It may have been that on Friday morning’s Today programme they were trying to lighten the mood and provide some distraction from the Trump nightmare that was about to enfold across the water.

So they started on a feature on the great courgette shortage.

Of course this is only a crisis if you want to eat a courgette in January. For myself I have my fill over the six weeks or so in the summer when they are in glut in the garden. Even then the best thing about them are the flowers.

But even so it transpires that snow has fallen in Spain as a consequence of which courgettes are in short supply. The talk moved swiftly on from the lack of courgettes to possible substitutes.

It transpires that a possible substitute is a cardoon. At this point ears pricked up as I was fairly sure there was a cardoon in the garden.

I went out to inspect it this afternoon and even took a couple of cuttings for cooking purposes. Back in the kitchen the cuttings looked a bit woody for cooking so I concentrated instead on the haul from the freezer in the basement.

On my occasional furtle through the freezer I have been made aware that there are a couple of rabbits in there.

I decided to put one of them to good use this evening.

It defrosted last night and I half expected there to be a high smells in the basement this morning. As it was the only smell was that which comes from too long in the freezer. It was almost enough to draw the cats.

The rabbit came wrapped in half a dozen plastic bags and I half think it was an unexpected gift from a couple of years ago.

It was duly cut up and put to good use admidst

some cooked down onion and garlic and half a bottle of white wine with herbs.