in britannia

You know, the more I eat brie, the less I like eating the rind. It's not bad and all, but I always get the feeling that I'm eating something that just can't be very good for me, like crayon or paraffin, or cafeteria food. I've been writing a paper and snacking on brie, and I've eaten a lot of rind. I wonder, honestly, what the proper thing to do might be. After all, enough people cut the rind off, and yet, everyone knows it's not technically bad for you.
Queens' College gives us, the singers, free dinner in hall every night we sing. It's nice, since the service doesn't get me out fast enough to eat at Keble Hall. The downside to this is that Queens' College food is awful. Dinner tonight was curried something-or-other. We figure it was probably beef, though guesses at the table ranged from dog to hamster. I'd have been fine with hamster. Dog, I'm a little more skeptical of. Maybe it was rat... No worse than brie rind, perhaps.
So I haven't seen Derek, the Yankees fan who lives across the hall from me, in two days. Word is he went to London for the weekend. I'll have a nice big plate of humble pie waiting for him when he gets back.
I've been sampling some of the more interesting food establishments in Oxford, and it's been pleasantly surprising. The Lebanese restaurant was incredibly tasty. Noodle Bar was pretty good, but the real incentive is that it's cheap. The kebab vans (I've tried food from four) are all horribly unhealthy, but they're quite tasty. These should be patronized very rarely, and only after 10:30 pm. There's a lousy Chinese place by Keble: it's relatively cheap, and you get what you pay for. Pub food has, by and large, been outstanding. I've had steak & ale pie, fish & chips, steak & chips, ham sandwich, English breakfast, all of which have been extremely tasty. I've had my share of bad English food, but it's all been at Keble or Queens'. Mainly Queens'.
I'd like to say for the record that a) I've yet to eat American fast food, even though I walk by a McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC almost every day. and b) the chips (fries) in this country vastly out-perform anything, and I mean ANYTHING that we've got in the states. Probably because they're fried in something horribly unhealthy, but man, they're tasty.
And while I'm on the subject of chipped root vegetables, the flavors of crisp (chips) in England is absurd. I went to the supermarket to do some research. Here's what I came up with:
Plain
Salt & Vinegar
Texas Style BBQ
(now things get weird)
Cheddar & Onion
Pickled Onion
Thai Chicken
Roasted Chicken
Flame Grilled Steak
Sunday Roast
Smoky Bacon
Worcester Sauce
Beef & Onion
Prawn Cocktail
These were all I've seen in the past week. A quick look at Snackspot.org.uk confirms that there are many more, including, but certainly not limited to Peking Duck, Vanilla Ice Cream, Doritos "Tandoori Sizzler", and the very poorly named Cup Noodle flavor "Seedy Sanchez".
This weekend I'm going to be posting my photographs online. Thanks to A.G. for helping me figure out the export feature of iPhoto.