drunken creativity.

We�re off to mum�s in a bit, for (hopefully) a barbecue. The weather, typically for a bank holiday weekend, looks as though it�s going to piss down. My back is slightly sore, a result of bending over a breadboard for the last hour, making stuffed vine leaves.

Which idiot invented these bloody things?

Now, I absolutely love dolmas, but they are tiresome in the extreme to make. Just doing the rice properly takes over an hour. Then preparing the leaves, filling them, painstakingly rolling them and stacking all carefully in a pan before cooking for 45 minutes. Then they go in a flash.

The only person who could possibly have invented these was a bloke.

A very pissed bloke. Let�s face it, it�s the kind of food, like banana and marmite sandwiches, which only the terminally drunk could have invented. Picture the scene: Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus get home (very late of course), tanked up on retsina and ouzo.
Agamemnon: Gods, I�m pissed!
Menelaus: What you got to eat, Odysseus mate? I�m starving!
Odysseus: Well, there�s some rice, few pine nuts, currants�that�s about it.
Agamemnon: what, no bread? What we gonna eat with that, then?
Menelaus: �ere, how about these, then eh? (waves a bunch of vine leaves at Odysseus)
Odysseus: you can�t eat them!
Agamemnon: Yes, you can � go on, I dare you!

And the rest was history.

Indeed, when you look at some of the stuff we eat � snails, oysters, sheep�s brain, Ginster�s pasties � they can only be the result of drunken bets long, long ago.