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Saturday, October 30, 2004
what I ate last: finally decided to abandon my friend and eat my roast beef, mash, spinach and saute yellow courgettes As an adjunct to that last post, the worst experience of this kind was when I used to cook at egg for the whole staff at lunchtime, and just as the food was ready a huge influx of customers would enter the shop. As I was cooking for £1 per person, it was generally either pasta, risotto, some kind of noodle dish or something equally cheap. I became expert at undercooking pasta and rice so that by the time we had finished serving the customers it would still be edibly al dente. 0 comments permalink  
what I ate last: bbq pork, beans and slaw (very good) at Mike and Ed's, Greensboro Ave, Tuscaloosa OK, why does that ALWAYS happen. You are about five minutes away from serving up the meal of your week, when your eating companion suddenly has to do something. Actually, this has several forms: a) As you are putting the plates on the table, someone needs to go to the bathroom. So everyone else has to wait while their food grows cold/overcooked/deflated. For me this is the ultimate rudeness. You were warned ten minutes ago that we were about ready to eat soon, so why didn't you go then? b) You have told your dinner guests to arrive for a certain time, allowed for the fact that they will be half an hour late and then will want to spend half an hour talking before they sit down, yet they STILL arrive late and your timing screwed. c) Today's scenario: your roommate suddenly has to run out and rescue a damsel in distress who is having an allergic reaction to a wasp bite. As in, was on the phone when suddenly the person on the other end starts gasping or something, and so he hurriedly exits, while asking whether you know where the nearst hospital is. Good thing I hadn't put the spinach on yet. Good thing the meat needs, erm, an hours resting time. Good thing the courgettes I just started to saute have time to go all limp. Good thing I haven't had time to cook properly since Monday and I was really looking forward to a good meal and now I have to wait. What does one do? Sod the stupid lovelorn bastard and eat without him, consuming the rest of that bottle of wine at the same time and leaving him cold leftovers? or do as I am now doing - blogging while consuming the rest of the bottle of wine and waiting patiently to resume the eating ritual. He's been gone half an hour and counting. 1 comments permalink
Wednesday, October 27, 2004 what I ate last: lunch: left-over Malay okra curry; dinner: chicken tacos and guacamole As I was writing to my good friend Ben today, I think the main reason for starting this food blog right now is that I am so starved of good food. From London, England to Greensboro [very very small town], Alabama is a long way from decent food shops and plentiful restaurants catering to all price ranges, to the joys of Piggly Wiggly. Basically, I can't stop fantasising about my former local Turkish supermarket, Brick Lane Beigel Bake, Spitalfields and Borough Markets, St John, etc etc... When I manage to find good food here, it comes in a glut. For instance, last week I cooked a mound of organic okra from Willie Nell, a local farmer. The week before, it was aubergines and sweet potato from the vegetable garden at the local girls detention centre where I help out sometimes. It's autumn (sorry, fall) here, but the wonderful bounty that I associate with the season (apples, quinces, pumpkins, squash, the last of the salads, wet walnuts) in England seems strangely absent here, maybe due to the monocultural farming practices. The farmers markets have closed down for the winter and the vegetables I managed to find are the last remnants of this years harvest. And then, my parents back in Suffolk send me beautiful pictures of picking fruit in the orchard, in that wonderful slanting October light...and I long for apple and blackberry crumble. Instead, what I ate today was left-over Malay okra curry (note to self: doesn't freeze well, turns to sloppy mush) and, as it's Taco Tuesday, two chicken tacos from the local Mexican where the students gather every Tuesday night for cut-price tacos and margaritas. 0 comments permalink
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 what I ate last: I cooked Malay okra curry, Indian beef curry, rice and green salad for friends So, I have a 'normal' blog but I keep realising that what I spend most of my time thinking about is food. I wonder how many of my 'normal' blog readers may ever find this one. Too few people really appreciate what I think is important about food - improvisation, unpretentiousness, the low as well as the high, none of that crap a lot of food bloggers talk about (overcomplicated/over-domesticated/prissy). I was brought up with two incredibly good cooks as parents (check out my dad's great book The Pike in the Basement) with a healthy disregard for recipe books. We had loads, of course, and we read them avidly, but as for all that 'take two tablespoonfuls of oil' nonsense, who doesn't know how much oil they need for their particular frying-pan?. Another thing I learnt was that 99% of savory recipes start with chopping onions and garlic. So, I love food, I need an outlet for my love (and occasional rage), and this is it. Till I start in earnest tomorrow... 2 comments permalink
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