<snip>
And my description of the local 'cheap' cuisine was no exaggeration, it's
ghastly.
<snip>
A serious point: for at least fifty years, the average Briton has preferred
*cheap* food to *good* food. One of the paradoxes of that distorted attitude
is that as well as insisting on cheap food we also tend to despise it. And
some of the results have been the tyranny of the supermarkets; inedible
bread produced by the Chorley Wood process; expensive and depleted corner
stores; extortionately priced restaurants where customers too often eat the
menus, not the stuff on the plate, and Smith's 'poverty of aspirations' for
most consumers - rich, poor and middling. (The tops of turnips and beets,
for example, tend just to be thrown away.)
The sort of meal I referred to costs less per head than a pint of beer. A
dish of oxtail costs about the same. A nettle soup or a salad of dandelion
leaves (I'm not being flippant, and I'm happy to eat either) would be
virtually free. To say nothing of the range of pulses to be found in, say,
Gujarati food shops.
CW
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'Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence'
(Magdalena Abakanowicz )
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