What’s the deal with British food?

A few minutes after getting home from work on Friday, my phone notifies me of a new email from work. I usually ignore these when I’m not on the clock; however, this email announced a few free slots for the Royal Victoria Marathon for interested staff. Within five minutes, I’d signed up for my first marathon.

Along with entering my shirt and sock sizes, I was asked what I wanted the announcer to say about me when I cross the finish line. Not that it makes a difference, as I won’t be able to hear it anyway. Nevertheless, I hope they honour my wish:

Before flying to London, I recruited the upstairs tenants to water the garden, as the roomie was also headed out of town for a week. I’d planted new radish seeds a week before I left, fully expecting to return to a new crop of fist-sized radishes, along with a bounty from the tomato, bush bean, and Hungarian hot pepper plants that had yet to bear fruit.

I’d long become disillusioned about my purple moon cauliflowers, of which sprouted leaves that only continued to get larger and more abundant since this June 20 picture:

A week before I was to return, I received this picture via WhatsApp. The purple moons had sprouted in my absence:

It was the Hungarian hot peppers that took the most unexpected turn, morphing into a massive nightshade plant bearing toxic berries. Those went straight into the compost.

Two of the four purple moons were chopped off for my favourite soup recipe: roasted potato and cauliflower. I’d mentally prepared to take a picture of my beautiful purple soup to share on this blog. Instead, the dark purple florets disappeared into a vortex of brown broth as I turned on my food processor. The finished product was a big pot of delectable grayish mauve goo.

One of the questions I got asked about my trip was, “What was the strangest thing you ate?” followed up by an inquiry about whether I ate spotted dick.

I did not. Ed and Hannah gave me this on my first night:

I realize it doesn’t mention chocolate anywhere on the packaging. Yet I was expecting it to be enrobed in chocolate when I opened it.

It reminded me of hardened, sweetened toothpaste. I didn’t hate it. In fact, I ate the whole thing that night.

This so-called treat put the first humans atop Mount Everest in 1953. I guess Romney’s had no choice but to use an endorsement from before better candy was made.

At best, British snacks were only vaguely tempting.

What human achievement could possibly be attributed to this small bag of clearance pork scratchings? The packaging didn’t make lofty claims beyond “great taste”.

When it came to sourcing the ingredients needed for my traditional breakfast of almond butter, honey, and sliced bananas on toast, this was the largest jar of almond butter I could find:

What’s this? Almond butter for ants?!

Like Canada, England isn’t a renowned destination for gourmands. Like Victoria, London seemed to have an influx of fried chicken places. Even if I ate chicken, I think I’d have felt too schlubby to enter a classy joint like Morley’s, where all the stock photo models dine and “hamburger” is two words.

For the most part, I was content with grabbing a ready-made sandwich from one of London’s many Pret a Manger chains. Ed and Hannah took me to some solid restaurants, none of which served traditional British fare. The fish and chips we ordered one night were the most English thing I ate. Besides Romney’s candied toothpaste, I guess?

My gastronomy journey began on British Airways. When I booked with them, I was presented with several special meal options at no extra cost. As a lactose-intolerant pescatarian, I am not super limited as to what I can eat. Yet, the options, which included kosher, halal, vegetarian, and lactose-free, didn’t offer much overlap with my dietary restrictions, so I dabbled in veganism for those 9 hours I was airborne.

This trip had me discover my favourite — and least favourite — airline. I was charmed by British Airways’ safety video, filmed in the style of a period drama and made accessible via captions. Most of the movies and shows also had English captions available, which is a rarity! (In 2019 I spent more than a total of 30 hours flying with Aerolíneas Argentinas, which had zero captioned content.) To British Airways, a boxed bike counts towards one item of checked baggage allowance.

No wonder Jude Law chooses British Airways. (Details to come in a future post.)

On the contrary, Turkish Airlines gave me a wretched journey home, and I’ll never fly with them again if I can help it. I chose them because they were the most economical option for flying back to Vancouver (or Victoria) from Slovenia. As there were no direct flights with any airline, I had a layover in Istanbul.

I must’ve glossed over their policy for transporting a bike, as the ticketing agent at the Ljubljana airport asked me whether I’d paid for my bike when I plopped the box onto the scale.

“I believe I have.”

I pulled up the email containing my flight info and showed her the listed baggage allowance, which permitted two checked items up to 23kg apiece: I had just the one box to check in.

“No, a bicycle is a special item, you have to pay.”

It cost me 180€ to get my bike home.

Weirdly, most airlines grant me and my broken ears priority boarding. I’ve never been antsy about spending more time in an economy seat. Still, I do get a kick out of seeing the puzzled looks on my fellow passengers’ faces as a flight attendant escorts me to the front of the queue.

The second leg of my journey was much worse than the first. Minutes after taking my place in an aisle seat of the middle row, which was where I was to remain for the next 12 hours, a bodybuilder-type plops into the seat in front of me and promptly reclines it as far back as possible, bringing the seatback screen 3″ from my nose. I had just paid nearly $300 to transport 23 kilograms in the cargo hold, and this fucker didn’t have to pay a surcharge for his juiced gains!

As I struggled to restart the movie I’d started watching on the previous flight on the glitchy touchscreen, an attendant came over and, without saying anything, took over the controls to pull up the safety video, which featured an inset of an animated character signing… in Turkish Sign Language. In the three weeks I was away, I picked up enough British Sign Language to carry a conversation. At no point in my trip did I pick up any Turkish Sign Language.

My choice in-flight entertainment was Nuremberg, to match the gloomy vibe of the flight. I’d like to believe my frustrated mashing of the touch screen bothered the bodybuilder so much that he got up and went over to confer with his fellow strongmen who were seated a few rows ahead. While he was out of his seat, I quickly leaned over to push the button on the armrest to spring the seat back in its upright position. To my luck, the body that returned to this seat was a boy of four or five years old who was unaware of the reclining button. Whew! Rami Malek is best enjoyed at a minimum distance of 6″ from my face.

The first meal served on the Ljubljana to Istanbul leg was fish, mashed potatoes, two shriveled-up button mushrooms, and bread. When meal time #2 rolled around and there was nothing suitable available for me, I merely said, “No thanks,” and proceeded to dig a bag of dried apricots from the bottom of my backpack. The packaging was missing its easy-tear notch. Overwhelmed with sorrow by the sight of me struggling to open my bag of apricots, the flight attendant brought over a cheese-free spanakopita, possibly from first class, and helped open my bag of dried fruit. It was just demeaning enough that I half-expected him to condescendingly pat my head.

My layover in Istanbul afforded me two hours to explore the massive airport (the fourth largest in the world). Instead of stopping to smell the rose-scented perfume and take in the delights of the Turkish variety, I decided to find my gate first. It was a fortunate decision on my part because the gate itself had its own security check. The snaking line-up had four separate checking points for the inspection of passports and boarding passes. At the end of this line, I was directed to hand over my backpack for inspection. While a woman dug through my backpack, another ordered me to remove my shoes and frisked me while I stood in my socks. The last security precaution had them swab my hands for traces of explosives.

There was no way I was going to leave my gate only to be subjected to that all over again.

On the Istanbul to Vancouver leg, I asked a flight attendant if any of the meal options did not contain lactose. She crouched and pulled back the foil on one of the vegetarian dishes and told me, “…this is cheese.” It was the most lactose-laden thing I’d ever laid my eyes upon.

I stared at the hardened layer of cheese for a few seconds before meeting her vacant eyes. With a wave, I politely passed up the opportunity to spend the next 10+ hours in gastrointestinal distress.

When the second mealtime rolled around, I also had to politely decline on the basis that nothing was more edible than the handful of Frutabela cereal bars I had left in my backpack. I felt like a stubborn child as the flight attendant (different from Lots of Lactose Lady) crouched and motioned for me to give him my phone (all the flight attendants on Turkish Airlines needed *my* phone to communicate with me) so that he could tap out a condescending message.

“Next time, contact us 48 hours before your flight to arrange your special meal.”

Bugger off and let me eat my Slovenian cereal bars in peace. It wasn’t like I complained until now. I needed a week and a half to marinate on it before airing out my grievances the way I know best: on my blog.