Some Entertaining, Food-Related Observations

I kind of like the dandelion and burdock, but to me it tastes like a combination of root beer and cough syrup. My sister told me that burdock is supposed to have medicinal qualities, so this makes sense.

Kit-Kats here are heavenly. Everyone seems to think so and I've tried one and they seem to be much better than American Kit-Kats. We wonder if they use a different kind of chocolate.

Dr. Pepper has a reputation for tasting strange compared to U.S. Dr. Pepper, but I can't tell the difference.

I've also tried 'ginger beer' which actually tastes like sucking on a ginger root, and it's not sweet at all. American ginger ale, by comparison, only vaguely tastes like ginger and it's very sweet.

One of the main differences between food here and in America seems to be that here, things are generally a lot less sweet or a lot less salty. Peanut butter is a good example of something less salty. I've tried two different kinds of peanut butter here and they both taste simply like pureed unsalted peanuts.

Crumpets look like what in America we'd call 'English muffins' but here they remind me of a very thick, spongy pancake. The bottom of one looks exactly like a small pancake! I haven't looked for it myself, but I have heard you cannot find maple syrup here.

Grated Parmesan cheese comes in very tiny canisters and is very expensive. It's precious like gold. There are many other varieties of cheeses here that I'm not too familiar with and have never tried, so I steer away from everything except cheddar.

Other than gerkins, 'pickle' means what I would call 'pickle relish' except that it's brown.

I haven't seen any Mexican restaurants anywhere. I have been craving a giant burrito!

No grape-flavoured anything, which I find surprising. Grapes are sold here, so people must like grapes. I wonder why there are no grape-flavoured products? Blackcurrant has a very similar taste to grape, so I imagine that there may be an organisation of blackcurrant growers who are suppressing the production of anything grape.

All eggs are brown, the shells are very crumbly and, try as I might, whenever I crack one, pieces of shell get in my egg and I have to fish them out. All eggs are English-laid, and they're very expensive relative to eggs in the U.S. -- about double the price. My theory behind this is that there are far fewer egg-producing hens in England than in the U.S., so eggs in England are a more precious commodity.

I just never knew pies or other kinds of meat-with-dough were such rage items. There is an entire aisle at the supermarket devoted to varieties of meat inside of dough. Generally, people in the U.S., when they think of pies, are thinking of dessert -- something with fruit in it, or maybe a cream pie. The exception are pot pies, which only occupy a tiny spot in the American supermarket.

My theory is that American pot pies must be a distant relative of all the different meat pies here. But I noticed that here, each different type of pie or pasty will be filled with no more than two featured ingredients (steak, steak and kidney, chicken and mushroom, pork, cheese and onion pasty, etc.) and if you want variety, it's taken for granted you'll have the steak and kidney today, and tomorrow maybe the chicken and mushroom.

In America, a pot pie is a rare treat, so "chicken pot pie" has chicken, but it also has mushrooms, carrots, peas, onions, maybe in a baked mashed-potato crust. The American pot pie is more of a self-contained full meal (at least if it's on a restaurant menu. The frozen supermarket variety are hardly enough to fill anyone up, but I think they're supposed to). But meat pies here are more like snacks or finger foods, or a very light meal, that you're supposed to eat all the time. This is my theory, anyway!