I dislike fridge door stickers a lot. They, like limpets on a boat’s bottom, appear out of nowhere and multiply. Fridge door stickers, limpets and flies may well come from the same family. Summer time is indeed here and the living is easy but it is not little babies that are spreading their wings it’s a monstrous horde of flies and I….I am bored of the flies. Keeping flies off the food while cooking demands the skills of a retiarius …I enter the kitchen to the roar of the extractor and washing machine to be confronted by a host of flies…. moving silently on the balls of my feet around the arena kitchen, armed with nothing but a fly swat and net, I relentlessly dispatch winged opponents one after another yet on they come: mine not to question why, mine but to kill a fly. There is an edge to cooking with, should I say in the company of, flies; an edge that does not allow an unguarded moment, an edge that demands that one forgoes the pleasure of self congratulation on taking a shimmering gold frittata from the oven, an edge that demands that a lid be put on it at once, an edge that says that nothing edible may be left uncovered for a moment. My summer kitchen has become a culinary seraglio wherein reside warm tarts and frittatas, veiled odalisques beneath their protective nets which reveal to the inquisitive eye but a diffused and featureless image save for those unguarded moments when a net is left carelessly drawn aside as in the lewd picture above.
Frittatas are much of a muchness meaning that their muchness depends on how well balanced were the ingredients and seasonings, how good were the eggs and how patient was the cook. The frittata that is the subject of this piece would not have seen the light of that summer’s evening but for our neighbour’s generous and unexpected gift of six fresh eggs, an extraordinarily favourable exchange rate, in return for our donation of a bag of stale bread to be gnawed on and pecked at by her, soon to be dinner, rabbits and chickens.
Beautiful.
Many thanks, Rosemary….hope you’re well and enjoying summer..:)
Sometimes I can’t believe coincidences. Just sat down with my dinner and thought I’d read your post. My dinner is baked courgette omelette 🙂 Yours is prettier.
That’s extraordinary….I have this with my son….when we speak on the phone we are so often engaged in cooking or eating the same thing:)
Flies are dreadful here too, attracted by the 14 day-old rubbish in domestic wheelie bins. I have quarantined ours well beyond the house and ordered a fly curtain. Aesthetics be damned.
Living on top of two small dairy farms means that this is a regular summer event….as the farrmers retire so the flies diminish….rather sad
Roger, I have the solution for you. OI have ordered a small (for msll will be sufficient colony of swallows to be delivered to and installed in your kitchen. You might lose a little top-of-the-cupboard space, but will gain from seeing these agile creatures darting about eliminating the flies. A small amount of bird poop on the tarte tartin is, I think, a small price to pay. Of course once the flies have been exterminated there is the small problem of feeding the birds and their offspring, but you are a resourceful fellow and no doubt will think of something. Loosing Molly the cat on them would be poor form. I hope this helps. James
At last; a bit of common sense. I was toying with the idea of having an anteater’s appetite redirected but the swallows are ready to go…..and if one swallow does not a summer make, it certainly makes one less fly. Many thanks for putting your mind to my problem and, as expected, supplying a well planned response.
I could not possibly top this thread. Brilliant.
I’m sure you could:)
That looks delicious – I’m quite fond of a frittata and its cousin the tortilla. I recommend installing screen doors and screens on the windows. They work wonders in the Southern States and Australia. Otherwise, feed the cat a bit less – most cats love to torture insects 😉
Can one of you all explain to me why screens never caught on in Europe? I have never understood that.
In Britain there are not so many bugs, but in Southern Europe they’d be a boon. Perhaps one has to see just how effective they are to appreciate them 🙂
I’ve often said I should open such a business!
That’s a good idea and we do indeed have them here…..I just don’t have the money! The screen doors are tricky any way as we don’t have any sort of porch, meaning the doors are flush to the outside of the building. Molly just look at flies and I can see him thinking “not much meat on that”:)
In the meantime, you can get little half window screens on a sprung wooden frame, which fit a lot of windows…
I taught a kitten in Australia to chase flies by lifting her up to where they were perched on the ceiling. Fly catching became her favourite game, though it’s probably too late for Molly 😉
We can get kits for windows here but it’s such a game as every window in the house is a different size…as are the doors! The Velux are all the same but Velux fly excluders are beyond my budget. In the end…you live with it. Molly is much happier attacking my feet as I lay sleeping than he would be hunting flies:)
One of the few things I’ll miss when we move back are window screens to keep the flies out! I know fruit flies like apple cider vinegar and then they drown in it, wonder if that would get other flies.
Where are you moving back to? I thought you lived in Canada …or have I got this all wrong?
I live in NH in the US. We’ll be moving back to the UK when our youngest finishes high school.
Got it…I hope England’s how you remember it😀
We go back regularly and we can’t wait! Won’t be nirvana but it will be better for us.
Sounds good to me😀