Adventures in retail

It's the sort of thing that might happen to anyone. I actually went into town just to check that the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection wasn't on sale in John Lewis (it's not). I saw my first Asus Eee, though. It's black! No one told me it was black! I thought they were white! And it's a quarter the price of the LHP, and it runs Linux, and and and. And I didn't buy one, though I might have done. Despite its charms, alas, my heart is given to another... (Tho' it'd make a good back-up. If I needed a back-up ultraportable machine. Which I don't. I don't really even need one. Really...)

So I bought a new sink-drainer instead, in my ongoing pursuit of the perfect thing; and then - well, if the Lit & Phil had been open I would have gone there and done some work. I speak jocularly about the catastrophe of their closing for a fortnight, but in reality it's not a joke at all. Genuinely, it stymies me. I am a creature of habit, and it is my habit to read drafts at the L&P. Without it - well, I could go to the pub, but if I start drinking at eleven in the morning I'll do no work later. I'll have to try to read the thing at home, but that's haaaaard...

So then I was just coming home, only my way home leads me past a Chinese cash & carry wholesale warehouse. Which I'd never been in before. So in I went.

And came out with industrial quantities of soy sauce and vinegar, a packet of tea and some dried brake.

Dried what, you say?

Dried brake.

Honestly.

I was going to copy what it says on the packet, but I found this on the first website I asked about it:

"And fist vegetable is the most famous vegetable. Fist vegetable is also called, brake, chicken toe vegetable, long-lived vegetable, etc. It belongs to fern, perennial herb, root stock, rampancy under ground with brown fuzz. The stem contents amylum and it’s esculent. It’s far away from pollution and more clean and healthy. It can be picked up in the last ten-day of a May. The leaf is single and curling like a fist. So it was given the name of fist vegetable. Both fresh and dried brake is esculent and cooked by hot water, then being fished out and dehydrated, and boiled with pork, chicken. The dish with brake is not only fragrant, fresh, smooth, and delicious with high nutrition, but also is good for alleviating diuresis and allaying a fever. Eating brake constantly can refresh one’s eyes and spirit, beauty faces, drive away disease and prolong lives. So it is called longlived vegetable. It is really a precious grew in hill and the dried brake is savable."

So there you have it. Or rather, here I have it. I'll let you know.

What am I eating here...?

Tonight's tea will be mashed potato, carrot and turnip, fried up with onion, garlic and chilli, mixed with chunks of ham and shredded cabbage, topped with a fried egg. Comfort food to the max. But can I call it a hash, or is it more a variant on bubble-and-squeak? Or...?