Foreground: Bec’s lunch. Background: Matt’s lunch.
Matt: Hey Darling, you know how your tummy felt a bit funny the other night?
Bec: Yes.
Matt: I’m just worried it’s your diet. What did you eat yesterday?
Bec: Weet-Bix for breakfast, and then a milo. Coke zero and a chocolate chip muesli bar for morning tea. A Vegemite sandwich for lunch. A chocolate when I got home, and then cheese for dinner.
Matt: And what did you have the day before that?
Bec: The same.
Matt: What are you having today?
Bec: Pretty much the same thing, although it’s the weekend so I’ll probably have cheese for an entrée in the evening and then whatever you cook. We’re not having vegetables are we?
Matt: I was going to make some.
Bec: Can we have fish and chips instead?
Matt: We had a big night the other night so I was going to try and be healthy. What about fish and some steamed veges?
Bec: If you steam the potato before you turn it into chips and deep fry it, I’m in. Is that how Heston does his thrice-cooked chips?
Matt: Yes, sort of, but, I was thinking we should have some other vegetables as well. Maybe some asparagus, dutch carrots, brocollini and a salsa of red capsicum onion and coriander. And maybe a little home made aioli on the side.
Bec: Yuck. Just chips for me. With tomato sauce.
Matt: You know the fat kid, from Hey Dad?
Bec: Yes.
Matt: That’s you. You have the dietary habits of a 13-year-old boy.
Bec: You know the TV show Absolutely Fabulous?
Matt: Yes.
Bec: That’s you. You have the dietary habits of a 55-year-old female alcoholic.
Matt: That’s not fair.
Bec: You’re right. You eat and drink as much as them put together. I stand corrected. You have the dietary habits of TWO 55-year-old female alcoholics.
Matt: Two standard drinks per night is the recommended daily allowance for an adult male.
Bec: I can vaguely remember the last time you only had two standard drinks in a night. It think was 2011. And you were “having an alcohol free day”, because you’d had gastro.
Matt: Wine is good for your stomach. It’s even in the bible.
Bec: I don’t believe that for a second.
Matt: 1 Timothy, 5:22-24 says “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” You should drink more for your stomach’s sake.
Bec: Do you know that verse off by heart?
Matt: Yes, but to be fair, it’s the only bible verse I know off by heart.
Bec: I would have thought you’d memorised the bit about wives having to do whatever their husbands tell them.
Matt: No. That bit is pretty dodgy. I think that’s one of the bits of the bible you’re supposed to ignore, like the bit about slavery being all good.
Bec: Right. Well, either way, my stomach wasn’t upset the other night from a lack of wine.
Matt: Correct. Your stomach was upset from having the diet of a 13-year-old boy. And 13-year-old boys don’t drink wine. There’s your problem.
Bec: No, I think my stomach was upset from you leaving the dirty pots, pans, cooking utensils and defrosting meat in the sink for a day, and then cooking dinner without washing up, with the rationale that ‘you can’t get food poisoning if you drink wine, because the alcohol in wine kills bacteria’.
Matt: It’s true.
Bec: It’s not true. Remember the last time you gave yourself food poisoning? How much wine had you had that afternoon?
Matt: We shared a bottle. But that doesn’t count because we’d left the duck terrine in the sun for too long, when you do that, the duck bacteria out-ranks the alcohol. As long as you don’t leave meat in the sun, wine kills the bacteria.
Bec: You should run a cooking school.
