Week 1: Day 4-8

The week was a lot calmer than my exciting weekend start to the experiment excepting a few hiccups. I mostly spend all of my week day hours at my desk swearing at my code and its mismatched results. I normally take leftovers for lunch since the Cavendish seems to be physically incapable of providing vegan food (or even food nutritious enough to be considered actual food. Seriously, the place has had 29 Nobel Prize winners and they feed them what can only be described as oily, overcooked grime) and I always cook at home since vegan options are limited in the college hall unless I give them a few hours' notice. So my week really wasn't that different to a normal week. There were a few things I did notice:

1. Sometimes when I get peckish at work I go to the vending machine and buy a nut bar. They aren't technically vegan because they are made with honey but I'm mostly OK with honey. Anyway, I couldn't do that this week. But it wasn't too painful because there's never any guarantee that the nut bars in the vending machine are going to be vegan (some have yoghurt or chocolate on them). So it's sometimes a bit of a disappointed gamble anyway. So I started bringing other snacks into work like fruit or some mung beans I sprouted or some sushi I made.
2. I've nearly been successful at getting out of the habit of searching for things on eBay. I'm at the point now where I open the eBay homepage and then close it again. So that habit has nearly been broken. I sound like an addict. My name is Elise and it's been 11 days since my last eBay purchase.
3. I am not out of the habit of trawling NET-A-PORTER and pinning everything. Not sure that habit is going to die easily. To be fair, though, I don't think I could ever afford anything I fancy anyway (yes, Erdem, your Hester patchwork skirt is amazing. No, Erdem, £1,875 is not a reasonable price to ask for it) so I don't think that one is too much of a problem.
4. I've seriously overestimated how much dried food I have and it's a distinct possibility that I will run out before the end of the month. However, it's made me be a little bit more creative and adventurous with my cooking. I had some old apples today and plenty of flour so I made some apple and cinnamon muffins (turns out I don't understand gas ovens so they turned out terribly but I was a tad hungover so ate them enthusiastically anyway). I also have dried mung beans so am going to soak them and try this recipe for Mung Dahl. I've also started to invite myself around to other people's places for dinner (if you know me you won't think this is too strange because I have spent a good deal of my life feeding other people. I also don't seem to have that part of the brain that makes self-invites awkward. Well, it's not awkward for me. I'm sure it's terribly awkward for all my poor British friends. I am, of course, joking. My friends are tremendously generous which makes this experiment a tad difficult at times. More on that later.)
5. This experiment is killing my social life. I had to turn down two formal dinners this month and the opportunity to meet friends of friends because of it. I also can't buy a ticket to any of the May Balls that happen in June in Cambridge because the tickets all go on sale this month. There were also some plays I wanted to see in Cambridge that I now can't go to. The hipster suggested a Harold Pinter play which I was terribly excited about but then it received a bombardment of excellent reviews and despite its run into April I somehow doubt there will be tickets left by March. I don't think I would have ever thought twice about doing any of this stuff before. I lead an extremely privileged life. So I guess it's nice that the experiment is teaching me to appreciate my privilege.

One of the things I said I was going to do as part of this experiment was try to buy local, seasonal fruit and vegetables only. I rather flippantly made the remark that because it was February my choices were going to be severely limited. I even made a joke about nettle soup. Turns out, when faced with the actual task of only buying UK-grown, seasonal produce, my sense of humour deserts me.

I'd been rather enthusiastic about the whole thing because I found out that there was a Farm Shop about a 2 minute cycle from my new house. I'm not quite sure what I was imagining I'd find. Locally grown shiitake and oyster mushrooms? Seasonal sweet peppers in the UK in February? Anyway, it turns out that 'Farm Shop' meant very little and most of the goods were imported. Nothing seemed to be actually local to Cambridgeshire. So I stuck to the UK produce and walked out with kale, Brussels' sprouts, potatoes, onions, carrots, a parsnip, purple sprouting broccoli, Cox apples and a red cabbage. And an avocado. The avocado may have slipped past my UK radar. Not entirely sure about that one.

My first thought was something along the lines of: I miss Australia and tropical fruit! My second thought was: I hate potato. My third thought was pretty much my first thought revisited. Then I took a deep breath and decided that if I was going to live the rest of my life on this stupidly wet and tropically-lacking island I would have to get used to the food. Which meant I needed to make do with what was on offer and when it was on offer.

Every week I try to make at least one new recipe. This week I tried to make use of some of my seasonal vegetables (with the help of some peppers that I ended up buying from Aldi. Also, I'm not entirely convinced by this locally grown food argument anyway and would like to revisit the topic again in the future). I made the kale into Cosmic Cashew Kale and Chickpeas and the purple sprouting broccoli into a nice side dish with hazelnuts. I had everything already except for the cashews but because I was cooking with the hipster, and because he eats about 4.5 times the amount the average human should, I felt totally OK with allowing him to make some contribution to the meal.

There is one event that occurred this week that will mean that I will (legally) have to exchange money for something other than fruit and vegetables this month. As an Australian in the UK I feel it is my duty to swagger about the country with a little bit of Ned Kelly-esque bravado. I've grown to enjoy my Twinings Earl Grey in hard water but I still like to let the British know that I haven't forgotten my penal, colonial roots. Yes, I'll toast to church and Queen over dessert wine and a cheese platter after my three course meal while you pass around the snuff but let me just remind you, English oppressors, that at any moment I could pounce and the antipodean in me will bristle with a century and a half of suppressed anger. I deny your authority over me. I am free and I shall remind you of this fact.

So, in short, I couldn't find a parking spot in my residential parking area, got really pissed off about it, parked on the double yellow lines and got a parking fine. And then tried to get out of it by basically saying that my only crime was not getting up before the parking inspector. Needless to say, they were not very sympathetic to my excuse. Well, actually, their extremely polite letter states that they are very sympathetic to my excuse but that I have to pay the parking fine anyway (such polite oppressors!). So I owe Cambridge City Council £35. And it has to be paid in the next week or so. I obviously could have avoided this by not parking on the double yellow lines. But that would be letting them win, right?

Thus ends my week. I hope you are all looking forward to hearing about my exciting weekend. So far it's been a little interesting. More drinking was involved. I've had some questions about my original intentions of wanting to move away from the culture of excess by doing this experiment and how this contrasts to my actual behaviour so far so I will write a bit about that next.