Day 214: I Buy A Wooden Spoon

For the time being, I have left my (opulently furnished, oft-cited by Elle Deco) Brixton apartments and moved to the Amsterdam, where I live in a canal on an actual and real IKEA set. As you will see from this photograph - taken on the afternoon of my arrival, hence the lack of empty crisp packets and bottles - the floor is, of course, laminate; the pictures are of pebbles; the lighting is fancy, and the side-tables rickety. The television crouches on a multi-media display cabinet that swivels, ensuring that I am able to watch MTV Cribs from any location I choose: my IKEA sofa, my IKEA ergonomic single seating solution, my desk or my IKEA dining table and matching IKEA chairs. (Even if I am peeping from behind my IKEA bookshelves or sitting on my IKEA "coffee table", I can still see my integrated TV and DVD. It is Sensational!)

But it is also dispiriting. It is a flat for the short-term letting, not for the living. It lacks soul and, despite the enormous amount of filth that I routinely spread about the place, it does not feel like Home. Usually you just put people you like in a place and give them wine if you want it to feel like home; if you can't do that, cooking usually works. Not microwave meals and that: stuff you chop and stir and have to think about a bit.

And yet cooking for myself in my very own IKEA set in Amsterdam is no fun AT ALL. The kitchen has been designed by a cretin, and equipped from the warehouse just outside Rotterdam that stocks all the 1 Euro shops in Northern Europe. There, alongside biscuit jars shaped like cats, 12-packs of lime coloured lavatory paper, rag rugs and 89-piece screwdriver sets, are the sorts of thing that are now in my kitchen.

I have saucepans made from tin with handles that melt and smell of old daffodil water when you put them over the heat. I have a block of seven blunt knives, and cutlery with brightly coloured plastic handles that fall off in the dishwasher. My cooking 'implements' are made of black plastic and combust at temperatures over 20C. But most disturbing of all is the very porous wooden spoon. (Just the one, mind.) It is vile, and all the other wooden spoons in the common-or-garden shops are just like it: long-handled, with a round head, and POROUS in a way that means you do not want to taste anything off it, or indeed put it anywhere near your face, ever.

All I wanted to do today was buy a new wooden spoon. I thought I would go to the kitchen shop round the corner. It is run by a tall and nice Dutch man with standy-up red hair and a big apron. I thought I could go to the cafe run by the nice Australian man and the beautiful Chinese lady with green glitter eyeshadow on the way and eat a muffin and drink some coffee and some apple juice with lime and ginger in it, because that is what they give me when I go in. Then I would feel Refreshed, and buying my wooden spoon would be Even Better.

I got a bit distracted in the end though. I went to the market opposite and bought four kinds of dried fruit ("try our dried mango! It will rock your world!") and some walnuts. Then, sick to the back of my monkey teeth with the revolting food sold by the supermarket down the road, and still shaking slightly from my experience with the carrot, I went to the fancy schmancy organic farmers' market where everything was splendid. My baskets were filled, as was my heart. Trousers were then bought ("enjoy your trousers!", they shouted as I left the shop). A charming girl helped me find an overseas postcode with the use of her mind and the internet; a tiny lady mended my boots and a boss-eyed youth sold me a newspaper. By the time I arrived at the kitchen shop I was Exhausted!

"I need a wooden spoon! I can't bear it anymore!", I yelped at the tall man with sticky-uppy ginger hair.

"This is no good! What kind you want?"

"A really nice one. The nicest one you have. Solid and kind. Not with a round head. I cannot cook without a nice wooden spoon. It is making me very sad."

"Come on now! Let us find you a good spoon!", he said.

We talked about wooden spoons. We also talked about how the Dutch apparently do not cook at home as much as they should, and are often found to "flop in a sandwich, or a similar thing" upon their return from the workplace. I told him that the British watch television transmissions and read books on the subject of cooking, but mainly microwave things. I showed him my mushrooms; he showed me a roasting tray that cost 189 Euros. He was a very kind man (not Like That, just A Nice Chap). And he said, "if you need ingredients, or want to know where to find things, you must email me!". He gave me a bit of paper with his email address on and pointed at the first bit of it.

"That word means in Dutch 'big fat greedy French Roman Catholic!'"

"Does it?"

"Yes! What is it in English?"

"I don't think it translates..."

"...I remember! It is Gourmand! It is French!".

I wonder if it is better to be Dutch and flopping sandwiches in my mouth or a big fat greedy French Roman Catholic, and decide that I am quite happy to be English and fond of Marmite and plain cake. I pay 6 Euros for my wooden spoon. We wave, everyone smiles, I go and I suddenly feel very jolly indeed and quite like my usual self.

Now my wooden spoon is at home and I am roasting a chicken. (This is always a good sign.) The spoon has made some soup this afternoon and will probably make some porridge tomorrow. It is a very nice spoon; here he is, next to disgusting porous spoon. (He's the one on the left, just in case you couldn't guess!)






















If you are ever feeling a bit homesick, go and buy a wooden spoon. It seems to work wonders.