ACROSS THE POND

with "The Brit" (Joe Sinclair)

Please send your comments and suggestions to joe@conts.com 

LET'S GET TOGETHER

AN ENGLISH CHRISTMAS 

SOME THOUGHTS ON FOOD

The mention of food - in particular curry - is a good excuse for me to write a bit about my own culinary pursuits.  Those of you acquainted with the UK will know of the restaurant revolution of recent years.  Every village, it seems, the length and breadth of the land, has a restaurant based on cuisine from the Indian sub-continent.  They may be called "Indian Restaurants", but are as likely to produce food of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, or Sri Lankan derivation as a generic Indian cuisine.  Furthermore, curries are merely one type of dish that derives from that part of the world, and Brits are nowadays becoming rather more sophisticated in their tastes and appreciation of such food.

This may come as a shock to many of you who believe that it is the fried fish and chip shop that holds that place of reverence in the British eating public's heart.  But to suggest that the humblest restaurant-goer on this side of the pond would be satisfied with a mere "curry and rice", is like expecting a visitor to Chinatown in San Francisco to order Chop Suey.

Cooking is a loved hobby of mine and the cuisine of the Indian sub-continent is one of my specialities.  Actually it serves two particular functions: it enables me - as a single person - to cook vast quantities and freeze them in smaller portions so as to have a ready supply available to me at any time.  One big plus with highly spiced casserole dishes is that they usually taste even better when re-heated than they did immediately after cooking.

The other advantage is that I have found "kefir" to be a perfect substitute for "dahi" (the Indian equivalent of yoghurt) for making curries - and no gourmet cook worth their salt would use water in place of dahi.  As for kefir - this is the bee in my bonnet and the product that keeps me young, fit, and active.  I won't bore you with a description of its magical properties here, but will refer you to the article on my Nurturing Potential e-zine website: http://www.nurturingpotential.net/Kefir.htm..  The product is not sold commercially in England, but I was delighted to discover it on the organic foods counter at a supermarket in Alabama when I was there a couple of years back.  However, the commercial product is so sanitised and homogenised that it is nothing like the stuff I've been making at home for the past thirty years!

TIME WAS WHEN . . .  

. . . it seems, in memory, one could rely on seasons of the year following regularly on each other.

. . .  Summer ended, Autumn began, leaves started to brown then drop, the weather became colder, then icy, and snow would fall.

. . . after a hard or mild Winter, the first herald of Spring would be snowdrops, followed by crocuses, and blossom budding on the fruit trees.

No longer, alas!

On my first walk of 2004, early in January, following my illness, I was astonished to discover fruit trees already starting to blossom along the riverside footpath.  And, two weeks later, when I visited my south coast apartment, crocuses were already projecting through the soil.

Each year, it seems to me, Spring starts a week or two earlier, so that now it has begun to encroach on Winter.  But Winter has a nasty habit of returning when you might be forgiven for believing that Spring was at last firmly entrenched.  I took the picture in the LH column after an overnight snowfall in London at the end of January - two weeks after seeing the blossom.  

The terms global warming, ecological disaster, protection of the environment, have become somewhat clichéd in recent times.  Not that that has made them less valid or important, despite an apparent disregard for the concerns of the international community in certain areas on one side of the "pond".  

I believe that this topsy-turvy seasonal behaviour is but a symptom of the situation, and I fear that it is already too late to restore the status quo.  My own belief system involves the recognition that there is much that I cannot change outside myself, and I have learned that kicking a barred door will merely damage the door and my foot.  All I (any of us?) can do is change our own perceptions and try and reframe negative situations into positive ones.

So I shall delight in the early appearance of the crocus buds and the cherry blossom.  I shall accept with equanimity their disappearance beneath the belated snowfall.  And I shall try to enjoy each new experience as it occurs.  But forgive me if I rail at the frozen water pipe that has suddenly cost me my hot water supply.

Oh dear, time was when . . . 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

On the occasion of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Washington DC in July 2003 (incidentally the first official visit by a British Prime Minister to a US President since Maggie Thatcher paid a call on her chum Ronald Reagan), part of his address to Congress went as follows: 

"Mr Speaker, Sir, my thrill on receiving this award was only a little diminished on being told that the first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to George Washington for what Congress called his "wise and spirited conduct" in getting rid of the British out of Boston.

"On our way down here, Senator Frist was kind enough to show me the fireplace where, in 1814, the British had burnt the Congress Library.

"I know this is, kind of, late, but sorry.

"Actually, you know, my middle son was studying 18th-Century history and the American War of Independence, and he said to me the other day: "You know, Lord North, Dad, he was the British prime minister who lost us America. So just think, however many mistakes you'll make, you'll never make one that bad." "