The Devil's Larder

22

LIKE ALL THE best ideas, the old man’s was a simple one. Foods nourished by the heat of sunshine should be able to relinquish that same heat and that much sunshine at a later date. It is, after all, a basic law of physics that no energy is ever lost.

Wine masters always say that the better reds release their ripening summer heat as soon as they are poured. Subtle palates can detect the year by quantifying sunshine in the grape. If that’s allowed, then an orange, say, matured and coloured by the sun in some hot place, must radiate as much. It should be the perfect hand warmer in winter. A southern plum, likewise, should have the knack of stewing itself in cold water. A kilo of bananas dropped into the garden pond should, for a week or two, keep the water nicely free of ice and save the goldfish from the chill. Ice cream, surely, could be softened slightly by the presence of some dates.

‘There ought to be a range of packaged fruits and vegetables — Sunbeam Meals, perhaps — that cook themselves,’ our old man said. ‘Picnics would be transformed by such convenience. Think of the benefits for miners, trawlermen and Eskimos. I’d be a millionaire.’

The only problem he encountered was discovering the trigger to reactivate and then release the buried heat without using means that would themselves consume an equal energy. He dedicated all his time to problems such as this when he retired. We learned to live with it and him, and only thought it strange when he was glimpsed about the town on winter nights, an orange gripped in each of his blue hands.