Back when we still had television in our house and my husband had his favourite programs he would regularly watch, indeed he was transfixed watching the British cooking extravaganza show put on by Two Fat Ladies. If ever I took a glance at the program I felt repulsed, seeing the two homespun-gracious ladies plunk their hands with ringed fingers and red-tipped nail varnish into foods they were preparing with such gusto. Not for me, I thought.

But my husband thought they were the greatest. And he still thinks of them fondly. He was poring over their Two Fat Ladies Obsessions; over 150 recipes featuring their Favourite Foods and Heartfelt Passions cookbook yesterday. Clarissa Wright had written an introduction speaking of the emotional passion for food and its preparation that she and her dear departed partner Jennifer Paterson had shared with their program, with life and its experiences, offering up in the book the delights they had exuberated about in their hugely popular television series.

He read out bits of declarations the two ladies had made on their search for the finest, most robust and tastiest ingredients with which to embellish their recipes. Predictably, they took pride in Britain's dairy-food production and butter and cream ranked pretty high. Expressing a huge distaste for whole-food alternatives they extolled the virtues of those elements in our diets that tended to make those of us who appreciate them enormously to the exclusion of alternates put on weight at an astonishing rate. Even while acknowledging this with humour, they clung to their love of high-calorie gastronomy and food preparation.

That key lime pie that I baked yesterday morning from a recipe out of the Florida Governor's mansion did turn out very well. I had omitted the 1/2-cup tranche of sugar that was to have gone into the graham cracker crust, figuring there was already ample in the crushed product made of graham crackers to begin with. And though the recipe called for a sprinkling of grated lime rind only on top the sour cream baked topping, I had grated the rind of two limes and mixed them into the pie filling.

The finished product was luscious as my husband predicted, but then he had an especial interest in the result, since he had found the recipe and suggested I replicate it. It was far, far too rich for me. I liked the taste and the texture, but I'll never repeat the recipe. Any time I feel like baking another key lime pie it won't be with sweetened condensed milk, eggs and sour cream; the sweetened condensed milk raises in me an instinctive shudder.

After dinner last night, where the pie held centre stage, I experienced a restless night, one complete with nightmares. And when I awoke in the early hours of the morning, it was to experience an hugely upset stomach.