Food, Part II

I don't cook much here. Our kitchen is small, and it isn't well-stocked. And converting quantities from mass (grams) to volume (ounces or cups) is a pain. I have to cook with my computer on the counter top so I can figure out how many grams of butter equal a stick and how many grams of baking powder equal a teaspoon. Tedious.

As a result, we make simple meals, or sometimes buy prepared meals from the grocery store. Now, at home, I would never consider buying a pre-made, packaged, grocery-store brand dinner. I don't even know if they exist, other than frozen TV dinners. Yet, they are big here. The prepared meal aisle, filled with refrigerated meals of all varieties, is one of the busiest areas at the store. Someone told us that it's really expensive to eat out here, so people buy these meals instead. These meals are all pretty good, and some are delicious. The paella and Indian meals are our favorites.

Cottage pie: ground beef and onions, sometimes with carrots mixed in, topped with mashed potatoes and cheddar, baked in the oven.  It's tasty but not interesting.  Malcolm loves it, as he does most basic foods on the bland side.

Indian Takeaway for Two: two curries, rice, naan, and usually a vegetable dish like aloo gobi.  These takeaway boxes are as good or better than getting takeaway from our local restaurants, and they are much cheaper.  You can buy the components a la carte as well, but it costs more.

I have to say that despite the convenience of picking up one of these prepared meals at a grocery store, I enjoy grocery shopping in England even less than I enjoy driving here. In fact, I feel that I am beginning to get the hang of driving here, but I will rejoice on the day that I never have to visit another English grocery store again. The famous British manners are entirely absent when people are grocery shopping. Everyone is cranky and hurried and seems to think you are about to buy the last block of cheese or package of scones. I have been pushed, elbowed, grumbled at, and huffed at more times than I can count at the grocery store. The grocery stores are organized very differently, too, and I can never find what I'm looking for. Would you look for maple syrup in the jam aisle or the condiment aisle? The answer is neither. It's in the cereal aisle at our local grocery store-- maybe for mixing into your oatmeal? Add two small, energetic children to this mix, and it's a recipe for misery.

We eat out a lot, too, especially on our travels away from home, and we have made an effort to try some traditional English dishes. Here are some of them.

Jacket potato (a.k.a. baked potato) stuffed with bacon and mushrooms.  Bacon is different here-- more like Canadian bacon than the American strip-style bacon.

Here's the restaurant version of cottage pie.

Bangers and mash with the bangers cut up for the kids. Peas seem to the be the default vegetable that accompanies all traditional English entrees, sometimes mashed to a paste, sometimes whole.  

Sunday dinner at a pub is a tradition for a lot of families. If you try to eat at a pub on a Sunday between noon and 8:00pm, you best have a table booked. If not, you will be lucky to get in at all, and it will involve a substantial wait. We managed to get a table at this pub between Edinburgh and Durham on a Sunday afternoon, probably only because we arrived right about noon.

The traditional Sunday pub fair is Sunday roast. Erik ordered this pork roast with a side of Yorkshire pudding (the round thing on the plate, made of eggs, milk, flour, and lard). One of the pub's specialities was "pig on a plate," including pork roast, pork sausages, pork belly, and black pudding (a.k.a blood sausage-- eek and ick!).

"Proper" is a favorite adjective used to describe food and drink here-- mostly drink. It seems to imply that most people don't know how to make coffee, tea, beer, etc. correctly, but you are lucky enough to have found an establishment that makes it properly.

This is a cafe at the international train station, where we caught the train to France.  Call me crazy, but if I was looking for a "proper" cup of coffee, I would not expect to find it at a train station.

Cakes are a big deal here. Traditional tea time doesn't seem to be as commonly observed as one might expect, but at many cafes, the only snack-like item you can buy is "cakes", which essentially translates to baked goods. If you are hungry at 11:00AM (as we often are, having woken up at the crack of dawn), the only food available for purchase at a restaurant is cakes.

Victorian sponge cake, a moist, dense yellow cake with a layer of cream and a layer of jam in the middle.

A mini apple crumble served with a pitcher of cream.  So good.

Traditional shortbread is not too sweet and a little bit salty. The boys are not fans, but it's one of my favorites.

Lemonade in England means Sprite or the equivalent. This Victorian lemonade was like an American lemonade with bubbles, with a hint of ginger and "herbal extracts."

We arrived too early to order lunch at this cafe.  I was very curious about Victorian Curried Apricot & Nut Loaf and Smoked Salmon & Watercress Flan.

Eton mess, another traditional English dessert. It really is a mess of whipped cream, berries, and bits of meringue.  

Desserts are called "puddings" in England, even if they aren't actually pudding.  Here's the dessert menu from one of our local pubs.

Snack foods are different here, too. There is no such thing as a snack cracker in England. We have seen nary a Goldfish or a Cheez-It since we arrived. Crisps, on the other hand, are a big deal here. There are more varieties of potato chips here than we had ever dreamed of. Some of the more interesting flavors are smoky bacon, prawn cocktail, steak and onion, and roast chicken. 

Here is Malcolm enjoying a syrupy Ribena juice box and Wotsits (like Cheetos) at the Magic Castle, an indoor play area that we frequent.

The culinary part of this adventure has been fun, but there is one thing I really, truly miss: Mexican food.  On a whim, we ate at a Mexican restaurant one night in Edinburgh, and as we sat down we saw a sign advertising their margaritas as "the best margarita in town." Erik and I giggled to ourselves that it wouldn't be hard to have the best margarita in town, because it was probably nearly the only margarita in town.  And if theirs was the best, the rest must be undrinkable.  As far as we can tell, the best Mexican food in England is created in our kitchen.

Great Britain Road Trip, Part V: The Home Stretch

If you've been following along with this whole road trip, Day 5 took us from Edinburgh to Durham to York, in northeast England. That's from F to G to H on this map.  

The skies seemed to clear as we drove south out of Scotland, and we had a mostly dry day on Sunday. We stopped briefly in Durham (in northeast England) to see a bit of the town and stretch our legs. We wandered into this central plaza where we found a brass band playing.

Downtown Durham

Brass band concert in the square

Statue of local coal magnate

Next we hiked up the hill to see the town's castle and cathedral. There was a vintage MG show going on in front of the cathedral, and at the same time the church bells were ringing to call people to the evensong service. It was a strange mix of activities.  

Looking uphill to the castle

Durham Cathedral

Door knocker on Durham Cathedral.  A sign nearby said that, in centuries past, fugitives could use this door knocker to request sanctuary at the church.  They were given 37 days sanctuary to put their affairs in order before they agreed to stand trial or leave the country voluntarily.

Our goal for the day was York, so back in the car we went. York was another hour and a half or so down the road. We made it there before dinner time, and we were greeted with this lovely sight, immediately across the street from our hotel.

Clifford's Tower, all that remains of York Castle.  And beautiful blue sky!

As it was Sunday afternoon at 5:00 by the time we were checked in, most everything was closed. We walked around town a bit and strategized for the next day. This bit of blue sky was most welcome, and we felt we needed to spend every moment we could outside. We have been in England long enough to know that weather this pretty doesn't last long. All the rain that has been coming down in the UK over the past couple of months has caused the rivers to swell. This is what we saw down by the banks of the  River Ouse, a couple of blocks from our hotel.

Water right up to the steps.  I think that ramp in the background is a boat ramp, but it was completely surrounded by flood waters.

Flood

The next morning we visited the York Castle Museum, which has nothing to do with the castle, other than the fact that it's located where the castle used to be. The museum takes you through recreated rooms that show what life was like in York from about the 1500s through the 1950s. One area of the museum even has a street recreated to show shops that would have been along the street in the late 1800s, complete with horse and buggy.  

York Castle Museum

We also visited the Jorvik Viking Center, where we learned what life was like in York during a few hundred years of Viking occupation. The museum includes moving cars that take visitors through a model Viking village with narration about what you're seeing. It was kind of like Viking Village Disney-style. It was actually pretty smartly done, because the kids enjoyed the museum much more than they would have if we were just looking at artifacts in glass cases.  

Last on our road trip itinerary was a visit inside Clifford's Tower (photo above), which we had seen from the outside the day before.  

Inside Clifford's Tower

Looking up at the scary spiral staircase to the top of the tower

View from the top

And then we had a long drive home.  We saw a little bit of a lot of places.  Though we wished we had more time in all of the places we visited, I think we made the most of our summer vacation.

Great Britain Road Trip, Part IV

We arrived in Edinburgh on Friday evening, with enough time to walk around town a little bit before dinner.  Our hotel was just off the Royal Mile, so we walked up to the main drag to get our bearings and poke into some shops.  The Royal Mile is a stretch of road between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyrood House, where the queen lives when she is in Edinburgh (Incidentally, she was in, so the palace was closed to visitors.)  It is lined with shops, restaurants, historic buildings, and statues. It is also full of seagulls, which are as abundant and pesky as pigeons. We saw several tearing open trash bags by the side of the road, and their screeching went on throughout the daylight hours-- about 4:00 AM to 10:00 PM up that far north.

Statue of Adam Smith (with a seagull on his head) in front of St. Giles Cathedral, the Scottish mother church (Presbyterian)

Looking down the Royal Mile

We bought some tartan scarves for the boys (Malcolm plaid for Malcolm, Mitchell plaid for Soren Mitchell), and I gleefully found the latest issue of People magazine in a newsstand.  We were hungry, but most of the restaurants nearby were either no-kids-allowed pubs, lunchtime cafes, or super touristy places.  Malcolm asked to eat in an American restaurant, and since there weren't a lot of other options in the vicinity, we agreed, though we were a little embarrassed to be that kind of tourist-- the ones who eat at McDonald's when they travel abroad, rather than enjoying the local cuisine.  The food was actually delicious, and it turned out to be the best meal we had all week.  After dinner, we snuck back down the "close" or alley (these abound in Edinburgh) to our hotel and did our best to block out the sunlight so the kids could sleep.

The close

Saturday morning, we woke to the sound of torrential rain.  We've gotten used to rainy days, but usually it is more a sprinkle than a downpour.  Since we had just one full day in Edinburgh, we suited up in raincoats, wellies, and umbrellas, and decided to carry on with our sightseeing plans.  Edinburgh Castle was on the top of our list of sights to see, and it was only about a half mile walk from our hotel.

On our way to the castle

Castle gate

"No one can harm me unpunished"

Rainy walk through the gate to the castle

We kept expecting the rain to die down or maybe even come and go, but it was relentless. We walked up the hill to the castle in the pouring rain, waited in the ticket line in the pouring rain, and started sightseeing in the pouring rain. The view of Edinburgh from the castle is supposed to be spectacular.  This is what we saw.

"View" from the castle

Not much to see

The kids did enjoy seeing the One O'Clock Gun, which fires every day at 1:00 PM to let sailors know the time. After that, their good humor ran out, and a meltdown led us into the cafe to warm up and regroup.  

This pretty much sums up our day.

The famous One O'Clock Gun

We decided to make a quick tour of the inside parts of the castle, but even that proved to be a challenge.  Everyone else wanted to be inside, too, so every room was packed.  Many areas had stairs that our stroller couldn't get through, so we tried to leave the stroller in a corridor.  It was nearly confiscated by a guard, because apparently you cannot separate yourself from any of your possessions even momentarily "on an army base", which apparently the castle is.  It became clear that it was time to abort mission.  Everyone was soaked and shivery, and frankly none of us was having any fun.  

Swords inside the castle

Malcolm and a suit of armor

Malcolm and a bagpiper, who appeared to be there just for photo ops.  Note the water on the lens and Malcolm's soaked pants.

Inside the castle walls

The castle is built into the rocks.

After lunch, Soren took his first nap of the trip.  At all our other stops, we figured we wouldn't bother with an afternoon nap when there was so much to see, but nothing is nicer than a nap on a rainy day.  Malcolm and Erik watched Serena Williams win the women's final at Wimbledon from the hotel bar, while Soren and I rested in a dark room.  The rain was still coming down post-nap, so we got on a double-decker tour bus and saw the sites from inside.  Unfortunately, the windows were so foggy that we couldn't see well, and we didn't even bother trying to take pictures.  I will say that what we saw was lovely.  Edinburgh is beautiful, and even reminds me of Paris in some ways.  We will try to return some day, though I don't think you can ever count on good weather in Scotland.

And that was Edinburgh.  On Sunday morning, we got back on the road, heading south in search of some sunshine.

Great Britain Road Trip, Part III

We didn't do a ton of planning for our road trip. We picked locations that sounded interesting but didn't plan out specific sites to see. When we woke up in Glasgow (oddly to the sound of seagulls squawking, despite the fact that there is not a major body of water nearby), we didn't have an agenda, so we decided to take the downtown walking tour laid out in Rick Steves' Great Britain. Our first stop was the Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It is still used as a school, but it also houses a Mackintosh museum.  Glasgow is a very hilly city, and the art school is at one of the higher points in the city. Erik not only pushed the stroller (90 pounds of kids, plus 10 pounds of stroller) up this massive hill, he ran to entertain the kids.

How did he do that?

Doors to the Glasgow School of Art

Glasgow School of Art

Unfortunately for us, the school's museum was closed for renovation, so this is all we saw of the school. They did have a lovely gift shop, where we dropped some cash on lovely artsy items.

The next stop was the Willow Team Room, also designed by Mackintosh, but as we had just finished breakfast, we didn't stop for more than a photograph.

The Willow Tea Room is upstairs.

A detail from the building

We saw lots of beautiful architecture in a city that looks as though it is struggling to make a comeback.  Glasgow has clearly suffered some economic hardship, with lots of empty buildings and many "for sale" or "for rent" signs on every block.  Downtown Glasgow on a weekday was about as busy as downtown Indianapolis on a weekend, with not much car or foot traffic.  Here are a few pictures from our walking tour.  I'd blame it on the rain, but I think it always rains there.

For sale

  

Along the way, we also enjoyed some sites that were not listed in our tour guide.  

Kilt shop

The Mitchells on Mitchell Lane

We found another carnival on a pedestrian mall in Glasgow, so we stopped to let the kids blow off some steam in the bouncy house and ride a few rides.  

Through the rainy bouncy house window

The double decker bus never loses its appeal.

Mega slide

Our last stop in Glasgow was The Lighthouse, another Mackintosh building that now houses Scotland's National Centre for Design and Architecture.  We started on the top floor, where there is a viewing deck for checking out the city skyline.

Glasgow from above

 

Malcolm on the viewing deck

There were some galleries open to the public with exhibits on architecture and design, but what we enjoyed seeing most were these famous signs for the toilets.

Erik and Soren climbed a spiral staircase into the lighthouse tower, which gave them an even better view of the surrounding city.  Malcolm and I stayed down below and looked at some Mackintosh chairs instead.

View from the top of the staircase. That's our red stroller down below.

View from the lighthouse. The gray and blue square-ish structure is the viewing platform we stood on earlier.

And that was it for Glasgow.  We got back in the car to drive to Edinburgh.  We took the scenic route to see a little more of Scotland than what was visible from the highways, some of it gray and grim, some of it green and lovely. We drove past the Firth of Forth and into the heart of Edinburgh.  To be continued.