hot ice and wondrous strange snow*

Did you know that the Coop now has frozen spinach for £1.25? It is by no means on par with the frozen spinach available in France or Italy or Switzerland, but it is good. I think it comes from Spain actually. In a sense, I have been torn on what to buy when it comes to spinach these days. As I see it, there are both advantages and disadvantages to frozen over fresh spinach. For example, fresh spinach is more expensive. £1.25 at the Coop and £1.15 at Sainsbury's will buy you 500g of spinach from either Spain or Italy, whereas £1.25 at the Coop, and £1.29 at Sainsbury's will get you nearer to an entire kilogram of the frozen plant. I was never very good at math, but it is clearly the case that frozen spinach is, financially speaking, the advisable option. On the same side of the scale as this is the fact that spinach can often be a hassle to clean. Fresh spinach, and from Spain especially, needs to be thoroughly washed because it is often very dirty. Because spinach grows in sandy soil, it is the migrant workers in whatever country (except Switzerland of course) who shoulder the burden of how clean it will be at the time of packaging. In this light, the question is: what is the advantage of fresh spinach? To its credit, fresh spinach tastes better and you can make it in a salad. Of course with this comes the fact that it will not keep for the entire length of a term like it will frozen and you will need to remind yourself that it is waiting to be prepared. Faintly we hear an echo of Petrarch's words: "cosa bella mortal passa, e non dura", and cannot without a heavy heart buy frozen spinach in our concesson to the transience of earthly life. It seems too much time is spent on buying green plants in Oxford.

What I really wanted to show here is that I think we waste a lot really enjoying life in a possible and indeed feasible way, because of the obstacles of time and money. You can melt St Augur over anything and it will taste decent and peperoncino is also good, but how much more aren't we really saving when we don't go for the microwaved life? Next: Volvic and Tap Water go head to head. It just kind of sucks when transience makes it into your grocery bag.