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Category Archives: Eating
Out of the Kitchen, Into the History Classroom
The favorite bourgeoisie food scribe, Michael Pollan, recently published a whining screed about how people don’t cook anymore, they just watch other people cook. Of course, as with all Pollan articles, by ‘people’ he means the bourgeoisie; white, upper middle class social strivers with disposable income and well-examined navels. These people, the bourgeoisie, have always aspired to NOT cook. Julia Child, who Pollan appreciatively credits with his mothers, and his, “culinary awakening”, is not so disingenuous as to pretend to be a defender of some sacred social ritual. In a 1989 interview, Child states simply that “I grew up in the teens and ‘20s, when most people had—middle class people—had maids or someone to help.” She goes on to say that her mother only knew two dishes, and herself, none at all. None of this should be surprising. The aristocratically wealthy have always had cooks amongst their servants, and the bourgeoisie have always longed to emulate, as far as… Read more
What’s In Season?
I try to eat as much as possible with the seasons – getting fresh local produce when it is at the height of flavor and nutrition, and the difference that has made in my diet and my (at least perceived) health has been enormous. However, getting a hang on just what is good now and what isn’t is pretty difficult when you are just figuring it out, given how disconnected from our food and the seasons we have become. As I went down that path and started to figure out what to be buying when, there were several outstanding resources that helped me along and took a lot of the guesswork out of the process. Of course, the thing that helped most was showing up diligently at farm stands, markets, and groceries that stocked local produce and paying attention to what was available, but these websites helped immensely in getting the hang of eating seasonally and locally. Epicurious has a fantastic tool to determine what is in season all over the United States for any specific month. About.com… Read more
Vegan Hunting
Huh? “Vegan Hunting” you say? Isn’t that a complete misnomer. No, I haven’t become one of those horrid “flexitarian” wankers. I’m talking about foraging – the original vegan hunting, and a pastime I have recently become acquainted with, or at least re-acquainted with. Foraging has all the same thrills as animal hunting, at least for me, and yes, I was a hunter in a previous life. There is mushroom hunting; analogous to big game hunting where a wrong choice has a good chance of getting you killed. Berry-picking is sort of the canned hunt of the foraging world, with lots of ranger stations and Ag Extension agents willing to tell you exactly where to go to load up on blackberries, choke cherries, etc. Ginseng picking is the extreme end of foraging, analogous to stalking Sika or Leopard. In my neck of the woods, Sassafras is one of the main wild foods pursued by foragers, along with pot herbs and wild greens, making them sort of the Mule Deer of the foraging… Read more
The Virtual Battery Cage
People always act shocked when I tell them I’m vegan, as if it never occurred to them to think about where their food comes from or what is in it. If you are one of those people, then this is for… Read more
Peanut Plant In Salmonella Outbreak Failed Inspections For Years
I don’t suppose that it should come as any surprise that the Blakely, GA peanut plant that has been identified as the source of the recent salmonella outbreak has failed inspections routinely since 2006. If inspection results do not result in action to remedy the problems, then the inspections are meaningless. This will lead some people to argue that inspection regimes should be abandoned, as they do not work to protect customers, cost companies unnecessarily in order to supposedly comply with the ineffective inspection policies, and fleeces the taxpayer to fund unnecessary programs. The idea put forth by these sorts of critics is inevitably some sort of vague self-regulation scheme supported by neo-liberal hand waving about the omnipotence of the “free market”. Of course, if a plant, or a whole industry, can routinely fail inspections without any real consequences, then the industry being inspected is effectively working under a self-policing regime. What we are seeing in this… Read more
It’s Still A Jungle Out There
Not much has changed in the meat processing industry in the 100+ years since Upton Sinclair penned The Jungle. Since the late 1970s, Henry’s Turkey Service has been shipping mentally retarded men from Texas to Iowa to work in the West Liberty plant. Henry’s has acted as the workers’ employer, landlord and caregiver — paying the men a reduced wage for their work at the plant and then deducting from their pay the cost of room, board and care. Payroll records indicate the men are left with as little as $65 per month in salary. Typically, their days began at 2:30 a.m., when they were awakened. At 4:30 a.m., they were taken into the still-dark yard and loaded into passenger vans for the six-mile drive to the West Liberty plant. Once there, they donned protective clothing and went to work “on the line,” cleaning turkeys. Gene Berg, a 53-year-old cancer patient, has worked there as a “gut puller.” Billy and Robert Penner, two brothers in their 60s, have pulled guts and plucked… Read more
Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Cookies Also Recalled
The Salmonella recall stemming from the Peanut Corp. of America continues to widen. Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Cookies has recalled some of it’s Peanut-butter Chocolate Chip cookies which contain peanut butter supplied by Peanut Corporation of America. The recalled cookies include: 12 oz. Bag (UPC 40559 03302) 3.75 oz. individually wrapped (UPC 40559 03305) Recalled date codes include the code for peanut butter, 2 and a Julian date. Example: 21509 is read as the 15th day of 2009. Recalled dates are: 221408 thru and including 21509 (READ AS THE 214TH DAY OF 2008 THRU AND INCLUDING THE 15TH DAY OF 2009.) Full details are available here. Expect more recalled products now that PCA has widened the recall to all peanuts and peanut products processed in its Blakely, Georgia facility since Jan. 1, 2007, after it came to light that they knew at least that far back that the plant was contaminated. You know something is badly wrong with our food supply… Read more
Clif, Luna Bars Recalled In Peanut Butter Salmonella Scare
On January 19, Clif Bar announced the recall of fourteen US products and 4 Canadian products due to the peanut butter in those products being sourced from the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). PCA is under investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a recent Salmonella outbreak thought to be caused by tainted peanut butter. Salmonella is actually a group of bacteria that can cause diarrheal illness in humans. They are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals. There are many different kinds of Salmonella bacteria. Salmonella serotype Typhimurium and Salmonella serotype Enteritidis are the most common in the United States. Most persons infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most persons recover without treatment. However, in some persons, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to… Read more
What I Don’t Eat
People always ask vegans “What do you eat then?” as if the entirety of world cuisine was made up of meat and cheese. Let me instead enumerate what I do not eat, so maybe you can understand a bit better: I do not eat dead bodies. I do not eat reproductive juices or secretions. I do not consume anything from the breasts of another species, whether or not it has been made to go rancid and breed mold on purpose. I do eat anything digested and regurgitated by another species. That’s it. In those four rules lies the entirety of vegan eating. Vegan living on the other hand is a bit more complicated, what with the 10,000 different ways to write the words “ground up sheep” on a bottle of shampoo without writing “ground up… Read more
Getting Started With The Vegan Month of Food
Welcome to the first entry in my own personal Vegan Month of Food. The idea is to write as much as you can for the month of October about vegan food. The blog entries can be about anything food related – your love of tongs, your top secret tofu pressing techniques, the first time your mom cooked vegan for you, vegan options in Timbuktu – you get the idea. Started by Isa over at the Post Punk Kitchen last year, I am pretty excited to be participating this year. I’ve got tons of stuff to talk about on the topic of vegan food. Of course, I am already a day behind here, it being the second of the month and all. I am pretending to have a good reason, and reason your name is food. You see, my take on vegan food this month may be a bit different than most. I am going to talk mostly, but not only, about growing your vegan food, and why every vegan should be growing some, if not all that they can, of their own food, as well as some of the trials and tribulations of trying to garden or… Read more
The Vegan Hundred
From BitterSweet via Bitchin Vegan Kitchen: News travels pretty fast in the blogosphere, and the latest craze that’s been showing up on food blogs far and wide has been The Omnivore’s Hundred, a list of 100 foods that all omnivores should eat at some point in their lives. Well, I like the idea, but obviously that sort of thing just doesn’t fly with me. Instead, I present to you my revised list, The Vegan’s Hundred instead! Everything here is either naturally free of animal products or can be veganized, and just like the original, these foods vary from the every day to extraordinary, delectable and disgusting. They’re simply all of the things that, in my opinion, any vegan foodie should definitely sink their teeth into at least once. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: 1) Copy this list into your own blog, including these instructions. 2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten. 3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. 4) Post a comment… Read more
Vegan Living
As many (all?) of you know, I have gone vegan. I am not going to go into the ethical reasons for my decision here, since it has been explained much better elsewhere. Instead, I thought I’d write a bit about what I have discovered/learned/found out about my food and myself in the process. Much more enjoyable, no? 1) It’s really easy. Actually eating a vegan diet is pretty darn simple actually. The four vegan food groups are way simpler to deal with than the “food pyramid”. B12 (the only vitamin not present in a vegan diet) is easily gotten through cereal, fortified soy milk, etc) and so poses no real problem at all. 2) It’s amazing how much of what we eat (even for dedicated “foodies”) is the same dozen or so ingredients. Switching to a vegan diet forced me to find and try new foods, new ingredients that I might never have otherwise ever encountered (Manioc anyone). My kitchen is now a whirlwind of new ingredients coming in and landing on my plate. 3) I feel great…. Read more
Garden & Eating Update
Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything about food or the garden or anything tasty, really. Life has had other plans for me than sitting around with the computer, but now that I am on a bit of a break before diving into new projects, let me catch you up: The garden continues to produce in abundance, though some crops were total failures. We have been covered up in green beans, flageolets, soy beans, yellow squash and cucumbers (though these did have a recent run in with pickle worms). I have been watching my calories for a while now, and have dropped about 14 pounds. Along the way I have discovered something: I can eat meat and dairy and be hungry by the end of the day, or I can eat only plant foods and have calories “left over” every day. This has led to a lot of soul-searching and reading and discussion, the upshot of which is that I can’t see myself doing much other than continuing right on down the path to being a vegan. ‘Tis a strange turn of events for an eater… Read more
First Fruits
Even though we got a late start this year on our planting, and even though I have been spending my time being a tradesman instead of a horticulturalist, we are still beginning to reap the fruits of our labors, at least in our spread out, makeshift orchard. Blueberries The property came with a large, well-established Tifblue bush, which is a mid-season variety that produces a lot of fruit. We added three more bushes over Winter, all Powderblue, another mid-season variety that is supposed to be slightly more disease resistant than Tifblue. Well, our new bushes have already given what fruit they will this year, which is not much given their small size, but it was a handful sufficient for making muffins. The Tifblue bush should come in in the next few weeks, and it will provide a nice harvest – enough for fresh eating, jam and maybe a pie or two. Strawberries We didn’t put in strawberries this year, having to make some hard decisions about what to plant and what to leave for… Read more
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Tagged blackberry, Blueberries, Figs, Fruits, jam, Peaches, Powderblue, raspberry, Strawberries, strawberry, Tifblue
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On (Not) Wasting Food
As an avid reader of “foodie” blogs, I run across articles like this one all the time, and I’m really not sure why they even exist. How hard is it to not waste food, particularly if you like food enough to read a food blog? Everyone occasionally has a few leftovers or some fresh herbs that it was impossible to buy in an appropriate quantity go bad, but for food waste to be a big enough issue to have to write about it seems to me to bely a deeper problem; these people don’t have any idea how to cook. Let me say this as plainly as I can: good cooks do not waste food. Ever. If you waste food, you are a bad cook, end of story. If your leftovers molder in the refrigerator, you are not planning portion sizes correctly, you are buying too much, and you have no concept of food cost. Therefore, you are a bad cook. Following recipes in glossy food-porn magazines and shopping at Trader Joe’s does not make you a good cook. Practicing economy and the mathematics of recipe sizing makes you… Read more
The Edible Landscape
I have, for some time now, been enamored of the idea of edible landscaping. Now that we are living on a nice piece of land, I have the room to put this idea into action. I have drawn up a rather ambitious list of edibles to add to the property here, but I happy enough with adding them slowly, a few at a time, rather than demand that I get it all done NOW or abandon the plan because I can’t possibly do it all right now. The first stages of the plan are coming along swimmingly. Thanks to the Nursery at Ty Ty, we now have two blackberry varieties (Arapaho and Choctaw) in the ground on one year old canes, a Meyer Lemon and three new blueberry bushes (Rabbiteye) to compliment the already mature one we found on the property. That same nursery is rounding up the next batch of plants: Banana (Amistad), Italian Stone Pine (for pine nuts), Lemon (Eureka) and Key Lime. Half a dozen fig trees, already on the property, are trimmed and mulched and already putting out leaves, giving me much… Read more
Beyond Food Miles – A Locavore Apologetics
The locavore movement has been misunderstood, perhaps willfully, by quite a few people. Newspapers characterize it as being simplistically, or militantly, focused on food-miles and ignoring the “fiendishly tricky business” of balancing your carbon emissions on your dinner plate. Never mind that many of the objections raised in the above Guardian article are canards. Environmentally-sound growing practices in Kenya for beans could easily be used in British bean growing, erasing the supposed advantage of the Kenyan produce in the carbon calculus. That isn’t exactly what I see as the point of being a locavore. Being a locavore is about more than just food-miles. It is about community. It’s about the quality of food you get, and who you get it from. When I buy tomatoes from a local farmer, not only do I interact directly with the person who coaxed them out of the ground (something of emotional value to me personally), but I am able to buy thin-skinned, juicy, flavorful tomatoes that… Read more
Visualizing What You Eat
In the great race to the bottom, visualizations and info-graphics are a handy tool for replacing words, what with all that laborious reading some old codgers think we ought to do since we have a facility for language. It’s annoying enough to have to read the names of the foods we buy, why should we have to read the nutrition label too? Enter Foodsel, a website dedicated to furthering your simplistic and incomplete understanding of the foods you eat. You can choose any food from Foodsel’s database and it will show you a pretty picture of batteries, sugar cubes and sticks of butter. Why, I don’t know, particularly the batteries. Humans do not run on batteries, so showing me that some soup contains 20 batteries worth of calories is pretty meaningless. Of course, I am helpfully told that I need to consume 107.3 batteries a day. Huh? Really, I have no idea what the people behind this site were thinking, but it wasn’t… Read more
The Cruelest Cuts
From my old home state of North Carolina comes a six-part expose on the poultry industry, documenting the lives of North Carolina’s 28,000 poultry workers. Editor Rick Thames kicks off the series with a searing editorial that compares these workers, mostly illegal immigrants with few rights, to the South’s most notorious historical underclass. But it is not just the South that profits from this neo-slavery. In a similiar vein and from my current state of residence comes bad news that schools all over Georgia have been buying their beef from Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, CA via Westland Meat Co. You know the one, where the Humane Society has managed to get graphic footage (WARNING: Not for the squeamish) of workers at a California slaughterhouse using forklifts, high-pressure water sprays, wooden sticks, and electric shocks to get sick cattle up on their feet so they can pass USDA inspection and be processed into America’s food supply. Abused workers, tortured sick… Read more
Peter Reinhart’s Napoletana Pizza Dough
4 1/2 cups (20.25 ounces) unbleached high-gluten, bread, or all-purpose flour, chilled 1 3/4 (.44 ounce) teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon (.11 ounce) instant yeast 1/4 cup (2 ounces) olive oil (optional) 1 3/4 cups (14 ounces) water, ice cold (40°F) Semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting 1. Stir together the flour, salt, and instant yeast in a 4-quart bowl (or in the bowl of an electric mixer). With a large metal spoon, stir in the oil and the cold water until the flour is all absorbed (or mix on low speed with the paddle attachment), If you are mixing by hand, repeatedly dip one of your hands or the metal spoon into cold water and use it, much like a dough hook, to work the dough vigorously into a smooth mass while rotating the bowl in a circular motion with the other hand. Reverse the circular motion a few times to develop the gluten further. Do this for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are evenly distributed. If you are using an electric mixer,… Read more
New Orleans Muffuletta Sandwich
Everyone who visits New Orleans that loves food ends up at Central Grocery (923 Decatur Street, French Quarter) eating a Muffuletta. If you’re like me, you took some home too. The problem is in getting a proper Muff outside of New Orleans, a concern of all of us who are fans of the sandwich but prefer to live above sea-level. So, this project was born – my attempt to rebuild the muffuletta from the ground up. First we need the Sicilian loaf that forms the basis of the sandwich: Muffuletta Bread 1 cup lukewarm water 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour 3 teaspoons instant active dry yeast Cornmeal Sesame seeds Olive oil Using your mixer with dough hook, place water, olive oil, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast in the bowl. Beat until smooth. If using your bread machine, select dough setting and press start. When dough cycle has finished, remove dough from pan and turn out onto a… Read more
White Bean Dip
Recently I made a pot of Great Northern Beans with some leftover ham from our Christmas feast that I had been keeping in the freezer. We ate beans with hoecakes yesterday, and today I was tasked with doing something with the leftovers. Now, my usual response to beans or soup leftovers is to begin what we have taken to calling my never-ending pot of soup. Leftovers go in the soup pot along with whatever sturdy vegetables I have on hand, and soup is ready. Over time we add more stock and water and vegetables to the pot and magically the soup pot stays full for days, sometimes weeks. This time however, I decided to try something different, and I didn’t have much in the way of vegetables around anyway, so I took stock of what I did have on hand, and this White Bean Dip was born. Ingredients 2 cups cooked Great Northern Beans 1/2 large onion cumin garlic dill dried mustard cilantro Procedure Drain the beans slice onion and fry in olive oil add cumin,… Read more
The Hunter as Honest Locavore
Barbera over at Tigers & Strawberries wrote an interesting piece on Hunters and Locavores. She says at the end of the article: Hunters here are pretty much what I would classically call a locavore, in the most visceral and true sense possible. They go out, find their meat on the hoof, stalk it, kill it, field dress it (a very unpleasant process–you gut and bleed it right there in the woods–and it is a smelly, messy task–trust me on this), and either take it to a butcher to process it, or, if they have the equipment, they skin, behead and cut up the carcass themselves. Personally, I think that anyone who has the stomach to do this deserves respect. Because they not only are confronting the ugly reality that meat must come from a living being head on–they are doing a good portion of the dirty work of making meat edible on their own. As one of the few hunters I know who would apply the word locavore to themselves, I have a few additional thoughts on the matter. Not only… Read more
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Christmas Dinner
Christmas is only a week away, so now my thoughts turn to food, of course. This year I am cooking Yuletide dinner for 8-10 people and trotting out my French cookery skills to (hopefully) wow our guests. Inspired by the work of Marvin Woods with African-American Gullah cooking, I have been playing around for some time now with the idea of melding traditional Southern ingredients and dishes with classic French techniques and methods. Think of it as a sort of a Creole for the interior of the U.S. South or as Provence in Georgia, if you will. This Christmas dinner is an attempt to put that idea into practice on the level of a whole menu. I think I have hit all the proper Southern holiday buttons here: Pork, biscuits, sweet potatoes, cranberries, mash, pecans, rice. At the same time, I hope the application of French preparations and techniques will render the meal new and exciting while retaining the familiarity of the seasonal favorites. My plan is to serve in three overlapping… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining Food on the brain today as the planning of the 2008 garden swings into high gear. Compost is cooking away, the plots are laid out (we’re using Square Foot) this time, and the long list of crops is in hand. We have also reorganized the frozen food storage over the last few days and made sure we have everything laid in that we want to for the winter (not that there will be a winter in South Georgia this year, but what the hay!). 3 cups Sumatra Mandheling coffee oops, skipped lunch (and breakfast) Bleu cheese chuck burgers grilled oven fries Pumpkin pudding Weight: 203… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining The old saying goes “Breakfast like a King, lunch like a Prince, dinner like a Pauper”. While I am not there yet exactly, I can feel myself moving in that direction, beginning with my refound love of breakfast foods and my rekindled habit of rising early. Sumatra Mandheling coffee Scrambled Eggs Sausage Patties Biscuits 12 oz Dr. Pepper Beef Stroganoff Green beans Bread sticks Pear Cake Weight: 204… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining Okay, so I skipped breakfast today, which is never a good idea. The remainder of todays foods were down-home favorites – simple foods I grew up with and have always had an affinity for. 3 cups of Sumatra Mandheling coffee 2 tsp sugar 1 cup leftover Brunswick Stew 1 slice Meatloaf 1 cup Boiled Potatoes 1 cup Brussel sprouts 1 Biscuit 1 slice Pear… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining After a week of this food blogging experiment, I am convinced that simply paying attention to what I eat makes me eat less. I am also becoming convinced that putting it out here for all the world to see (theoretically at least) is pushing me towards eating better foods in general. 3 cups Sulawesi Toraja Coffee 1 egg over easy on toast 2 hotdogs 1 cup Campbell’s chicken soup Baked Brie en croute sliced andouille sausage Cream cheese & Bacon biscuits 2 glasses Le Grand Noir Cabernet-Shiraz Weight: 202… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining Today’s eating was dominated by Sunday Dinner, done on a German theme this week, and quite delicious, if I do say so myself. Coffee: 3 cups Sugar cube: 2 Schweinepfeffer (Paprika Pork Stew): 1.5 serving Onion Rye Bread: 2 slices Westphalischer Kirschkuchen (Westphalian Cherry Cake): 2 pieces Westphalischer Kirschkuchen (Westphalian Cherry Cake): 1 piece Today’s Weight: 202… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining Okay, so I have been corrected as to the proper Southern usage of Dinner and Supper. Dinner is the largest meal of the day regardless of when it is served, and supper is the small meal after (and only after) dinner. So you can have Lunch and then Dinner or Dinner and then Supper, but not Supper and then Dinner. Coffee: 3 cups Sugar cube: 2 Pickled eggs: 2 Bologna sandwich Hotdog: 4 French fries: 2… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining I think I might just enjoy this whole food diary thing, so I have been playing around a bit with how to make it a more enjoyable topic for postings, starting with a snazzy layout. Let me know what you think. Coffee: 3 cups Sugar cube: 2 Fried Bologna Sandwich Fried Bologna slice: 2 Cheese: 1 Over-medium egg: 1 Bread:2 slices repeat of breakfast Cajun Pizza: 3 slices Andouille sausage Bell pepper Black Olive Sauteed Onion Button Mushroom Weight: 205… Read more
Daily Dining
Daily Dining I think I might just enjoy this whole food diary thing, so I have been playing around a bit with how to make it a more enjoyable topic for postings, starting with a snazzy layout. Let me know what you think. Coffee: 3 Smoked Sausage: 1 Grits: 1/4 cup (uncooked) Pear Cake: 1 slice Red Beans & Rice: 1 serving Andouille Sausage:… Read more
Daily Dining
Todays Food: coffee: x3 sugar cube: x3 beef & cabbage stew: 1 serving banana: x1 candy Corn: 1 serving pasta w/ Pesto: 1 serving kielbasa: 1 serving steamed Broccoli: 1 serving olive bread: 2 slices w/ margarine Todays Weight: 209… Read more
Daily Dining
Jenn and I are on a quest to trim the old waist-lines, and are beginning with a modest food diary in order to get a handle on what we actually eat. I’ll be posting a daily list of my consumption along with my weight for the day. So, here goes. Today’s Food: coffee: x3 sugar cube: x5 half & half: 1 tsp bologna sandwich bread: x2 bologna: x2 cheese slice: x1 Reese’s Cup: x1 unsweetened tea: x2 beer (ale): x3 cabbage & beef stew: 1 bowl Today’s weight: 211… Read more
The Garden Is Political
Imagine an America where millions of people left their cars at home and rode their bicycles to work, grew their own food in their yards, recycled so much that you couldn’t find litter on the streets, repaired things instead of replacing them and generally lived lives of frugal conservation instead of profligate consumption. Sounds like a fairy-tale doesn’t it? Well, currently it is, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m not talking about the future either, but the… Read more
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Farmers Markets Cheaper Than Supermarkets?
There has been a little flood recently of items concerning the costs of shopping at farmers markets instead of supermarkets. Meg Hourihan points to some conclusions from a business-statistics class at Seattle University. Meanwhile, over at Becks & Posh, Sam has come to the same conclusion. For my part, even ignoring the cost/value of known provenance, less food-miles traveled, etc. I have found that market food has been, on average, about the same price as or a little cheaper than supermarket food here on the outskirts of… Read more
East London Boozers | The Pembury Tavern
This little gem is a real find! In addition to being a proper drinking den (Milton Brewery goodies and STRONG ale on tap), it has a laid-back student vibe to it that, in the States, I associated with good independent coffee houses. There is a Bar Billiards table, a total of eight real ales on tap, the house wines are £2.10 for a glass of excellent Cabernet Sauvignon, the food is hearty and plentiful for the money, and the staff are genuinely friendly. Maybe the decor leaves something to be desired, as it can look a bit empty and abandoned when it isn’t busy, but really, if that is my only criticism of the place, it can’t be too bad, now can it? Address: 90 Amhurst Road, London, E8 1JH Phone: 020 8986 8597 Hackney Central (0.2 miles), Homerton (0.7 miles), Dalston Kingsland (0.8… Read more
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…On Cooking & Eating
There’s not much profit to be made off of the healthy, self-reliant individual who can solve his own problems. I find I can cook an excellent meal for myself from scratch within 30 minutes and while doing other work at a cost of not much more than a dollar. Yet, many people are absolutely dependent on heat-and-serve food or restaurants, solutions that cost much more, take more time, and don’t taste as… Read more