I’ve actually lost a bit of weight here—true, I still look like a manatee with glasses, but it has gotten to the point where pairs of once-tight pants (trousers, not underpants, if any Brits are reading this) have started slipping down, causing me to either rely on the one belt I own or frantically hike up the waistband every five steps like I’m doing a folk dance. Part of me is thrilled about the possibility of at some point no longer being the Fat American, but then the practical part of me is sort of panicked about how I will be able to afford new pants should this trend continue. I’m terrified that I’m going to be on my school placement and I’ll be known as that strange teacher who holds up her pants with hemp ropes like a sack of potatoes. “Do you know Sam?” “Ah yes, she’s that well-educated hobo, right?”
The problem is that British food is absolutely vile. Look, I love this country, I so very badly want to be able to smugly tell my friends back home that even the food here is fantastic, but unfortunately here in England I’m frequently confronted by plates of food that I could not, even in my vague liberal artsish way of fudging the boundaries of my knowledge, pretend to be able to identify.
Occasionally I CAN identify what I’m eating, and that’s even worse. For example, steak and kidney pie. WHY? And I don’t mean why in the curious, academic sense. I mean it in the aching religious sense, the crisis of faith sense, where you ask God from the very depths of your soul how an omnibenevolent being could possibly treat his creation so terribly in allowing man to invent steak and kidney pie. It really is The Problem of Evil. I honestly believe that there should be special death camps set aside for people who serve other people steak and kidney pies. And, being in theory a candidate for Hitler’s own death camps, I think I’m allowed to say things like that.
Sometimes the food isn’t bad, it’s just put into weird combinations. For example, I keep seeing restaurants that serve baked potatoes with tuna (instead of sour cream, chives, bacon and cheese—like a NORMAL baked potato). WHY WOULD YOU PUT TUNA IN A BAKED POTATO? What on God’s green earth could have possibly possessed you when you dreamt up that unholy union? I mean, Jesus Christ, no wonder you lost the Empire.
Then there’s the whole issue of baked beans. Apparently people here eat baked beans with their bacon and eggs in the morning. I personally don’t see what business beans have coming to breakfast. I want to look the beans right in the eye and ask, “Who the fuck invited you?”
It’s not all bad though. The sweets have been fantastic. Last week I was inducted into the world of biscuits, and I have now heard the Gospel of Trifle. I find myself running home from class each day, literally sprinting through the park and bowling over old women trudging along with their shopping who dare stand between me and cake, just so I can make it back in time for cake. (How twee and British is it that my college serves us cake every afternoon? But that’s something that deserves its own blog post.)
And also in fairness the non-British food I’ve had here has been pretty fantastic. I’m eating shawarma like I’m back in Israel, and I have so many kebab shop options near my apartment that I’ve decided that from now on I will not eat at kebab shops that cut the meat off with an electric turkey carver. No, I will insist my shawarma be cut off with one of those bigass knives that look like samurai swords. Come to think of it, I think I’ll insist on using a samurai sword for all knife functions. How fantastic would it be to spread strawberry jelly on toast with a knife so large you’d have to clear everyone out of the way beforehand? (“OH MY GOD, GET OUT OF THE WAY—SAM’S SPREADING MARGARINE!” “OH GOD NO, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” “AAAA!”) I think it’d lend a nice air of drama that is so sadly lacking at meals nowadays.
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