Healthy eating

They bleach their chickens here, did you know that? Okay, okay, on closer reading you'll find that it's very very heavily diluted bleach. Still. They wash their eggs too, which is why they need refrigeration. Most supermarket milk and cheese here is pasteurised beyond recognition (though mugs like me just pay through the nose for special 'raw' cheese).

The health and safety gurus are everywhere, in Europe and in the US. They just have different methods, I suppose.

But on top of that, there's a sort of fanaticism about germs and dirt here in the US just doesn't exist in Europe. I am famously sloppy about germ sharing, which is exactly why Lady P picked up a tummy bug on our last trip to the UK. (I literally took the straw from her sick cousin's drink and gave it to her. I might as well just spooned his infected saliva onto her cake). So I could raise my game and get on board with the American way of life, I suppose.

And yet, in Hermosa Beach, I think I fit in quite well. I see a lot of people properly smooching with their dogs here. And letting their kids eat sand, not to mention walk barefoot to the beach or the playground. And the range of raw milk cheeses in our local organic hippy grocer is not half bad. It's as if a little slice of dirty old Europe lurks beneath this SoCal beach city.

So if that's true... why the hell can't I buy muesli anywhere?! I mean proper muesli, full of seeds and nuts. I used to find it hidden in the 'hot cereal' section, next to the rolled oats. But now, in Vonn's and Ralph's and Whole Foods and even the organic grocer - which does sell quinoa porridge, of all the horrors you can imagine - I can't find anything like it.

This is not muesli

Gah! I can live with refrigerated eggs, excessively clean chickens, and even tasteless cheese - but please don't take away my muesli.