Marrows for your Marras!

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! 
We all sometimes have to sing for our supper. 

One Friday evening last summer, at the Hartlepool Male Voice Choir rehearsal, a fellow chorister, Alan Altringham regaled us not only with his dulcet tenor tones but also with a few of the lovely courgettes which he grows himself among other vegetables. This summer, I am told that allotments are brimming with courgettes which are some of my favourite greens. 

This wasn’t the case when I was a kid. When my mother made a stew or any dish that included courgettes or aubergines, she knew not to put any on my plate. Most of my childhood friends also steered clear of those two vegetables, which when overcooked, became gelatinous and tasted disgusting.

But nowadays, being a lover of most vegetables, I never turn my nose at any of them especially when they’re graciously offered. My stepson, Les also brings me a few of the vegetables he grows in his Horden allotment, from lettuces to soft-stem broccoli, cabbage and fennel. 

Speaking of vegetables takes me back to the late eighties and early nineties when realising that to get the stuff I really wanted to serve at Krimo’s, apart from growing it myself, the only alternative was to get up early twice a week to head for Cannon Park in Middlesbrough where there were many fruit and vegetable warehouses. It was mainly a wholesale market but, like me, a few other restaurateurs regularly arrived at around 5am to get the best produce available. I often met Vince from Santoro’s in Yarm and, over a sausage sarnie and a cuppa at the tiny café on site, we shared various restaurant stories with wagon drivers and warehousemen. 

In September, I ventured back to Cannon Park, with my neighbour, Glen but this time looking for a car to buy rather than vegetables. Glen, a true car aficionado, advised that, in order to choose the right one, I had to scour every single dealership in Teesside and check any car that appealed to me. We spent four days going from one garage to the next, test-driving so many cars that in the end, I believe I got the right car for me. This exercise was more stressful than going around feeling courgettes or tomatoes.