Returning to Britain after the warmth, abundance and good food of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, Elizabeth was daunted by the grey and drab Britain that she found. With rationing still enforced, people were still relying on wartime recipes and ingredients. The food she encountered was quite terrible. ‘There was flour and water soup seasoned solely with pepper; bread and gristle rissoles; dehydrated onions and carrots; corned beef toad in the hole. Need I go on!’ Elizabeth wrote. Whilst in London she met up with her former lover, George Lassalle, and they resumed their affair. In November of 1946, the couple decided to spend a week at a provincial hotel in Ross-on-Wye. This week spent in a bleak English backwater had a profound influence on Elizabeth and played a major part in the life she was to create for herself, cooking and writing about food that was almost unknown in post-war Britain of that time but which Elizabeth had enjoyed so fully in the previous six years.