Puddings!

I said last time that puddings would need to be a post unto themselves. So here is that post. Ohh puddings, how I miss them. Now puddings are a funny thing. The term is often used to refer to general dessert. Basically, whatever sweet you have once you finish your supper may be called pudding. These types are usually spongey cakes with a sauce poured on top, sometimes filled with fruit or nuts. However this gets confusing as there are also savoury puddings that can be served with dinner. Lets save the best for last then and start with the savoury.

Yorkshire pudding is definitely my favorite of the savouries and the one you have more likely tried (compared to the others at least). The Yorkshire pudding can even be found in restaurants like Lawry's, where I first tried them, served with roasted meats and veggies just like they are across the pond. Similar, or pretty identical actually, individual Yorkshire puddings are like pop-overs. They belong in the bread category of the dinner, and are made with a thin batter similar to American pancakes, though they do not taste like them. Light, fluffy and delicious. They can be baked individually, as pictured below, or as one ina big pan then sliced into portions. 

Sometimes individual puddings will have meat put in the middle, as if the pudding is just the holder for the rest of the meal. Traditionally Yorkshire pudding is  baked with leftover meat juices, as the pudding soaks up the flavors nicely, but this is not the case everywhere. So without the juices, these puddings have a nice differentiation from the other commonly known savoury pudding. No blood!

Yummy British Food

As I write this I am already overcome with excitement for this Thursday. I’m super antsy because two of my friends from London (Americans though) are coming to visit and I have missed them greatly. One will only be here for the night and the other for two days. Not nearly enough time. And what do we want to do with them in this great city? Go to Hollywood, see Rodeo Drive? No, it’s our mission to find a decent pub for traditional English breakfast. So it is with them and their visit in mind that I will reminisce about one topic that was close to our hearts and that we dearly miss... FOOD!

The British have long held a bad reputation when it comes to food. As one foodie from Manchester has admitted, "we do unspeakable things to peas" and yes making them look like guacamole is truly unspeakable. (On one of our first days my friends made that mistake, and that’s not a fun surprise for folks from SoCal). So it’s funny that I start this post saying how I miss this so-called terrible cuisine. In some ways I saw where the reputation for nasty food came from. There are still many pubs that are using recipes (and possibly pie crusts) that are decades, maybe even centuries old. British food had been known to be bland or overly spiced, the latter being to hide the rotten flavor or preserve it. And while it is still possible to come across a pastie that isn’t to your liking, on the whole I think the worst meal I had in London was a dish that claimed to be California Mexican.

I rather enjoyed standard English fare. Indian food is now a big part of that but I will continue on that another time. For now we're talking classic British. Fish and chips are commonplace, not as much in Central (London) but definitely by the coasts, and up in Scotland, etc. Its fried fish (often haddock or cod) and chips and usually peas (likely mushed, blegh). The best I ever had was in Brighton, right on the shore. Note that I asked them to hold the peas. 

A Brief Day in the Life - BRITSPEAK

So I think it is about time I write a post concerning my own blog/blog topic. And considering the surplus of vocabulary related anecdotes I could share, I think you now are now about to encounter my first post on BRITSPEAK! In the US, we really don’t speak English. In England they speak English. I even hesitate to say Great Britain or the UK (those are different from each other, maybe I will explain in the future) because in areas like northern Scotland, most people who are not accustomed to the accent would never believe that English is the spoken language.

As this is my first entry concerning Britspeak though I will go through some common terms that are necessary for getting around in daily life. We will venture through the course of a day and find all the fun words we need to get around. Lets start at the sidewalk.

One of the first things every tourist notices when they arrive in the UK (and doesn’t come as a surprise unless said tourist has lived under a rock) is that the Brits drive on the left side of the road. And the Brits recognize that they are the weirdos in this case because they have written which way to look on the ground, helping out all those people from almost everywhere else in the world that sticks to the right. This was particularly handy when I first moved to London but when I started traveling to the continent I was sorry the signage was no longer there. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to looking to the right that I had to be stopped from crossing the street by friends when we got to Europe. Even though the French, Spanish, German, etc. drive the same direction we Americans do I had mentally switched over and had trouble converting back to looking left. Okay so there is no Brit word here but its language related! Moving on.

While London is a great city for walking it also has a great underground system, most commonly referred to as the tube (ß our first Brit word!). I love the tube. Coming from Los Angeles where the public transportation system is lacking at best, the tube seemed like the greatest invention since the wheel. I took the tube almost every day and knew the lines better than I knew LA. No joke. When I got back home I was on the way to a friend’s house and I couldn’t remember what street came after Balboa. I had lived in LA my entire life and I couldn’t remember the grid of the valley but I could tell you every stop on the Central Line (and the District, Circle, Piccadilly and Bakerloo).