Reminiscing - Gran's roast lunches

I have to tell ya, reheated vegetables at work sans mashed potato is really untasty. I'm eating broccoli, broad beans, and a selection of "frozen winter vegetables", because I devoured all the mashed spud and mashed carrot last night, and now I regret it. I mean, I like broad beans. I REALLY MISS my grandmother's roast dinners, with roast spud and roast pumpkin, all manner of other veggies but most importantly, the steamed then baked broad beans in a little triangular shaped colander thing. Oh, I miss it. Gran's roast lunches were the best thing in the entire world (apart from my mother's cooking, which is not only wonderful but free to take back to Hobart with me when I leave!), and I do miss them so. I remember how she did the lunches, because I used to go over early enough to help her serve them. I drained and mashed and helped make the gravy out of the roast pan with vegetable juices and cornflour. DELICIOUS.

I suppose it was all delicious because Gran always used full-cream milk and butter for everything. And why not? People never seemed to get so obese in those days, did they? Probably because they led really active lives, and thoroughly deserved butter and full-cream milk by the time they made it back to the dinner table from chasing sheep all day or whatever they were doing. In fact, were I to work twelve hours a day on a farm, I probably COULD indulge in roast dinners with butter and full-cream milk every bleeding day and I'd lose weight instead of gain it. How problematic for me that I will never be employed on a farm. I wouldn't really be much use on a farm. I have no muscle mass to speak of and I'm always worried about breaking my acrylic nails (which now look lovely, thank you, now that I've discovered Mona Sculptured Nails in Hobart. I do miss Bridget's beautiful, picturesque gels, but I broke my gels as soon as I looked at them - sigh).

Anyway, back to the topic at hand (though I've forgotten what I started with). Ah, bland veggies. Yes. I should've sneaked (I'm rebelling against the use of the word "snuck" for aesthetic reasons) some more of that potato salad dressing out of the fridge, just to use as a bit of a flavour creator on these reheated greens. Or made some gravy. I have been using Gravox powder in the leftover oil/juices of whatever meat I cook (no doubt very unhealthy), whisking it just in the pan, and mixing it in with the water from the potato and carrot pots. Hell's bells. Bloody delicious. I am the master of gravy now. I even taught my fabulous non-cooking mate Mikey to make it for me the other night while I was otherwise busy making biscuits. Got him to drain and mash everything, and create a lovely gravy. He'll be a wonderful cook, I can just see it. He may not see it, however, but I'm optimistic.

Back to work I go. Glad I could unload about the joys of my tasteless lunch.