Finally: something that tastes good, ovvero Hermès: Part Deux

You can't exactly buy a very slimming piece of self confidence on Bond Street let alone at Sainsbury's(tm?). But you can buy spinach. I recently went back to that derelict rathole that is the Broad Street Oxfam and a small part of me died when I realised how many square centimeters of French printed silk I had literally let slip through my fingers by not buying the second of the two ties. This sentiment was redoubled because I had gone to said rathole early on my way to an especially boring weekly on German culture, wherein, my tutor - it being her very last lesson to teach before returning to wherever it was she came from in the Eastern Block(tm?). It was very disenchanting because - maybe she had been drinking or something (not gonna speculate, ok?) but she was overtly excited about never having to teach us again. She make jokes, laughed, in a certain sense, came across as a generally amiable person, who was able to see the ridiculousness of us sitting in at 16th century room in Southwest England discussing issues in German contemporary social policy. (n.b. what I mean is that she saw how little one can actually learn about somewhere and someway of somewhere else, not actually being there - the things in themselves are of course valid).

Well anyway, everything has culminated in what I feel to be one of my most defining decisions. Fucking boil it. I was walking down St. Giles (which is a very multicultural thoroughfare and the widest street as in not Boulevard, Avenue, Champs-Élysées™, etc...) and I asked everyone I passed (as in mentally interrogated them) with the "how many of you have had a baguette for lunch today?" The statistics were very alarming and support my theory that only like 11% of the food one ever eats in Oxford is part of a warm meal.

So what to do? How do you skirt this problem if you fit into the is incredibly busy/quasi on a budget category. Fucking boil it. I found out you can boil anything. For example: spinach. Take a pot, fill it with water, boil the water and add the spinach, boil it and remove it. Press out the excess water, then put it back in the pan with some (preferably alpine or Bavarian unsalted) butter and simmer the spinach for a while and I like to add crushed red peppers and lemon juice to make it hot/lemony. This has been really good to know, because after like 3 years of cooking classes in Switzerland, becoming a Vegetarian in England leaves you a lot to be unsure about as to what the hell to eat and not get Salmonellosis.

The point is, Spinach costs around £1.20 (approx. : Sainsbury's = £1.15 for class 1 Italian, organic; Coop = £1.25 for class 2 Spanish (I know - go figure...) and is very easy to cook and nothing to be ashamed of having eaten (not that baguettes are either every once in a while, but if you have more than 2 a week in my opinion, it indicates some sort of loose living.).

Coming next: Leeks™!