Girl tell me do you love vegetables...now tell me do you love Tony Rebel...eh eh

FIRST: A SONG....
Cook
By: Lexxus

INTRO:
Bwoy Lennie, see yuh gal a bawl
Say yuh put har out
A wha yuh do har?
Steely hear wha mi tell har say
CHORUS
Gal yuh better can cook
Think you deh yah fi yuh pretty looks
Waan live a restaurant and done mi bank book
Cook, hmmm, recipe book
Gwaan inna the kitchen cah yuh hand dem nuh nook

Big Sunday morning yuh lie down inna bed
Before yuh boil two banana steam two fish head
Yuh mad, bout you want sausage and egg
Big man nuh want nuh bully beef an bread
Fus thing, mek mi get the finger nail clip
Snip snip, tall finger man take a trip
Mi know say yuh caan peel banana wid it
Plus dumpling

CHORUS

Have some gal wha way past them teen
Big hottie hottie but live pon sardine
Can't even cook some cow foot and bean
But them ready fi Devon House ice-cream
Sherene, hmmm, wha that smell so green
A mussi some last week food you a steam
A mean, Sherene a what dat smell so green
A couldn't vegetable yuh say yuh in deh a steam
Is big stone yuh want fi wake yuh up out a yuh dream

WARNING, LENGTHY...FOOD IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO ME (im a fat kid) JUST LOOK AT THE PICTURES IF YOUR LAZY

I've been here for a month so far...so I have some backloaded pics. The first few posts wont be in chronological order...actually none of them may be..oh well..

FOOD! (food is a very dear topic to me...so please bear through...there's more interesting stuff to come)

I've been telling people for years that I know how to cook. I've always understood the mechanics of cooking and what goes into a good meal, but I never really had to actually cook...between the lady person and Adams House Dining Hall I was pretty set. Although I have thrown down on some ribs before.

Sigh...not anymore. However, I feel slightly silly brining a camera to the kitchen on my floor to take pictures of the yummy food I make each week (salmon, mushrooms, pasta dishes, sausages, scotch bonnett peppers, asparagus and Levi's Roots Reggae Reggae Sauce..oh my...) so instead you'll see pics of other random food related items. Don't get too hungry. Plus, there are a lot of asides through this post. I have a lot on my mind about food and if you know me, you know I'm random. The asides are like footnotes of my brilliance

The picture above is a meal I had when I went out with my cousin and her friend at a cute Italian restaurant off Oxford Street which is near my student housing hole. It was penne with spinach somehow made into balls with fresh ground black pepper and some parmesan cheese. That was good...but times were not always so great. Please continue down.

The things I do since people won't switch to flickr....

HAUL,
The Queen (and don't worry...I'm not really a glutton...this just happened to be the first set of pics)
The beginning was rough. Before I got cooking supplies it was just me, that bottle of Lucozade Sport and free itunes downloads (only Ugly Betty got money out of me).

That happened because I tried to eat food sold in one of these places...lesson learned: never trust food a 3 Pound (as in monetary unit) buffet from an "All you Can Eat Chinese TAI" place...sadly they are all over and the cheapest thing around. These pictures are actually two different stores acroos the street from each other on Goodge Street, one of the main streets near my student housing hole. I'm not sure what the meat was that I bought, so after one bite, I spit it out, attempted the noodles which were just as bad..and somehow they ruined my vegetables. My meal didn't even consist of three spoonfuls...I threw it out.


And these are pretty tame ones. Another one on my way to school has lights a la the liquor stores out in the hood. They pay sad looking people to wear boards for them and hand out fliers. (seeing as I can't find a job, I may become one of those sad looking people...but I'm still too bougie for that) I was fooled the first time...shame on you.


Next I tried these cooked chicken legs they sold in the "hot" section of the closest Sainsbury (one of 2 main supermarkets...the other is Tesc0). It was chicken in a bag, quite literally and if the picture says anything I was skeptical. It said to eat right away, but I thought it would be fine if I put it in the fridge and then heated it up later. I was wrong. Bleh(...although they're non hot cooked in store chicken wings do do the trick. And at 1.97 pounds can serve about three -four meals once you add some Reggae Reggae sauce.)

After that misadventure, I figured if the Brits can do anything right it should be there own cuisine. I bought Fish and Chips! I remember quite liking them when I came when I was little although I don't recall eating them the last time I was here. Strangely enough those were sold in a bag as well. Do these people have a food in a bag obsession? Quite possibly so...


Not bad, and a really big meal...but terribly greasy and not quite the homely feel I was going for. At five pounds I was pretty sad when I couldn't eat but 1/3 out of the meal and it wasn't something to put up and it was almost as sickening as KFC. Sadly I still didn't have a pot to cook in (thankfully I had somewhere to piss...pics of that to come..lol)

It was at this that I remembered that England is quite like America...and was really good at appropriating other cultures' culture. Quite frankly, America learned its pimp skills from England (according to my eight grade teacher Jamaicans learned drug dealing from the Queen during the Opium War). I turned to one of the gazillion Indian food restaurants, ordered some Naan and Tandoori chicken wings...retired to my room on that first Friday night and called home in ecstasy. Warm, good tasting food at last! (below: me looking ecstatic!)
Though the glory wasn't meant to last. Fast food out here is fast food.

KFC as usually is icky, but after staying in the library all night and not wanting to cook the options are bar food, those reheatable dinner things from the supermarket (I had one of those my first week too...not too bad), KFC, McDonalds, Subway or these random hot dog and onion street vendors that only show up after like 10 30. I sadly took chances with KFC. Really, after that 20-30 minute walk from school in the cold, solitary night (there were ppl out but I was alone minus the other footprints in the sand) I just wanted a warm meal and a bed. The smile was before tasting it and calling my sister in tears.



What about pizza you ask? Oh no...Pizza out here is akin to a restaurant like ..I can't even think of how to put it. They are usually sold in cozy sit down places with a few express places that have pizza that often look like the pizza they had in the Kingston airport when I was in the fifth grade. If you can't picture it, don't try to. Just know that it's not Italian pizza, Chicago pizza and definitely not NY pizza. This is me with my "takeaway" from one of the several Pizza Hut sit down restaurants around town. I got it as a treat to myself for finishing my first essay (this was after treating myself to a Krispy Kreme donut the day before and a good "home" cooked meal made in my student housing hole kitchen). The buffalo wings weren't buffalo, but I'm sure some Brit is sad in NY looking for a Cornish pastie or mincemeat pie or whatever those things are that they eat.



As for the hood Chinese food store...its pretty much non existent in the part of town where I live unless you go to one of the previously described scary places with questionable meat. (I'm in the West End of London right by the University College of London, Saatchi and Saatchi's headquarters, Dennis's publishing arm in the UK, a huge old shopping strip and in walking distance from London's SoHo). However, I did find a Japanese food cart on Friday and swiped lunch for 3 quid 50 p (excuse me I'm trying to get the lingo correct). It did the trick:


You're probably wondering if I'm still surviving off that bottle of Lucozade. No...its all about tea, my big old 2l bottles of water since I'm wary of the kitchen "drinking" water and sparkling waters for when I need a kick. It doesn't touch CVS Stars and Stripes Black Cherry but it does a trick.


And when everything costs twice as much as the number on the sticker, you savor every last drop once your on your own and can't embarrass yourself. Yep, even when something punctures the bottom of your bottle and you realize water has been dripping on you the entire way home from the supermarket and you have no cup except your tea mug, so you turn the bottle upside down and drink from that hole. Yep, even then. Okay..its not that bad, I was just being extra...

Overall there is tasty food if you know where to look and my kitchen is looking better and better each day. Plus, since everyone's all international and not what, you learn a few new things. And I already od'd on McDonalds the week I had a paper due and had all those 2 pound coupons. Sadness.

Here's some non fast food entries...kinda.. I got a pot and life got better!



Yummy Yummy...My aunt sent me home with two fingers of plantain seen above, some reheatable Jamaican patties and a jar of Nutella. God rewards you when you wake up early to go to church. Unfortunately I think one of those fingers is going bad now...but I fried the other one last week and it was great.








This was a stand at a fair I'll tell you more about later...I couldn't help but sing "Burgerlicous" to the tune of Fergalicious...cheesy...yea I know. I was more upset that it was a carnival without funnel cake. I wanted my funnel cake.



WHEW, sadly I have more to say about food...its a constant..think about it, you eat almost every day of your life...you should enjoy it as much as breathing. Strangely, I've been getting more ethnic fatigue out here after eating than I did before. I'll leave on this note: I haven't had a hot breakfast in a month. I miss my mommies pancakes and dumplings and saltfish , well not together..but yea... I also need to find a Caribbean shrimp roti if I'm going to be here for a year, another trip to Brixton it is...