The hunter-gatherer
Where I used to live, in the bustling metropolis that is Eastbourne, I had a really good Indian takeaway so close I could nip out in my slippers to pick up my Rogan Josh, the best sit-down fish and chips in town, an offie, a Co-Op open til ten o'clock for pint of milk crises, and a butchers, a bakers and a candlestick makers all on one handy parade of shops three minutes from my front door. And a cash point. But if I'm honest, I didn't use any of those much, partly because I like cooking, and partly because I'm so unreconstructedly urban that going to Tesco's at midnight is my idea of the weekly shop - everything under one roof, no queues, no polite conversation, and everything half the price. And two cash points.
But on moving to the countryside, I girded my loins for a different kind of shopping experience. Anxious about shops shutting at 5pm, being closed on Wednesday afternoons and owned by real-life The League of Gentlemen shopkeepers, I stockpiled long life milk and teabags. Fearing that people in the countryside only ate pork chops and boiled potatoes, I stashed the cupboards high with extra virgin olive oil and porcini mushrooms. And I turned into my grandfather, who didn't go anywhere without a hundred quid in notes, just to be on the safe side.
So, there I am one day, smiling smugly, sipping a glass of chilled fino and waiting for my porcini mushroom risotto to finish simmering, when my Crime Squad neighbours ring my doorbell.
"Hi. Oh, you're cooking..."
"Yeah."
"Oh well..."
"What?"
"Well, we're going for a curry and wondered if you fancied it. There's a takeaway in the next village. We walk through the orchard. Order. Have a pint in the pub while it's cooked. Then picnic on the village green... Oh well, next time, eh?"
And off they go, forks in hand, for a rural takeway night out. A perfect blend of culinary multiculturalism and English pastoral idyll. I eat my chi-chi little risotto by myself and dimly admit, once again, that the countryside of my childhood really isn't the same place now. I decide that it's high time I explore life beyond the A14 Tesco-Mecca.
So, where do you get food in the countryside? "Not in the bloody village shop" was my immediate answer having so far been charged almost twice the reasonable price for any item other than a newspaper. Actually, there are two shops in the village. One is next to the pub, thatched and positively picturesque, but the feeling that I should be supporting my local community never manages to override the feeling of being fleeced every time I go in there. I might not mind paying premium prices if I were buying locally collected honey or handmade sausages, but let's face the harsh truth, we're talking Happy Shopper here...
The other shop is owned by a couple who clearly have some kind of relationship with the Indian subcontinent. Less fleecing, a wider range, and better opening hours, but still not exactly the organic slow-food everything-tastes-better-in-the-countryside revolution we get the impression of from the media. No sirree, it's still Mother's Pride loaves and Heinz soup and Chicken Tonight...
Okay, I thought, maybe I'm still being too urban, maybe I need to look to the producers not the middlemen - y'know, make just a little bit more effort. Unused to making any effort whatsoever to get food I don't go too mad, but I do decide to check out this organic vegetable box lark. It was all quite the right-on thing in downtown Brighton years ago, but here was my big chance to score a zillion middle class dinner-party points by only having my veg transported half a mile down the road. In my head the threat of global warming had already been averted by my cunning new vegetable policy! Oh, the glory!
But nope, living in the countryside it is MORE difficult to get an organic vegetable box, not less. My colleague at work, who lives in the centre of Cambridge, can have a box delivered, no problemo. But oh no, madam, we don't deliver all the way out there - "out there" coming with a curled lip of an expression. And this, despite the fact that to deliver my colleague's box they have to drive more or less past my house. Because, really, the organic vegetable box thing is an urban phenomenon with not a great deal more social responsibility than driving one of those dumb SUVs. It's all about pretending to adopt a more rugged, more "authentic" lifestyle, when actually it's as urban as it gets.
So, that doesn't work. What next? Aha, the farm shop! That'll do it! I'm a Guardian reader, I know all about the tyranny of the supermarkets and their insistence on perfect vegetables. I shall revel in the misshapen carrot! I shall embrace seasonal change and never once yearn after an avocado or a pawpaw! Oh brave new world! Undeterred by the diesel fumes coming off the lorries on the A14, I turn into the drive of the farm shop whose signpost I've passed going to and from work for two months. It's an empty pitted road. There are padlocked metal sheds on either side. There is no sign of a shop. There is no sign for a shop. There is no-one to be seen and I remember that in all those journeys I have never once seen a car going in or out. And because I'm immediately into horror movie territory involving isolated houses, rabid dogs and in-bred farmhands, I quickly swing the car round and screech back onto the main road. I'm afraid of the country! How rubbish is that?!!
I drive slowly back to the village, feeling distinctly pathetic. Needing to cheer myself up, I stop at the plant stall, a village enterprise that involves me acquiring a quirky selection of well-bred herbaceous perennials for only a pound a time. Now that beats the urban garden centre (key outlet for macrame kits, and remaindered books) hands down. And on the shelf are some handwritten clues to the homegrown whereabouts - carrots 50p, runner beans 60p - except I'm too late; the shelf is empty.
Whether it's a useful personality trait or just bone-headedness, I'm not one to give up easily, and I'm not about to give up the quest for decent rural food. Idly flicking through the local paper, I find another line of enquiry - the monthly farmers' market. Surely this will be it?! I cut out the ad and stick it into my diary - come hell or high water, I shall be there!
The day breaks into fine Autumn sunshine. Full of the joys, I lace up my walking shoes, throw the pink townie rucksack over one shoulder and stride off along the footapth. Although the small market town I'm heading for is off-map, I figure that as it's on the same river I walk along on my daily ramble, I have only to keep to the bank and I'll get there eventually.
It truly is a glorious day and a glorious walk. Longboats chunter along at a few miles an hour, their occupants waving cheerily as they pass me. A couple stop to ask me if the path goes to the old railway bridge. A small boy in a red jumper standing quite alone in the middle of the footpath greets me with "I found a toy! I found a toy!".
"Well, that's a strange thing to find along a footpath", I say, wondering if this is some agrarian waif quite used to wandering footpaths alone, or if I should be ringing the Missing Persons Hotline.
"Just there", he says, pointing to a patch of scrub beneath the ancient overhanging trees.
Then I see his dad and his brother and the family dog bounding up behind him and I start panicking that I look like a distinctly dodgy character, making small talk with a small boy in a wood.
"Oh hello", says dad, beaming, "what's he up to now?"
"I found a toy!"
"He wanted to show someone", I edge in nervously.
Dad bends down to look at the very grubby indeterminable toy in question, and then looks up and winks at me, "ah, treasure, my lad, treasure". And then off they go on their adventures, and I'm beating along the footpath again, wondering if all people living in the countryside are just born really nice (and good-looking, well-dressed and funny), or if it's a by-product of residence. There may be hope for me yet, if only I could master the art of speaking naturally to strangers...
Eventually I come to the town, and from the time it's taken and knowledge of my usual walking speed, I reckon it's been about a five mile walk. And a five mile walk on a sunny day must deserve a shandy and a sandwich in the garden of a riverside pub. I smile benevolently at wedding parties and children, and watch two thirteen year old boys as one teaches the other how to fish. They're wearing Adidas trackies, baseball caps and and hoodies, and I wish for the 97th time that I had got round to buying a digital camera because their silent concentration on a harmless outdoor pastime defies the media-induced frenzy about teenaged boys. Well, harmless as long as you're not a fish, that is...
And so to the much vaunted farmers' market. Well, much vaunted by some, but on the wet fish van I first encounter there is a big sign saying "This business is NOT part of the farmers' market!" Strange, methinks, what's the issue?... I dawdle about, eyeing up the dressed crab and the naturally smoked haddock, thinking that at last I've found some real food for sale, and that I might ask about the sign, but after five minutes waiting for the stallholder to get off her mobile, I give up on both and wander off towards the rest of the market.
And it is a huge disappointment. It's a faux-market, a phoney replica of some rural vision that has very little to do with the buying and selling of local produce. It's a Chamber of Commerce event that seems to have far more to do with bringing day trippers into the town than it has to do with food. It's not real, but it seems to be achieving its purpose as there are plenty of people milling vaguely around in holiday spirits. They each have one small purchase, clutched in their hand like a prized souvenir. It's not dinner.
There is an ostrich burger stall - er, yep, that's a stall selling burgers made from ostrich meat, which you can buy in small take-home packets if you enjoyed it and want to recreate the experience for all your family and friends. It stinks. There is a stall selling jars of jam for three pounds fifty. Three pounds sodding fifty for a jar of jam?!! I don't care that it comes with a little gingham cover and a neatly handwritten label - it's still only jam!!! A cake stall selling half pound cakes, also for three pounds fifty. A plant stall and one selling hand made cards - guess how much each? Yep, you guessed it.
Oh well, I think, at least the vegetables will be organic and fresh. And to be fair, they do look good. But I live by myself and everything has been bunched and bagged in large quantities that I just can't use. I walk around, trying to find a stall where the produce is loose, and I will feel less bad about asking for two or three of an item instead of by the kilo, but there isn't an option. Determined to buy something, I eventually settle on a bunch of carrots so large it fills my rucksack. The stallholder scowls at me when I decline anything else. She's clearly not selling much and though I could make a few suggestions, based on my experience of several years shopping on the very real, exciting and always interesting Berwick Street market in London, I keep it buttoned. My question about the fish stall sign has been answered. I wouldn't want to be associated with it much either. It's a sham and a shame.
But my trip is not in vain because on the way back, just near the point where the small boy in the red jumper stopped me, I discover a crab apple tree and at last I have sourced all of the ingredients for the hedgerow jam recipe in my Women's Institute recipe book. I pack a load of them in among the carrots and resolve to go out soon to pick the other things I've already spotted: the haws and the rosehips, blackberries and elderberries and sloes. It seems that I've finally found the answer to rural food: you have to forage for it yourself. The Neanderthal hunter-gatherer deep inside me lets out a happy satisfied yowl. The 21st century city-girl wonders for a moment how long she can live on a diet of berries, and for slightly longer about what time Tesco's closes on a Sunday....
But on moving to the countryside, I girded my loins for a different kind of shopping experience. Anxious about shops shutting at 5pm, being closed on Wednesday afternoons and owned by real-life The League of Gentlemen shopkeepers, I stockpiled long life milk and teabags. Fearing that people in the countryside only ate pork chops and boiled potatoes, I stashed the cupboards high with extra virgin olive oil and porcini mushrooms. And I turned into my grandfather, who didn't go anywhere without a hundred quid in notes, just to be on the safe side.
So, there I am one day, smiling smugly, sipping a glass of chilled fino and waiting for my porcini mushroom risotto to finish simmering, when my Crime Squad neighbours ring my doorbell.
"Hi. Oh, you're cooking..."
"Yeah."
"Oh well..."
"What?"
"Well, we're going for a curry and wondered if you fancied it. There's a takeaway in the next village. We walk through the orchard. Order. Have a pint in the pub while it's cooked. Then picnic on the village green... Oh well, next time, eh?"
And off they go, forks in hand, for a rural takeway night out. A perfect blend of culinary multiculturalism and English pastoral idyll. I eat my chi-chi little risotto by myself and dimly admit, once again, that the countryside of my childhood really isn't the same place now. I decide that it's high time I explore life beyond the A14 Tesco-Mecca.
So, where do you get food in the countryside? "Not in the bloody village shop" was my immediate answer having so far been charged almost twice the reasonable price for any item other than a newspaper. Actually, there are two shops in the village. One is next to the pub, thatched and positively picturesque, but the feeling that I should be supporting my local community never manages to override the feeling of being fleeced every time I go in there. I might not mind paying premium prices if I were buying locally collected honey or handmade sausages, but let's face the harsh truth, we're talking Happy Shopper here...
The other shop is owned by a couple who clearly have some kind of relationship with the Indian subcontinent. Less fleecing, a wider range, and better opening hours, but still not exactly the organic slow-food everything-tastes-better-in-the-countryside revolution we get the impression of from the media. No sirree, it's still Mother's Pride loaves and Heinz soup and Chicken Tonight...
Okay, I thought, maybe I'm still being too urban, maybe I need to look to the producers not the middlemen - y'know, make just a little bit more effort. Unused to making any effort whatsoever to get food I don't go too mad, but I do decide to check out this organic vegetable box lark. It was all quite the right-on thing in downtown Brighton years ago, but here was my big chance to score a zillion middle class dinner-party points by only having my veg transported half a mile down the road. In my head the threat of global warming had already been averted by my cunning new vegetable policy! Oh, the glory!
But nope, living in the countryside it is MORE difficult to get an organic vegetable box, not less. My colleague at work, who lives in the centre of Cambridge, can have a box delivered, no problemo. But oh no, madam, we don't deliver all the way out there - "out there" coming with a curled lip of an expression. And this, despite the fact that to deliver my colleague's box they have to drive more or less past my house. Because, really, the organic vegetable box thing is an urban phenomenon with not a great deal more social responsibility than driving one of those dumb SUVs. It's all about pretending to adopt a more rugged, more "authentic" lifestyle, when actually it's as urban as it gets.
So, that doesn't work. What next? Aha, the farm shop! That'll do it! I'm a Guardian reader, I know all about the tyranny of the supermarkets and their insistence on perfect vegetables. I shall revel in the misshapen carrot! I shall embrace seasonal change and never once yearn after an avocado or a pawpaw! Oh brave new world! Undeterred by the diesel fumes coming off the lorries on the A14, I turn into the drive of the farm shop whose signpost I've passed going to and from work for two months. It's an empty pitted road. There are padlocked metal sheds on either side. There is no sign of a shop. There is no sign for a shop. There is no-one to be seen and I remember that in all those journeys I have never once seen a car going in or out. And because I'm immediately into horror movie territory involving isolated houses, rabid dogs and in-bred farmhands, I quickly swing the car round and screech back onto the main road. I'm afraid of the country! How rubbish is that?!!
I drive slowly back to the village, feeling distinctly pathetic. Needing to cheer myself up, I stop at the plant stall, a village enterprise that involves me acquiring a quirky selection of well-bred herbaceous perennials for only a pound a time. Now that beats the urban garden centre (key outlet for macrame kits, and remaindered books) hands down. And on the shelf are some handwritten clues to the homegrown whereabouts - carrots 50p, runner beans 60p - except I'm too late; the shelf is empty.
Whether it's a useful personality trait or just bone-headedness, I'm not one to give up easily, and I'm not about to give up the quest for decent rural food. Idly flicking through the local paper, I find another line of enquiry - the monthly farmers' market. Surely this will be it?! I cut out the ad and stick it into my diary - come hell or high water, I shall be there!
The day breaks into fine Autumn sunshine. Full of the joys, I lace up my walking shoes, throw the pink townie rucksack over one shoulder and stride off along the footapth. Although the small market town I'm heading for is off-map, I figure that as it's on the same river I walk along on my daily ramble, I have only to keep to the bank and I'll get there eventually.
It truly is a glorious day and a glorious walk. Longboats chunter along at a few miles an hour, their occupants waving cheerily as they pass me. A couple stop to ask me if the path goes to the old railway bridge. A small boy in a red jumper standing quite alone in the middle of the footpath greets me with "I found a toy! I found a toy!".
"Well, that's a strange thing to find along a footpath", I say, wondering if this is some agrarian waif quite used to wandering footpaths alone, or if I should be ringing the Missing Persons Hotline.
"Just there", he says, pointing to a patch of scrub beneath the ancient overhanging trees.
Then I see his dad and his brother and the family dog bounding up behind him and I start panicking that I look like a distinctly dodgy character, making small talk with a small boy in a wood.
"Oh hello", says dad, beaming, "what's he up to now?"
"I found a toy!"
"He wanted to show someone", I edge in nervously.
Dad bends down to look at the very grubby indeterminable toy in question, and then looks up and winks at me, "ah, treasure, my lad, treasure". And then off they go on their adventures, and I'm beating along the footpath again, wondering if all people living in the countryside are just born really nice (and good-looking, well-dressed and funny), or if it's a by-product of residence. There may be hope for me yet, if only I could master the art of speaking naturally to strangers...
Eventually I come to the town, and from the time it's taken and knowledge of my usual walking speed, I reckon it's been about a five mile walk. And a five mile walk on a sunny day must deserve a shandy and a sandwich in the garden of a riverside pub. I smile benevolently at wedding parties and children, and watch two thirteen year old boys as one teaches the other how to fish. They're wearing Adidas trackies, baseball caps and and hoodies, and I wish for the 97th time that I had got round to buying a digital camera because their silent concentration on a harmless outdoor pastime defies the media-induced frenzy about teenaged boys. Well, harmless as long as you're not a fish, that is...
And so to the much vaunted farmers' market. Well, much vaunted by some, but on the wet fish van I first encounter there is a big sign saying "This business is NOT part of the farmers' market!" Strange, methinks, what's the issue?... I dawdle about, eyeing up the dressed crab and the naturally smoked haddock, thinking that at last I've found some real food for sale, and that I might ask about the sign, but after five minutes waiting for the stallholder to get off her mobile, I give up on both and wander off towards the rest of the market.
And it is a huge disappointment. It's a faux-market, a phoney replica of some rural vision that has very little to do with the buying and selling of local produce. It's a Chamber of Commerce event that seems to have far more to do with bringing day trippers into the town than it has to do with food. It's not real, but it seems to be achieving its purpose as there are plenty of people milling vaguely around in holiday spirits. They each have one small purchase, clutched in their hand like a prized souvenir. It's not dinner.
There is an ostrich burger stall - er, yep, that's a stall selling burgers made from ostrich meat, which you can buy in small take-home packets if you enjoyed it and want to recreate the experience for all your family and friends. It stinks. There is a stall selling jars of jam for three pounds fifty. Three pounds sodding fifty for a jar of jam?!! I don't care that it comes with a little gingham cover and a neatly handwritten label - it's still only jam!!! A cake stall selling half pound cakes, also for three pounds fifty. A plant stall and one selling hand made cards - guess how much each? Yep, you guessed it.
Oh well, I think, at least the vegetables will be organic and fresh. And to be fair, they do look good. But I live by myself and everything has been bunched and bagged in large quantities that I just can't use. I walk around, trying to find a stall where the produce is loose, and I will feel less bad about asking for two or three of an item instead of by the kilo, but there isn't an option. Determined to buy something, I eventually settle on a bunch of carrots so large it fills my rucksack. The stallholder scowls at me when I decline anything else. She's clearly not selling much and though I could make a few suggestions, based on my experience of several years shopping on the very real, exciting and always interesting Berwick Street market in London, I keep it buttoned. My question about the fish stall sign has been answered. I wouldn't want to be associated with it much either. It's a sham and a shame.
But my trip is not in vain because on the way back, just near the point where the small boy in the red jumper stopped me, I discover a crab apple tree and at last I have sourced all of the ingredients for the hedgerow jam recipe in my Women's Institute recipe book. I pack a load of them in among the carrots and resolve to go out soon to pick the other things I've already spotted: the haws and the rosehips, blackberries and elderberries and sloes. It seems that I've finally found the answer to rural food: you have to forage for it yourself. The Neanderthal hunter-gatherer deep inside me lets out a happy satisfied yowl. The 21st century city-girl wonders for a moment how long she can live on a diet of berries, and for slightly longer about what time Tesco's closes on a Sunday....
posted by JVB at
6:38 AM
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