Oh for cluck’s sake, not more?

I knew this would happen. No sooner do I mouth off about the quality of chicken than I have to start backtracking on what I said. This is not to say I have eaten some good chicken since I last blogged, but I will admit that my implied generalisation – which repeated pretty-well every prejudice that Brits have about America – that the produce over here is all tasteless pap, was unfounded and unfair. You can buy just as crappy food in Britain as you can over here. I’ve seen awful meat and poultry on the shelves of all of Britain’s supermarkets, with the exception perhaps of Waitrose. I’m just irredeemably smug because when I’m at home I get to buy all of my meat from local farmers.

Cluck cluck

I made Arroz Con Pollo last night, a sort of chicken paella. I’ve made it many times before. It’s easy and tasty. Well, not last night it wasn’t. We got all the ingredients at a local supermarket, Schnucks. It’s generally a good store that caters well for the local community and which takes care to stock foods that appeal to every ethnic background. We bought onion, garlic, green peppers, short grain rice, tinned chicken broth, fresh plum tomatoes, paprika and chicken thighs.

Mr Creosote rides again

For foodies, a quick run-down of eateries so far…

Crown Candy Kitchen is a candy store cum soda fountain cum diner which opened in 1913 and which hasn’t changed dramatically since. There are only a few booths, more like tiny wooden cubicles, and if there are more than four of you, you might as well head elsewhere. Likewise if you don’t like queuing for a table you might as well head elsewhere. The extraordinary thing about this is that Crown Candy is in a pretty desolate corner of town, north of Downtown. Millions of dollars have just been spent by the city in at attempt to rejuvenate the area and nearby there are lots of old stores that have been spiffily renovated but which currently stand empty, waiting to be occupied by boutiques and art galleries. Personally I wish they were becoming shops that actually serve the immediate neighbourhood, like bakeries and butchers, but that doesn’t seem likely.

Zing zing zing went my heartstrings

This is my idea of a good trip. The biggest factor in that is that I’m not here to work; Lucy is. It isn’t that often that I’m free for the duration of one of her jobs, or vice versa, and more often than not we’ll spend weeks thousands of miles apart. I could have stayed in England, watering the garden, being a Saddo and pottering about at home, but it seemed infinitely more sensible to come to St Louis and have, you know, a married life.
Lucy is singing three cameo roles in John Adam’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” for the Opera Theatre so it’s not as if she should be rehearsing a great deal, nor does she have the pressure of a major role to worry about. Unlike most companies the Opera Theatre doesn’t work downtown but out on a university campus to the west of the city. They perform four operas, all in English, over about a month and that’s it for the season.