch in the catering department, had surpassed himself.

Although I’ve done a bit of washing up, my own usefulness is questionable. I can’t get by on correcting everyone’s grammar, can I? Mind you, washing up for Mat would be a full-time job since, like a shark, he eats constantly. Rather than recognise traditional feeding times like breakfast or lunch, it makes more sense, with him, to commemorate the times when he isn’t eating.

Foodwise, I can only do omelette. For one. The breathtaking simplicity of risotto has been demonstrated to me, but I wonder if I might yet reintroduce the signature dish of my university years, a highly original combination of instant mashed potato, tuna, and salad cream - made in, and eaten from, a dessert bowl. I have yet to patent, or even name, this, but I feel its time may be coming.