Gourmet Food

Rosalie, my favourite cooking maniac. 

She has been cooking up some fabulous food lately. I sometimes think she overdoes it. She should just toss whatever it is in the frying pan sear it on both sides slap it on a plate and serve it to me. I’m sure it would be delicious. Instead, I get a gourmet meal that I have to rate. 

I hate it when she gives me something that other people find delicious but I just don’t like. How do I tell her when she has put so much love and effort into it? Luckily that doesn’t happen very often.

Being English I like a lot of my food plain. I was raised in a culture where everything is fried and served with fries. On menus in some cafés in England, you see just about everything…and chips. Together with tea that has been stewing for a few hours if not days. Add two heaping spoons of sugar and some milk and you have a perfect cup of English tea. Yuck!

I do miss my English fish and chips though. I’ve been served some good fish meals here but there is nothing like coming out of the theatre late at night, finding a fish and chip shop, placing an order and eating it out of newspaper as you walk home. You would have smothered it in salt and malt vinegar first though. You would have to be walking because you just missed the last bus. Not that it mattered as you spent the last of your money on the fish and chips anyway.

I love being Canadian and part Mexican but there will always be that pull toward some English-style foods. I was married to a Scot for 27 years and still can’t face blood pudding. Haggis though, that’s a different story: That, I like.

Okay, so we have some funny-sounding foods in England. For example:

Bubble and squeak: is a fried British dish made with potatoes and cabbage. It’s quite similar to the Irish colcannon. It often contains meat such as ham or bacon and is traditionally made on Monday with the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner or on Boxing Day with leftovers from the Christmas feast. It is sometimes topped with a fried egg.

Toad in the hole: is a traditional British dish made of sausages baked into a large Yorkshire pudding, typically served with onion gravy.

Pease pudding and faggots: This one takes some time to explain so here is a link:  Pease pudding

Mushy peas: fresh garden peas are harvested when young. Marrowfat peas are mature garden peas that have been allowed to dry naturally in the field before harvesting. It’s what gives them their starchy texture—and ability to get mushy. And I still can’t understand why you guys don’t like them.

Jellied eels: Again this needs a link as there is some history. Jellied eels. I haven’t tried them because they don’t appeal to me.

After reading about some of the gourmet foods we eat in England surely Rosalie has to understand why I can’t like everything she serves up. But I do like bananas.