This is what happens to me when the husband leaves town

Apart from pulling dead leaves out of my tortoise's indignant jaws, I've been surfing the internet randomly for an hour only to stumble upon this literary gem: British Food, An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History.

I can only assume that by "extraordinary," the author means: "breathtakingly awful cuisine that could peel the tastebuds from your tongue."

Have you ever skimmed the titles of cookbooks at local bookstores? There's a notable dearth of texts on British cuisine. In a geography textbook on food, several English people said that they did not live in a food culture. That may be the understatement of the year, coming from a place where I ate eggs and freaking baked beans in a can for breakfast (and yes, every establishment where we stayed offered us this concoction...every person I know who's ever been to England has encountered it...). I'm more frightened by my dietary options in the UK than I am by their rigorous academic standards, and it does not encourage me to learn that they're in the midst of a national debate over whether cooking skills are important.

Seriously, if globalization has any benefits, it's that a vast array of foods can flow freely across borders. Note to UK: you are a wealthy country. You can afford to import fruits and vegetables. Cabbage should never be the summation of one's national produce. For the love of god, fix it before two very homesick former vegans wash up on your shores and spend the next three years subsisting off cheese and cucumber sandwiches.