Food memories

Ok. I know he's gay, but I so want Thom from Queer Eye to be my boyfriend. I mean, in last night's episode he walked into an empty Ikea. How does he have the power to make that happen? Have you ever seen an Ikea car park with less than a hundred cars? And everything in stock? Even in my single days in North London, the Ikea on the North Circular Road represented everything stressful in shopping. There's no Ikea in Canberra so last year I made a trip to Sydney with my girlfriend as she wanted to stock up on nursery furniture. Crowds, no stock, insane purchasing system (get a ticket from one desk, take it to another desk and then drive to other depot 5 minutes away to collect). I filled in a complaint form but it made no difference - blah, blah, we endeavour to ensure that stock is available but popular items, blah, blah. Yesterday I knitted the umbilical hat from Stitch'n'Bitch for a friend's baby. This after having accidentally knitted a mobius band on Saturday night. The father of my children is a frustrated mathematician so they are obsessed with mobius bands. In grade 4, Miss S gave her class speech on "My favourite.... Greek Mathematician" and is obsessed with Sophie Germain. Note this does not extend to any particular genius in maths but makes for interesting trivia. I'm working on my links and adding the food writers that I turn to most. This cook was writing about making naan from Madhur Jaffrey and I was remembering that I learnt to cook from her Eastern Vegetarian Food and Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern food when I lived in Libya. I had become a vegetarian on arrival since I was too squeamish to eviscerate a chicken. Despite the Libyan supermarkets only selling out of date Russian tuna and bottles of harissa, my friend, Rose and I found nearly everything we needed to cook out of these books equipped only with 2 hot plates. Some Algerian Berber friends taught us to char grill vegetables over a flame to make salat mechouia. An Egyptian man with a Glaswegian wife taught me how to make falafel though he insisted only Israelis used chickpeas and that "ful" were the correct beans with lots of dill so they were bright green inside. The Polish people on the floor below had a still which they fed with tinned tomato paste. Most of the time the lack of alcohol was ok but I recall one week in February when we had no electricity for 5 days and it poured with rain - by day three we were knocking on the door of the Polish engineers prepared to flirt with men with bad teeth for a stiff drink. A bloke from Belfast showed us how to brew our own beer with was less temperamental and less risky.

Comments

[anne]

The IKEA in North London in in a really godforsaken spot which tragically I used to work in. We were so deperate for somewhere to have lunch that we would occasionally go to IKEA for a treat. I secrety quite like their cod liver oil flavoured fish and chips. My friend always had the meat balls. Scorn and derision were what we met when we admitted to other people what we got up to in Harlsden

Ryanair do a special flight from Ireland to Liverpool Ikea. People come over, do their shopping and then are allowed to bring their flatpacks back on the plane. But what do they do when they realise the screws are missing?

Anne

[Zoe]

Ulsterbus in Northern Ireland run special coach trips to Ikea in Glasgow. I have never been to Ikea so don't know what I am missing!