Eating by numbers

Living with Martín is a bit like living with your maths teacher. Every story gets turned into sums and numbers. Instead of talking about the wonder of skiing down a mountain, Martín might work out the time ratio of how long it takes to go down on skis compared to the time spent on lifts. While others might marvel at a full-bodied red wine, Martín would do the sums to tell us the profit made on each grape squeezed into it.

His brain simply works a lot differently from mine. Sometimes this is a pain in the arse and sometimes it is endearing. But at least a few times a week, you're going to hear me saying to him: "Can we stop reducing everything to numbers?"

(A quick aside here. I truly understand the value of numbers. Especially those involved in my bank statements and wedding budget.)

Anyway, this weekend we decided that instead of going out for dinner we would roll our sleeves up and bring the restaurant to our place. It would be good bonding time in the kitchen, as we hadn't seen each other to speak to during a demanding week. We chose two new dishes to make which tickled our taste buds: Greek greens followed by a Spanish mixed paella. We headed out into the drizzle of Ealing on Saturday afternoon to search for the ingredients.

After a trip to the fishmongers and Tesco we had bags full of king prawns, mussels, pork belly, parsley, spinach and sourdough bread, plus much, much more.

"This is a great idea of mine, isn't it?" he kept saying, as if it was the first idea he had ever had. I wondered where all this enthusiasm for fresh ingredients and home cooking was coming from and going.

Then I saw the Look of Numbers. "Well, we have all this food and have spent less already than we would going out for dinner," he remarked.

That was true. I couldn't argue with that. And the wine had been a bargain, which is what always kills us when we go out. But it didn't stop there.

Anyway, onto the starter. This was a delightfully fresh tasting spinach, and red onion combination on warm bread flavoured with crushed cherry tomatoes. Simple and divine. Topped off with Greek oil and some Greek music, we imagined ourselves on a balcony in Santorini.

"And all for just £4" he delights in sharing.

Now, I have to point out, Martín is no penny pincher. He's not tight. He's very generous. It's just his obsession with numbers.

Onto the paella. This was real teamwork and it tasted amazing. Which is a good job as it was full of flavours and food. So much food! I thought my wok would explode with all we kept adding to it and as we tenderly nurtured every paella rice grain, turning and turning them. But it worked. Credit to us.

But there was a lot of it. Piles of paella. Mountains to munch on. It was inevitable that those words would come out of his mouth again:

"We've made so much here. How long is this going to feed us for?"

Three days.

"And all the other ingredients we bought, how many meals is that?"

Well, at least another five of these and then some.

He leaned back, full of paella and economic pride. When food at home tastes this good, the numbers really do add up.

A Christmas feast in January

I am standing in Tesco with Martín on January 2nd 2012. He loves supermarkets; perusing the aisles for things we'll never eat, need or use. I am used to this, and usually work round this by sending him off on a very specific mission, which takes an age, but means I can get the majority of the shop out of the way while he thinks about buying 18 cans of peaches.

But yesterday I could not budge him from a super-saver-end-of-aisle-Christmas-is-over-fest.

Salmon, cooked hams, fine cheeses all on offer. He couldn't get over it. He had to buy them. And there were three things in his favour, which means he won.

The first is simple: they were things we love to eat. Our weekends are not complete without a King's Breakfast of salmon, spinach, mushrooms and eggs piled high on toast laden with cream cheese. As pork addicts, everything pig related gets a full seeing to in our house and nothing is spared. And cheese? Martín would eat a whole whale carcass if it was covered in the stuff.



Keep it simple: fondue for Christmas dinner

 The second was that we don't have a normal Christmas. There's no platter of little biscuits with salmon; no turkey and stuffing; no ham and potatoes; no Christmas pudding and cheese board. By going skiing, we eliminate ourselves from the supermarket slog for Christmas food and escape to the mountains where we let ourselves be satisfied with a simple pile of French beef, a pot of hot oil, some dips and chips. Therefore, come the New Year, we are not already bored of these foods which were overbought and have been sitting wrapped in foil like fallen asteroids in the fridge ever since.

The third reason why Martín got his wicked bargain way was because these foods were half price and half again. True bargains you can only dream of before Christmas when these items are on your shopping list.

And then it got me thinking. Why don't people have their Christmas food feasts in January? For those that love the foods more than the festival, it's so much cheaper come the post-Christmas price meltdown. Christmas can still be in the spirit of giving, time with loved ones, and you can do that with any foods you like! What do you fancy? Chinese? Go for it! Italian's your thing? Why not! There is nothing that binds us to the turkey and ham and stuffing sandwiches aside from the fact we've always done them. But with January's perfect prices for all those foods, why not delay those feasts?

Just don't tell Tesco.