Food

At my family farewell, Bede asked if I was prepared for five(ish) years of culinary hell. Things haven't been that bad, but I do have a few comments.

My greatest annoyance has been bread. I haven't really enjoyed the bread I've been eating, particularly in salad sandwiches. I've just been eating normal wholemeal bread from the supermarket because I'm generally not fussy, but it just hasn't tasted right: a bit sweet. I decided to have a good look at breads last time I needed to buy some, and sure enough, on one packet, it said 'lightly sweetened taste'. I was talking to some floormates at the SP housemasters' dinner this evening, and they seemed to think it normal that wholemeal bread was sweetened. I just can't understand it: it's bread! If I wanted to eat something sweet, I would eat cake, or at least white bread (yes, that comment is for Tom's benefit). Bread is meant to be about as savoury as it gets. I ended up reading all the nutritional information (or nutrition facts, as they call that table here), and picking from the ones that had the least sugar. One of my remaining choices was lite bread (seriously, who makes lite bread???), but the other was just the store brand wholemeal. It's not my favourite bread ever: it's a bit insubstantial (tastes quite like lite bread, really!), but I'll probably eat it for the rest of the year, unless I find a bakery very close.

Cereal has been quite reasonable. Instead of Vita Brits (I could find a Weet Bix equivalent, but to my palate Weet Bix is to Vita Brits as sweet bread is to bread) I've been eating shredded wheat, which is, well, wheat that's been shredded (and formed into little parcels: imagine building a bird cage to hold a tiny coin and you've just about got it). I couldn't find a good muesli, so I've reverted to making my own. I've found bran, rolled oats, sunflower kernels, coconut (also sweetened, but given that muesli is already sweet this doesn't bother me so much), wheat germ (I was impressed by that one) and dried apricots at the supermarket. I was surprised not to find sultanas: there was a decent dried fruit selection, but what I would consider the most obvious was not there, and I had to go to a health food shop. I haven't found dried apple yet, but I just put in extra apricot instead. I'm not missing anything, am I, Mum or Dad?

Fruit at the supermarket appears to be better than Australian supermarket fruit but not as good as fruit shop fruit, so I'm pretty happy with it. We're just coming to the end of stone fruit season, and the stone fruits were reasonable (I was rather spoiled growing up on a farm, but I think they were probably comparable to Australian store-bought stone fruit). Vegetables aren't so great: there's choice in tomatoes but not cucumber, for example. The carrots are funny shapes (for example, I have seen baby carrots that aren't actually baby carrots, but grown-up carrots cut into baby-sized pieces: the taste is unexpected!): too long and thin for my liking, in general. I've adopted a strategy of not deciding what to buy until I go to the shop and see it, so I think I'll be able to get a reasonable selection of decent vegies.

One thing I find offputting is buying per pound. I don't bother converting most prices to Australian dollars because I'm being paid in US dollars, and more in dollar terms than last year's income, so I figure I can just adjust to the new currency. In any case, the prices are similar enough that I don't really notice the difference. Buying per pound, though, I have to multiply by 2.55 instead of 1.16 (incidentally, Google is far too smart: I found those figures just by typing the relevant conversions in). That's a really big difference: for example, red capsicums are $4 per pound. At first, I thought that was a very good price and was going to buy them (back home I usually bought red if it was $2/kg more expensive, green if the difference was more), then realised it was really quite expensive.

Actually, my budget isn't so tight I need to worry about spending too much on red capsicums, but I tend to take the attitude that you can achieve more by doing small things regularly than big things occasionally (I apply that to more than just being frugal).

One thing I found hard to find was plain noodles. I was making a stir fry the other day, and wanted to eat it with noodles (I don't have a rice cooker, although I have since experimented with the microwave and it's worked well). I looked in many places, and could find various exotic kinds of noodles, but not plain, unflavoured instant noodles. In the end I just bought a box of instant noodle packets and have been taking out the flavour sachet. Perhaps I can establish a noodle exchange, for people who bring instant noodles for lunch but change their mind about what flavour they want (grad students are famous for eating instant noodles, or ramen as they're known here, but I think I've encountered less people eating them here than back home).

I'm not a big fan of the yogurt (I've only had one type so far, so perhaps a different one will be better, but I did pick the one that looked most promising). The problem is it's hardly yogurt because it doesn't have enough live acidophilus cultures. It's really just cold milk with pectin added for thickness.

For those of you who recognise my reference, I point out that indeed the yogurt is not pink and has no berries.

Since writing the last sentence, I've spent quite some time browsing CBS' The Big Bang Theory website, trying to get the quote right and then getting distracted and generally catching up on what I missed (the last few episodes of season 2), and it's getting late (it's after my usual 11pm bedtime). I'll thus end now. I do encourage you to keep emailing me (or posting here, but that isn't private), and particularly to ask any questions you have: I can keep finding material to write about, but I want it to be interesting.