Let's talk about food!

After cooking myself dinner tonight, I had an urge to write about food and my eating habits here in London.

I've been pleasantly surprised. People who'd been to London before kept telling me to get used to Indian food. I haven't had Indian food yet (though I will for sure). But I've had a lot of different kinds of food when I eat out. For example: Bella Italia, an Italian restaurant, isn't fantastic but didn't bother me so much because I'll just go to Italy for mindblowing Italian food. Bistro Celebre, a French cafe, has delicious French mocha and croissants. Nando's, a Portuguese restaurant, has great chicken and sauces and Portuguese rolls. Beirut Express, a Lebanese counter, has yummy shawarmas (like Greek gyros). Wagamama's, a Japanese fusion restaurant, had nice hot noodles (I ordered what was supposed to be yaki soba, but got something more like chow mein, though it was still really good).

Then, of course, there are the pubs. I don't have pub food very often but the stuff I've had has been pretty good. Fogg's in Camden Town seemed like a pub at first but it was a little more classy. Really good burgers though. A pub in Bath, whose name I forget, provided me with a delicious English breakfast: bacon, ham, sausage, over easy eggs, beans, tomatoes, chips.

I don't go out to eat very much though. I usually go grocery shopping once a week at either Tesco Express or Sainsbury's. Tesco Express isn't really like anything we have in the states..it's the size of a 711 but carries a better quality and a better range of groceries. At Tesco, I can buy fresh fruit and veggies, milk, cereal, bread, sliced meat, you name it. Sainsbury's is a big grocery store, like Albertson's.

I buy the normal boxes and boxes of cereal and litres and litres of milk, bread, eggs, sandwich meat, yogurt, oranges. Breakfast and lunch are easy to do. Dinner, however, takes either a little sacrifice or a little creativity. At the end of the day, if I don't have something good and hot to eat, I get tempted to eat out. So I have to stay stocked with easy to cook but nutritious meals.

Some of my flatmates get bored easily if they eat the same thing day after day, but I don't mind so much. I don't mind eating simple penne and tomato sauce 5 days straight as long as it fills me up. I've also made ramen noodles (stuff I had to cook on the stove, not just Top Ramen) for dinner which was good because I made them chow mein style. The past couple of days I've been having rice. I've never cooked rice in a pot on the stove before, but I've gotten pretty good at it. I haven't bought meat so I just put sliced ham on the stove and cooked them like bacon. Yum. It sounds a little pathetic, but my rice and ham actually made me really happy tonight.

Anyway, point is, I've learned that when you're on a limited budget, what really matters is hot food with some carbs.

In Dublin, I ate sandwiches all throughout because it was the cheapest food I could find. Dublin is expensive. They were pretty good sandwiches though.

In Istanbul, the food was Mediterranean and delicious: bread, cheese, olives, eggs, tomatoes, doner (again, like Greek gyros), tea.

So, food here hasn't been bad at all. But, I'm definitely excited to go to Italy and France and get some real good grub on.