spacekadet

It's been three months and 12 days since I arrived in London, and months longer than that since I've seen a paycheck. But after 3 weeks of contract work, I finally received some hard-earned British poundage!

First (online) purchase:

Two film tickets to 37 Uses For a Dead Sheep which played last Sunday at our neighborhood movie theatre, The Rio, as part of the London Film Festival. A documentary about the life and (sadly) imminent death of the Kirghiz tribe in Turkey, 37UFADS manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and extremely touching. It really deserves an entry in itself, but don't hold your breath.

First withdrawal of non-US money:

£100 from the Abbey Bank ATM on Kingsland Road

First (real-life) purchases (i.e. a splurge at Borough Market):

- Mixed salad leaves
- Sun-dried tomatoes
- Masa harina, chipotle chiles, and a tortilla press from the cool chile people
- Crema di acetato balsamico (a thick, sweet and extremely yummy variety of balsamic vinegar)
- Comte cheese
- Parmesan cheese

Ok, so Tim bought the cheeses - but I was there to help eat them!

Second (real-life) purchases (i.e. a splurge at our local farmer's market in Stoke Newington):

- Fungal beauties from the Mushroom Man*
- Organic free-range eggs for poaching and tasty omelets
- Apples on Apple Day - Cox, Egremont Russet, Royal Gala, all from UK orchards!

First night out out:

Dinner followed by Salmonella Dub at Shephard's Bush, though admittedly, dinner was the true highlight of the evening. We ate at the Anchor and Hope, a gastropub near Waterloo, where I had, quite possibly, the best meal I've ever had in London: a generous piece of plaice, perfectly pan-fried (i think), on top of buttery, black trumpet mushrooms, seasoned with onion and flecked with puy lentils. I tasted the chips (i.e. fries) that came with the rib of beef that my company enjoyed: holy wow. I don't even like potatoes but these were divine - nothing fancy, just thick, perfectly fried and salted wedges of potato.

* I've since learned that the Mushroom Man is "William Rooney" of Gourmet Mushrooms, the only grower of locally sourced organic mushrooms in the UK (or so says UKTVFood. Here's a splendid tidbit from the times:

How are commercial mushrooms grown?

Mostly on pasteurised, composted wheat straw. But at Gourmet Mushrooms at Morants Farm in Essex, William Rooney grows around 55 “exotic” varieties organically, on wood sawdust. “We don’t consider them as cultivated, just a bit tamed,” he says. Rooney focuses on species that grow locally, including white cloud – a shiitake – maitake, or “hen of the woods” and beef-steak, which “looks like a piece of red meat, and bleeds red juice”.