Second home

I’m back in England, for the first time in nearly two years. It’s amazing to me that I spent the better part of ten years of my life living here, and now nineteen months have flown by since my last visit—just a couple of weeks before I started this blog, in fact. My travel plans escaped unscathed from Volcanageddon, or whatever we’re calling it, although it was touch and go for a bit there, and I arrived yesterday morning, right on schedule. I spent about 24 hours in London, getting acclimated, going to meetings, and eating quite possibly the best Mexican meal (including margaritas) I’ve ever had. And tonight I’ve returned to my old stomping ground: Oxford. I’ll be spending most of the next three days inside a conference room, but I plan to escape from time to time and revisit some of my favorite haunts—yes, of course they all sell food, why do you ask?—and catch up with some friends. You can only get away with that kind of thing in a visit to a place you’ve called home, and I plan to make the most of the opportunity.

Food politics

I watched Food, Inc. the other night on PBS. Even though I didn’t learn much that I hadn’t already come across in other places, it was still pretty horrifying and depressing. And at the moment I feel revulsed by the idea of buying anything that can be classed as a product of the “food industry.” I’m not going to make any drastic pronouncements (yet). But I’ve been experimenting for a while with making things myself that I had previously only bought ready-made, and I feel more strongly than ever that that’s the direction in which I want to be going. There’s the health aspect of knowing what’s in my food, which is certainly important; but right now I feel as though the political statement I can make, by buying as many single-ingredient items as I can, is even more so. The filmmakers reminded me that we as food consumers send a message with every purchase that we make. They pointed out that Wal-Mart switched a while back to buying only hormone-free milk in response to customer demand—a significant decision considering both the size of Wal-Mart’s market share and its reputation as the premier outlet of industrially produced food.

Challenge 5.1

I have a feeling I’m not going to be buying this cookbook after all. When I first picked it out for the Cookbook Challenge, I had been through it exhaustively. I had covered one whole side of loose leaf paper (aka A4) with the names of recipes I wanted to try. Of course, I had also overlooked how many of them required specialist equipment not currently available to me (you know, things like mixers and cake pans). But even with the ones that are possible with my limited range of tools, I keep finding myself in the same situation: I read over the recipe, realize how similar it is to one I already have or have been wanting to try—and then make that one instead. Over the weekend, I was all set to make Poor Boy Beef Stroganoff, expecting it to be simply a frugal variation on traditional beef stroganoff. Then I re-read the recipe and noticed that, if I made the cookbook version, after preparing all the major components of the dish—including the accompanying starch—I was going to have to put the whole thing in the oven and cook it again.