Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Rookworst at HEMA probably deserves a mention, too: sold to be taken home and eaten, but you'll see people snacking on them in the street.

That 'in a sense', Jamie, is the kind of sense that would also stop people from eating ethically, because at a sufficiently wide angle, nothing is unconnected to slaughter. All distinctions collapse. Vegetarians can't escape the cycle of slaughter. Vegans can't easily escape the massacres wreaked by farm equipment upon small creatures in fields. If you quibble about whether vegetarianism should extend to not eating things in a production model that allows other people to eat meat, then you might as well just order up the grain-fed, cow-crate steaks and be done with it.

(I'm reminded of the Jain monks whose vow not to take life leads to them starving themselves.)

I haven't consciously, deliberately eaten meat in a decade. I've no doubt unconsciously consumed animal products, especially in recent years, since the US is far behind Europe in taking animal fat and other stuff out of products you'd otherwise expect to be fine. And purity is a lofty goal: should I refuse the slice of birthday cake at my young relatives' parties because the eggs used to make it are from battery hens?

You just do the best you can in your own choices, and you trust that small-scale farmers handle the meat side of their agriculture with the conscientiousness of their other work. Because livestock farming is the exploitation (in a neutral sense) of animals' life and death, and that's just how it has been since the ancient hunter-gatherers had a few ideas to make their lives easier.

I'm not a terroir cultist, but the same varietal grown in very different regions can produce very different wines.

The real lesson from this piece: learn to love your wine dealers. Ask questions -- especially 'have you tried this one? what do you drink it with?' -- and soak up their knowledge. Find dealers who bring in obscure regional stuff and cherish them like family members. Vocalise your palate: you won't sound silly. (I miss Oddbins.)

But to answer the question: some of my favourite Australian grenaches are too expensive when imported to the US to justify buying, but if I want a summer-berry red, then an supermarket-shelf Spanish garnacha will often do the trick.

Braun. All the way. Though I'd not seen the model 2qra mentions, and I'm now tempted to nab one...

British food at its best is often hard to adapt to restaurant eating, which may be why so many home-table meals work badly in the pub-grub setting. (The exceptions are the fry-up and the chippie.) I wonder sometimes whether the substitution of money for time over the past quarter-century has left people not quite affluent enough to eat marrowbone and mutton and S&K pie at St John, but also lacking the time or suppliers (or bravery) to cook it themselves.

Strangely, I think there's a useful comparison with Mexican food, which is more or less unobtainable in the UK beyond crappy tacos. Most Britons aren't aware of mole poblano or pozole or menudo, and those are dishes that, even in the US, have made a much slower transition from the home kitchen to the restaurant table and the general American palate.

I've been thinking a lot about British eating habits in days past, particularly thanks to Pepys' Diary. Lots of group lunches and chophouses and turkey-pies and oysters by the dozen. And lamb, a meat whose relative rarity and cost in the US continues to puzzle me.

Heavy? Let's say 'northern European'. And the ne plus ultra of British food to line your stomach with concrete is served to Oxford dons in winter.