Breaking Bread in Britain, Part 1

The stereotype of British food is that it is not very good. Dry boiled veg as a side to a slab of overcooked meat; this is what some people have told me that they think of as English cuisine. Much like the stereotype that British people are cold and unfeeling, it's not entirely accurate but it's definitely rooted in truth. But food in this country, fortunately, has come on a self-improvement journey that far surpasses that of its citizenry.

I LOVE to eat and cook good food, and I know a lot of you out there also feel similarly! It's always fun for me to here what people ate and drank when they traveled, so I thought it would be fun to share more about my British food experiences.

So let's start by looking at some pictures of favorite British meals....

One British classic is the jacket potato. It's basically a baked potato with all kinds of fillings. You can have a jacket potato with chili con carne, baked beans, tuna and cheese, coronation chicken, and myriad other fillings. Usually there will be coleslaw or a small salad on the side.

A plate full of Yorkshire delicacies - Wensleydale cheese, bloomer bread (brown), chutney, and coleslaw, and cabbages.

Sausages and mash (bangers and mash, as you'll see sometimes).

Cornflake treats (pictured below) and flapjacks are typical English dessert-snacks. It's the same premise. The cereal is mixed together with a bunch of liquified sugar and baked.

This is a classic British breakfast. So. Much. Meat.

This is a Scottish-specific classic - haggis, neeps, and tatties! Yes...some people think it's disgusting. But I like things like scrapple, so I don't. I think it's great. It's basically animal innards. Neeps and tatties is a mash of turnips and potato.

Ok, asian fusion is definitely not classic British...or is it? After they colonized like basically the entire world, Britain "adopted" (read: co-opted for their own financial/cultural benefit) the flavors of countries around the world. Really, just the like the United States has done. Anyway, Wagamama is one of those sinfully amazing places that came out of this. It's like all the asian flavors/food combos under one roof with BOMB.COM food. I'm a lil bit obsessed. I dragged most of my visitors this year to Wags for wagamama ramen (highly recommend), teriyaki donburi, and yasai itame, as well as their amazing juices and FREE green tea.

The aforementioned food appropriation is actually a thing, by the way. It's something I've started to care more about since an experience I had a few months ago, which no doubt only happened because I have too much time on my hands to think/care too much nowadays. But anyway, it led me to do a little reading about the idea of food appropriation and this article pretty much sums it up way better than I ever could. It basically explores the concept of privilege (monetary, social) in relationship with food.

Kale salad - a very nouveau bourgeois food, if you ask me!

Grocery shopping this year is another area in which I think a lot about food privilege. This was the crux of why I became an AmeriCorps VISTA at Paul's Place last year. The Farmers' Market was started by my supervisor, Charlotte, in response to the fact that Pigtown is a food desert and kids at Paul's Place (which serves the Pigtown area) were experiencing high levels of obesity, high BMI, and other poor health indicators.

I'm privileged in that there are loads of grocery stores around me, and when I asked around, everyone had their opinions about where I should go. People at my church who apparently had no concept of how little I make told me just to shop at M&S or Sainsbury Local, because they're close to my house. They're also super pricey! Others said go to Aldi, which is a forty-minute walk each way. No, thank you, not carrying groceries back all that way. They must also have thought I was mule.

While it was a completely privileged version of the problem, I recognized in my experience a small seed of what I had learned through working in food justice/access for the preceding three years.

Carrying groceries a long way is physically challenging and sometimes actually painful (as I learned when I bought a huge thing of olive oil/tomato sauce/a pineapple all in one shopping trip DON'T DO THAT PLZ) but shopping somewhere close-by is pricey. This is exactly what people who live in food deserts face all the time, and it makes cooking and eating non-processed foods very hard.

These are my FAVE type of chips (crisps) found here.

Anyway, to wind up this long-winded story time, I settled on mostly shopping at Morrison's, which is a chain of shops known for having very good prices and isn't terribly far from my house. I mainly get my produce now at the Shambles Market. The Market is one of my favorite things about York. It is year-round, outdoor, and sells fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and other minimally prepared foods.

I want a year-round everyday market like this in Baltimore!, is my thought almost every single time I shop there (so like once a week or every ten days or so). But we do have great farmers' markets in Baltimore (see the aforementioned Pigtown Community Farmers Market ;)). Our urban and suburban planning in most of the US, is quite different though; most places aren't designed for a walkable, year-round Market to serve a small geographic area with a high human density.

Regardless, the beautiful thing about living in another place for a year is the endless possibilities things to take back home and adapt. For me, that includes the insights I've gained about food and food systems.

So for now, I'll just soak up the quaintness of walking fifteen minutes into the city centre, past medieval houses and over bridges, to buy farm-fresh vegetables. Like so many other things this year, I'm looking on it as a little gift from the universe to have such sweet small everyday experiences like this.