When I was a child, we would come back from a camping holiday craving a bath but wishing we could still eat bacon sandwiches and drink cups of tea sitting outside. We had eaten meals that no one would think the height of good cooking, like 'tent goulash' (1 tin each of stewing steak, baked beans, new potatoes, chopped tomatoes, a pinch of paprika heated up in one pot over a single gas flame) but eating it outside made us miss it when we got home.
As we got older and travelled further we missed Oringina, croissants and very fresh Baguettes but we're desperate for a nice cup of tea with 'proper' milk.
When I started to go away with the Long Suffering Husband we had the Spanish/ Greek package holidays that were all the rage in the eighties. Food was terrible. We missed food. As soon as we came home we craved roast dinners, curries or anything with a vegetable. Tourist resorts, in those days, were desperate to give the English what they thought we ate. They served badly cooked chips with everything and I remember one restaurant in Kos having fried peas on the side.
Now, when we go abroad we come back craving their fresh, traditional dishes: Greek salad, tapas, haloumi, salami, olives, very fresh little fishes fried in
batter, even some of the brilliant things the Greeks can do with a courgette.
Holidays in the United Kingdom shouldn't leave you thinking about your stomach. In theory, nothing has changed.
We had a week, self catering in the Scottish Highlands and we had decided that as we were on holiday we would mainly be eating in pubs. The Scottish diet is notorious for being unhealthy with deep fried mars bars, whiskey and Iron Bru being their most famous food exports and pub food is well known for being mass produced Brake Bros frozen options with a side order of chips.
We sat in one pub, sharing a table with a young couple.
"I was hoping to find a fish restaurant, with all this water around here," the woman complained, picking at her goat's cheese panini and pushing chips around her plate.
"I think there's one in Fort William," suggested the LSH helpfully.
"Hmm. I've seen that. It looks a bit tacky."
"You wouldn't know unless you tried; it could be all deep fried frozen or there could be a chap with a stripy shirt and a lobster pot sitting on the edge of the pier catching to order." I said, hoping to crack the porcelain frown into a smile.
"Oh, Lobster," she said wistfully, "I was really hoping for clean food. I work as an acupuncturist and a client did warn me about the terrible diet of the Scottish but..." She looked into space, dreaming
of a kale smoothie and a plate of steamed quinoa and green beans. Her partner made inappropriate jokes about wife swapping. Although she was a stuck up cow I did have some sympathy with her because I am also fussy about food.
The LSH always feels as though he has chosen wrong when we go out to eat. He looks at everyone else's plate and wants to eat what they have chosen. He avoided that problem this time by having fish and chips for every meal; likewise my son, who had a pulled pork burger. It's surprising how different the same meal can be in other inns. Chips can be hard, cold, soggy, crispy, burnt, salty, too hot, twice cooked, triple cooked, barely cooked, served in a basket, bucket, fishing net or, God forgive, on a plate. Batter too. The fish comes on a sliding scale of freshness and who would have thought it was possible to muck up cooking frozen peas? (Once, they were microwaved on the plate without water and stuck together in hot, hard wrinkled clumps).
After a few days I noticed that that the pubs in the Highlands were catering for a particular kind of fussy eater. They would walk into the bar like John Wayne, breathless and sweaty hand hand over a plastic bottle containing a small amount of ribinea, which the barman would dutifully top up with tap water without a word being spoken. During that time the fussy eater would have removed their helmet, propped themselves on a bar stool and the power of speach would have returned.
"Soup?" the barman asks, "We've got celeriac or spicy lentil."
Every pub had the most delicious, fresh homemade soup on the menu, with a choice of at least two that were filling, comforting and made even an unfit flabby woman like me think I could tackle those claustrophobic hills on two wheels.
Now I'm back I'm craving homemade soup but first I'll pop to the allotment to see what variety it will be.
Overgrown courgette and shrivelled tomato soup, anyone?
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