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.