Anne's a little obsessed with making good, healthy, varied meals. When we lived and worked in London we didn't have a lot of time to make meals from fresh ingredients, so often made pasta and curries using sauces from jars. We thought this was OK, until Anne's sister Kerry made us feel thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.
Just before we left for our year away, we visited Kerry and her boyfriend, Mark, in Norwich, and brought with us some food we'd not used. We thought they might like it. We were wrong. Kerry turned her nose up at most of what we'd brought. "Oh, we don't use that - we make it fresh", "Oh we don't have ketchup in our house, though I might keep it in case visitors want it". It went on like that. She did take the Lloyd Grossman pasta sauces though - they're good! Kerry didn't want our Oxo cubes either, so when she was out we hid them all over her flat. Thus we win.
So, anyway. We have more time to prepare and make food when we're travelling, and when we have a hire car we can carry lots of good, fresh ingredients. (There's the downside of having to use communal kitchens, but that's a whole other issue.) Anne's been making some great meals in NZ. We've been using pumpkins, asparagus, chick peas - the works. Kerry - even you'd be impressed!
(By the way, I do help, and sometimes even make the whole meal. However, busy communal kitchens do tend to stress me out a bit so Anne's in charge. I'm not a lazy slob of a boyfriend - I do the lunches. Usually. Anyway, the division of labour in this relationship is not the subject of this post. And anyway, I do all the driving.)
Anne's concerned though that when we get back to the UK and have jobs, we might settle back into our old ways, and that when Kerry comes to visit (and break our crockery) she won't approve. So, Anne's trying to come up with, say, ten good meals that can be made in rotation on a strict schedule. These meals mustn't take too much time, and must be reasonably healthy. And tasty. I generally let Anne talk to me about this aim without really taking it in, attempting to nod in what seems like an appropriate place. The other day when she was talking I tuned in for a bit. I found that Anne was listing the meals we'd had in the previous days in reverse order, and writing them down. To my utter astonishment, she managed to remember every evening meal we'd had for the last three weeks.
This girl really does have an amazing memory. Especially when it comes to food.