Hertford and the Failure of Whole Foods

Yesterday at lunch I went on yet another Whole Foods quest. I find I have come to rely on Whole Foods as a source of items with perhaps an American slant, which was my mission yesterday. As a key component of my plan to make festive snickerdoodles over the weekend, I needed colored sugar and cream of tartare. Having recalled seeing colored sugar there before, I figured it was a safe bet. But noooooo. They did have colored sugar, mind you, but it was £4 for a little tiny thing and they didn't have the right colors. They had a light green, orange, pink, and yellow. Not useful if you need kelly green and red! On top of that, the little dye kit was £16. There comes a point where you decide your snickerdoodles don't need to be festive and they can roll in normal cinnamon sugar.

For the second ingredient I wasn't sure if it fell under the category of a spice, like cinnamon, or if it lived with the baking ingredients, like baking powder. Luckily it's one and the same aisle at Whole Foods. Despite about ten minutes of searching, I was unsuccessful again. They have about 24 kinds of flour, 1000 types of salt, and 27 varieties of pepper, but no cream of tartare. Things are not looking bright on the festive snickerdoodle front. While I know they don't have colored sugar at my nearby Sainsburys Central (aka, 'small with no bakery or meat counter, but bigger than a convenience store), tomorrow I shall go on a quest towards the full-size Sainsburys at Gloucester Road. If I fail there, I can always up my other options with more readily available ingredients.

In other yesterday news, in the afternoon I got sent on a mission to get a 'contract of common ground' signed in Hertford, located in Hertfordshire (they are that clever, it's like Oklahoma City, Oklahoma). This involved taking the Central Line to Oxford Circus, then the Victoria line to Highbury & Islington, getting off and walking around really confused until I realised it indeed was not Finsbury Park, taking the Victoria line one station further to Finsbury Park, buying a ticket like a good non-fare evader, taking a short-haul overground train about 12 stops to Hertford North, walking in unpleasant freezing cold surroundings for about 15 minutes to the council, staying there for about 2 minutes and then doing the whole thing in reverse. It took 3 hours and 45 minutes. I got to the office 15 minutes after quiting time to drop off the contracts and pick up my newly acquired parchment paper and pecans so I wouldn't have to take them to the Christmas party tonight.

And in response to a comment made by someone generically calling themselves 'dad', public transport is the default mode for business trips around here. There are no staff vehicles available for use, and everyone take the tube and train to reach their destinations, perhaps with the occasional cab. Oh, and you can walk or take a bus. This is probably a combination of destinations lacking parking, people not being willing to drive, complicated road systems, the ability to do work while travelling by train, and the company being 'green'. I guess if we keep telling everyone else how to travel by sustainable modes we should practice what we preach, even if it does take ages to get places! Although with traffic around here I'm not sure how much a difference it would make!