Two posh boyfriends in a row combined with three years in Cambridge and more than ten in Oxford have rendered certain legacy eating habits from a northern upbringing pretty much unsustainable.
To be fair, this has overwhelmingly been a good thing. I make my own salad dressings instead of using Heinz salad cream, sometimes I make coffee in a cafetiere instead of drinking instant, I haven't had a kebab since 1989 and I don't think you can make a decent pasta sauce out of tinned tomatoes and minestrone Cup a Soup.
But there are losses too. Getting to understand fresh vegetables was a revelation (in my childhood they were usually frozen at home and tinned at school), but you can have too much of a good thing and sometimes I just want a tin of green beans and a fork.
For a while I used to buy them surreptitiously, but I am more sensitive to food snobbery than I would like to be and I quickly stopped. Until I went to see the Lizard the other week, and she made me a salad which included tinned artichoke hearts (acceptable, who's got access to fresh artichokes on a regular basis?) and - gasp - tinned green beans. And you know what, it was bloody lovely.
I copied the salad wholesale the following week and it went down very well. And tonight I had them with chickpeas, olive oil, anchovies, chilli, garlic and parsley, and that was bloody lovely as well.
So. I am encouraged. Next: Branston pickle.
joella
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