Weird things happen when American ex-pats living in London get together en masse. For starters a lot of England bashing goes down (light-hearted of course) but strange yearnings for the products of home arise. This is pretty much how July 4th manifested itself for me this year. I confessed to bringing Ziplock and Force Flex garbage bags, Bounce fabric softener and mini white (only multi-coloured exist in England, don't ask me why) marshmallows back with me from trips to the states. My friend Ann, who is returning to NY, offered me a couple bottles of Tide laundry detergent and some Windex and tears came to my eyes. It was, therefore no surprise that I would rush home to Notting Hill bang down the doors of Mr Christians (literally), which has recently been stocking American items a la Partridges, and buy not one but two packages of probably the most abhorrent product on the US market.
On American soil, it is seriously unlikely that I would ever resort to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, even if I was trying to re-enact my college days, in that case I would go for the organic version and namesake, Annie's. But somehow on the 4th of July it seemed right. Pascal enjoyed it as well but then again he didn’t see the colour of the “cheese” mixture before it was combined with the pasta. It did, however, occur to me that many people, especially men, eat food out the package regularly and for no other reason then they are afraid of cooking.
Therefore, I will take this opportunity to introduce a guest piece, ManSchool, that will appear every now and again aimed at trying to teach our male readers, but really anyone who is intimidated by cooking, that it is not that tricky and can be fun. Stay tuned for the first addition later this week.
