While in town I buy ingredients for whatever new foodie delight I have settled on for the evening. The irresistibly titled Trials of a Wilderness Bride, plucked from the shelves of a second-hand bookshop along with a grease-spotted copy of The Joy of Cooking, has useful recipes for things like corn bread and something called calf fries, which turn out to be breaded testicles. Much as I long to place a brace of fried testicles onto the children’s plates in the evening just to hear them scream, it’s surprisingly hard to find even such a thing as a leg of lamb round here, let alone the range of speciality cuts required for such an exotic dish. Even the Wal-Mart in Tucson fails me with its rows of homogenized geometric shapes which appear to bear no relation to any known animal. When I ask, adrift in aisle 101, whether they might have such salubrious a thing as an organic chicken, the helpful Wal-Mart lady adjusts her permed crown of hair with one six-inch nail, cocks her head to the side and muses, ‘Organic chicken . . . now then, would that be made of soy?’

Foolishly, I complain about this to Benjamín and, before I know it, a decapitated local lamb is delivered. ‘You said you wanted fresh meat,’ Benjamín says, dragging the carcass from his truck and tossing the saw down after it.

‘How many more animals must die?’ Emmy cries, although she doesn’t really, but would I’m sure if she only knew that her mother has recently sanctioned the slaughter of an adorable little piggy who will shortly be taking up residence in our freezer in the form of buff paper parcels filled with bacon bits and shoulder roasts.

I’m like a secret drinker with my new cookbooks and instead of refining drawings, or musing on the volatility of cesspits, I find myself guiltily dipping into grills and steams and roasts. Jack and Emmy are appalled by my foodie volte-face and speak of the days of macaroni cheese like war children deprived of fresh eggs. I remain unmoved. Morally, of course, I have the upper hand, but geographically, too, I now hold the higher ground. It’s either my cooking or they can go down the hill for Benjamín’s legendary broth de coq.

‘The choice is yours,’ I tell them gleefully.