spaghetti with raw tomato and garlic sauce

I went shopping today to stock up for the new semester. Super Target, I have to guiltily confess, but look here, there's no ethical shopping to be done around here for 100 miles. And even Super Target, which is the doyenne of the West Alabama shopping scene, is totally miserable. Not even free-range eggs, which every corner shop in London now sells. No free-range chicken, much less any other free-range/organic stuff. A meat section the size of a Tesco Express [extremely small, if you're unfamiliar with English superstores] and an even worse fish section with evil-looking, glowing, vacuum-packed prawns. Weirdly, no real parmesan although they sell rather horrible-looking pecorino, and in general, totally miserable American versions of European cheeses, all plastic and inedible. And I don't understand what happens to the rest of the sheep when the only cut of lamb they sell is a loin chop. Of course, if you want it frozen in a cardboard box ready to go in the microwave, you can get it.



America really needs to get its food situation sorted out. Nowhere in England are things this bad. Even a Tesco in Middlesbrough [grim town in the North of England] has a whole aisle of fresh vegetables, not just a miserly little corner. It's not rocket science why you're all obese, when even the well-meaning and food-obsessed like me have to try so hard to get anything real on my plate, that I almost give up and subsist on barbeque sandwiches. It makes cooking really boring, too, when you're never surprised by a new seasonal thing turning up in the shops. Sigh, moan, gripe, yawn.