Today's grocery run: South African butter, Dutch apple pie, English steak and kidney pie, Namibian eggs and German bread. Colonial echoes aplenty. Even the Namibian egg farm has a German name.

Who in their right mind would buy a steak and kidney pie? I spent 9 months in England. If they had mushy peas or even jellied eel here, I'd buy it.

Outside of Europe, great loaves of bread are rare, so that German baby is not common here. I didn't want it sliced, but the lady misheard me. Break bread, or cut it yourself. A machine sliced loaf has lost much of its magnificence, innocence and integrity, with each slice a clone, deserving of contempt from whatever touches it, man, ham, jam or butter, etc.