Ginger Tablet

Hospital Food in Glasgow

So I was in the hospital for four days. Some of that time I was too drugged to eat, but I still had a few opportunities to sample the cuisine on offer. As I didn't bring a camera with me, I've made some illustrations to show you what I had:

Basically the food comprised of a heap of parboiled rice with a generous ladle of mystery meat poured over top. Lunch was a lamb curry, dinner a chili. Obviously. 

Some thoughts:

- Worse than airplane food. Way, way worse.

- Although the tray had many compartments promising side dishes and dessert, they were always empty. I filled the gaps myself with my cup of tea and my painkillers. Pretty pink ones! I probably would not have eaten the side dishes or puddings, but boy did I want the option.

- No fruit or vegetables. Ok, one day I got some green beans and I think there was an apple somewhere, but it would have taken me a full week to get my five-a-day. This can't be good.

- At some point it occurred to me that there must be a dietitian on staff at the hospital. That someone must oversee this on some level and approve it. At least approve the catering company (who also took care of the restaurant and the shop - equally grim places). How does that person sleep? Are the decisions based solely on finances? I read a policy document recently that addressed the food situation in Glasgow hospitals and the need to completely overhaul everything, so I know that people know this isn't ok, but how did it get this bad?  

- Breakfast was a white roll with butter and jam and a bowl of cornflakes. I felt fine about this. If you tell yourself it's "continental" it tastes more sophisticated.

Now, to be fair, we had choices in what we ate. There were always three or four different kinds of strange meat and one vegetarian option. I went with the meat because I didn't believe that their "egg and cheese souffle" would lift my spirits or make my taste buds dance a hot, hot dance of euphoria. And maybe had I required a diet low in sodium and saturated fat, something would have been arranged. I'm pretty sure they accommodated religious dietary requirements.

But really, while the unhealthy food bothered me in principle, in practice I was totally sorted. Not only was my appetite not that great (it's like the only time in my life where I took a bite of a chocolate and felt satisfied. Like "oooh, half a truffle, I'm soooo stuffed, I couldn't even have another lick"), but I also had J bringing me some pre-planned snacks and my lovely friends bringing me loads of treats. So I could genuinely approach the food with eager car-crash curiosity as I wasn't dependent on it for sustenance.

AND THE NURSES WERE ANGELS. AND EVERYTHING WAS REALLY CLEAN AND BRIGHT AND AIRY AND NOT OVERCROWDED AND I DIDN'T GET A SUPERBUG AND IT WASN'T REALLY THAT BAD AT ALL. Honestly, those nurses. So incredible and kind and patient. Like rescued me when I fainted in the shower and I had to pull the emergence cord because I couldn't move (I was sitting on one of those shower benches, just like a grandma, so didn't fall and drown. Phew). And the nurse totally came and revived me and didn't make me feel like a dick, and you think, of course she wouldn't make you feel like a dick in that situation, but think about how ridiculous I must have looked and how she must have to do this kind of thing all the time and how great it is that she didn't laugh and just mustered up caring. Yay NHS!

Anyway, this "food" is all behind me now. I've been back home for about a week and a half now and it's pretty much a land of milk and honey and ambrosia and nectar. I'm well on the road to recovery. I can totally eat a whole piece of chocolate now. It's important to get your strength back up. 

Timmy's in Glasgow

It took me a few beats to figure out why my eyeballs were finding this strange. I have seen so many of these cups on the street in my life it took me ages to remember that I wasn't in Canada, that this was weird. 

The Spar on Argyle Street squeezed a little Tim Horton's stall in sometime last fall. I went in once out of curiosity and because I thought space and time dimensions had temporarily shifted. I stammered something to the guy there, trying to ask him why this was here, when it had arrived. I bought a doughnut (Boston Cream). I left. The doughnut was fine, better than the normal Glaswegian offering (they're not really a thing here), but it didn't taste the same. It tasted like it had been frozen, like it had survived a long transatlantic journey. The chocolate topping was solid, it didn't stick to the paper bag, it wasn't quite right.

I've never been back for two reasons: I don't believe in seeking out inferior versions of things I miss. I would rather develop new crushes. And secondly, even in Canada there are only ever two reasons to go to Tim Horton's: 1) You're on a road trip and it's the only option and when the only option involves mandatory doghnut eating, who is going to complain about that? 2) You are somewhere with stupidly expensive/crappy food options and you need exceedingly familiar food at extremely predictably prices. If you are at the airport, a stadium, in Yorkville, then yes, Tim Horton's is your friend. The preservative-ridden soup, warm plastic chicken breast and fake bacon sandwiches and a double double will save you. You will still have money after and in these places, that is a minor miracle.* The Timmy's at the Spar fulfills neither of these criteria and so it is useless to go.

Because let's get one thing straight: Tim Horton's is not good. It's not a mecca of taste and texture. Our rabid loyalty is just nostalgia and Canadians clinging to things that bring them together as a nation. And that's totally fine. It just doesn't seem like a brand that's aching for international domination. It's just not that special outside of its context. Especially if it's reduced to essentially a doughnut stand in a convenience store. They don't put cream in coffee here so you can't even get a double double. No one knows what that means. What's the point?

Anyway, you know what did bring a wee tear to my eye? The french on the cup. I loved seeing that tiny chaud looking up at me. The bilingual nature of the litter made me feel fleetingly patriotic and homesick. I interpreted it as Canadians staying true to their beliefs and identity. Not that the company was too cheap to make cups only in English for the international market. What can you do? Nostalgia and patriotism are not generally known for their ability to impart rational thoughts.

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* Timbits have their own applications that are not included in the above examples. Specifically, they are useful tools in bribery and friend-making and easing boring, tedious tasks. They are quite adaptable and I would maybe buy them here, but I'm not sure they're offered.

A Brilliant Idea, a Gratuitous Cherry Blossom

Although I'm more than up for foraging and baking bread on a Sunday (once I stop huffing), that's definitely not how I eat on many weeknights. Especially if I am only cooking for myself. At those times I revert to the recipes in the "extremely quick and forever reliable" folder in my brain. One of the staples and stars of that collection is frozen tortellini. I'm not proud of it, and if frozen stuffed pasta isn't your thing, then just ignore the rest of the post. Look at the flower.

If you do sometimes rely on frozen pasta, then this is for you. Do you ever screw up the cooking times with your tortellini? That stuff is delicate. If you undercook, you could end up with spinach and ricotta ice cubes inside the dough and if you let it boil for too long, you get disgusting mush. There's about a twenty second window where these guys are perfect (or as perfect as they're going to get), and I have yet to figure out exactly what it is. Sometimes I hit upon it by sheer luck.

Because I consistently strive for perfection in everything I do, I came up with a solution for my disappointing pasta: I steamed it. Yup. I treated them like little Chinese dumplings, threw them in my steamer and let them go for about 10 minutes. Actually, I have no idea how long I let them cook for; I was too preoccupied with my sauce. But unlike boiling, it's fine to ignore your steaming pasta. It's a much more gentle process, so the window of perfection is a lot bigger. I would say between 8 and 15 minutes, although I am definitely making up those numbers. In the end, you get hot pasta with all of it's textural integrity intact. It might even have a nicer texture. Plus you don't have to drain it after. You could also try this trick with fresh pasta. No reason why it wouldn't work.

After I first did this, I forced my flatmates to acknowledge and discuss my brilliance for 20 minutes. The fact that they avoided me in the kitchen for four days afterwards was undoutedly a sign of their respect for my culinary skills.    

Disappointing Produce: Curly Parsley

I'm not going to rail against my local produce shop. These people perform a minor miracle in keeping pretty beautiful and often seasonal products on their shelves. Trying to buy vegetables at the major grocery stores in Glasgow can be a nausea-inducing joke. Sometimes, if you go in the early evening or late on a Sunday afternoon, most of the vegetable aisle (the very small vegetable aisle) will be picked clean. Nothing but rows of empty boxes where over-packaged and over-refrigerated produce once stood. So this little place is amazing in comparison with heaps of ripe fruit, various jumbles of potatoes, onions and garlic and ginger, pretty crisp green vegetables, including spotless okra, and loads of South Asian vegetables that I don't know much about. And it's really cheap. And really close.

Normally, they also have a fine assortment of fresh herbs and what I was looking for the other day was a huge bunch of flat-leaf parsley and a couple of zucchinis. I was going to make Daccia's zucchini pasta because 1) I missed her and 2) it's a standard meal in my quick-dinner repertoire. But when I got to the shop I couldn't find any of that parsley. I wandered round and round the aisles in a daze, looking for those oh-so-flat leaves (the people who run the place are pretty used to my dance of indecision so they didn't bat an eyelash. They didn't notice that I was pouting slightly this time, not just being a space cadet). Because my decision was borne from the powerful twins of emotions and laziness, I couldn't change my mind. I couldn't suddenly think of something new to make for dinner. I had to substitute the parsley. And I had to substitute it with the curly stuff.

Now that it's not the 80s anymore, no one likes this parsley. It's because the flavour-to-abrasion ratio doesn't make it worth eating. It's not a pleasant thing to put in your mouth and the flat-leaf kind tastes nicer. It also never looked that great on the side of a plate. Who came up with that lie? Flat-leaf generally looks better in finished meals, it's little chopped leave stay put, they don't curl about in stubborn little clumps. But I had no choice and, I decided, in Glasgow one is often given potatoes when one is trying to make lemonade so innovation is a necessary skill.

If you are ever in a similar situation, here are two things to do with a huge bunch of curly parsley:

1) Parsley Pesto with Zucchini and Linguini

Daccia's normal recipe involves slicing the zucchini in long, thin strips and cooking them in a lot of butter, olive oil, garlic, salt and chili until they are tender. The zucchini is then tossed with pasta and loads of fresh parsley and cheese are added on top. This is very, very nice even when made by someone else.

I cooked the zucchini in exactly the same way as D, but I didn't add the garlic. Instead I took a few handfuls of that wiry parsley, a couple of cloves of garlic, the juice of one lemon and some olive oil and whizzed it up with a hand blender. I also cooked some linguini while all of this was taking place. Three activities at once. Because my timing is perfect, the pasta was ready to be drained just when the zucchini started to get nice and soft and smooshy (well, you actually have a fair bit of flexibility with the zucchini; it's not that delicate). The pasta was coated with the pesto, and the zucchini was added in and I topped it with grated cheese.

Really good, and you would never know that the uncool parsley had been anywhere near my kitchen!

2) Green Hummus

Despite what more famous people say about hummus, I really think it's much better to make it from scratch and with a lot of tahini. The texture is more interesting than anything you can buy in a store and you have a lot of control in adjusting the flavours, accentuating the ingredients that you think are tastiest. It's also good if you put a whole ton of parsley in it.

First, soak some chickpeas overnight. Yes, you could use a can, but I think that you shouldn't. We can disagree about this and still be friends. I used some organic ones, (about 1.5 cups dried) so my end product was both delicious and pretty smug.

Boil the suckers for over an hour the next morning with some salt. Then dump all those little guys in a blender, or a bowl that's deep enough for a hand blender. Next you just need to add some garlic (I used 3 cloves), lemon juice (I squeezed two), tahini (maybe 1/4 cup, maybe less), as much olive oil as you need to make it the consistency you want, and all of the parsley you have in your house. Whizz everything up. Maybe you need salt, too, depending on how much you used to boil the chickpeas. Taste it and see. The end result will have a lot of character and will make you question why you ever bought that junk in the plastic tubs. Remember, the garlic will get stronger with time, so don't go too crazy if you want people to kiss you in the near future.

I ate this with some tomatoes and toasted potato scones. Don't they look like an exotic flatbread in the picture below? Scottish cuisine is full of surprises.

(When was the last time you saw a garnish like this?

Don't answer the question if you live somewhere unfashionable. If it was last Friday night, just pretend that it's really been over two decades. Say this: "Oh! Look at that! It reminds me of Italian-American food from when I was a small and parsley-ignorant child! Ha! I know so much more now." Good. They believed you.)