Our eating habits...

Here in the UK this week there has been a lot of discussion about food, food supply and people's eating habits, in the aftermath of the emergence of the fact that many of the beef hamburgers sold in many well-known supermarkets have been found to contain significant quantities of horse-meat. The problem is not so much the fact that the burgers contain horse-meat (in many countries, e.g. France and Belgium, horse-meat is considered a delicacy) but that the products did NOT contain what they were alleged to contain. Somewhere along the line either someone has been very dishonest or very incompetent. Either of these would be a good enough reason to reconsider whether you really want to buy or consume mass-produced processed foods. I am deliberately choosing this moment to write a little about what my wife Jane and I eat.

Food purchased on the market at Ferney Voltaire, France

Let me say first that we are not fanatical about any aspect of this subject. If we find a genuinely good mass-produced product, we have no qualms about using it. In general though, we like to cook food that is made "from first principles", using raw ingredients. Wherever possible we like to use fruit, vegetables and herbs that I have grown in our garden, but of course the garden is not very big, so it is not possible to be self-sufficient.

Fresh veg from the garden, prepped for cooking

In default of home-grown produce though, we try to buy wherever possible from Farmers' Markets and small local shops. As an example I cite the little butcher's shop about 300 yards from where we live (the Linkway Butchers).

Slow-cooked Jamaican pork

Their meat is just so much better than what you get in the supermarkets. It is consistently more tender and more tasty, and its (local) origins are known. Most of their meat  - and especially game - comes from very close by. Their bacon is particularly good: when you cook it, it goes crispy, not hard, and it doesn't exude loads of watery white gunk like mass-produced bacon does!

Unfortunately the greengrocer's shop that used to be in the same small line of shops as the Linkway Butchers closed a couple of years ago, priced out of the market by its massive competitors, and in our town we only have a Farmers' Market once a month.

Pizza

Our eating habits are strongly influenced by the cuisine of the places we have lived in or visited. I was born in Malaysia and in my Army days served extensively in Brunei, Hong Kong and Nepal. When we were in Hong Kong, Jane at one stage taught British-style cookery to the wives of our Gurkha soldiers, and in return learned a lot about Nepalese cuisine, along with the local Cantonese style.

Jamaican patties

Later on we both became keen on trying to re-create dishes we encountered on our travels around the world on holidays. The result is that we have an exceptionally wide repertoire of recipes.

Chicken Satay, rice, Gado-Gado and peanut sauce

Actually neither of us feels obliged to follow a recipe too closely, and we often cook meals "inspired by" a recipe, a book, or a chef's style.

Pasta salad with garden veg and boiled eggs

In a typical week we might eat a Chinese stir-fry on Monday, Caribbean Brown Stew Chicken with Rice and Peas on Tuesday, Italian pasta with meat sauce on Wednesday, British-style roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding on Thursday, an Indian curry on Friday, a North African tagine or Middle Eastern meze on Saturday, and something "simple" like Bangers and Mash on Sunday!

Tomato soup with pesto palmiers croutons

We are not vegetarians of course, but we love veg, so our meals often include several different ones. We also love salads and eat them at every possible opportunity.

"Jamie Oliver" salad, with peaches and Prosciutto

Sometimes we eat a snack with a cocktail, before dinner. It's possibly something like this:

Pre-dinner "nibbles"

Jane is diabetic, so we seldom eat puddings - especially not sweet ones - but we do often have fruit (such as home-grown raspberries or blueberries) for dessert.

Raspberries and Blueberries

 I hardly need to remind you that we are very fond of cheese, both used as an ingredient and eaten after the Main, in lieu of a sweet dessert.

Loosehanger cheeses

One final thought: For most of our married life I have been the "Primary Breadwinner", going out to work each day, while Jane has most often been at home, initially looking after the children and subsequently running her own one-person business, so understandably she has done most of the routine cooking. Latterly however, I have been able to take a greater part in the culinary regime.

Reindeer steaks with soft polenta

For health reasons I am now on an 80% working contract, which means that I normally have a 3-day weekend, giving me more opportunity to participate in food shopping and in cooking. That's fine by me. I love cooking and am trying hard to make up for lost time. I feel that if I were to have my time again I might even have been a professional chef.

Polenta with Borlotto beans

A mutual love of food and cooking is one of the things that brings us closer together, and I have had the enormous advantage of having full-time one-to-one tuition! Must dash now, Folks - back to the chopping-board...

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P.S. Jane can take a lot of the credit for our adventures with World Cuisine, by virtue of winning so many foreign holidays - all in a day's work for the editor of the prestigious Competition Grapevine magazine! She writes a blog about competitions, also called The Competition Grapevine and another one called Onions and Paper - named after the most basic ingredients of her two main hobby areas - cookery and crafting.