Immeasurably More

Scotland's most lauded poet Robert Burns was born January 25, 1759 making tonight Burns Night.  In honor of the man and his Address to a Haggis , a friend and I went out for haggis, neeps (swede in English and rutabaga in the US) and tatties (potato) with whiskey sauce. I can't claim to have been won over to Robert Burns's opinion of the haggis, but once a year I think I can manage.  My principal objection to tonight's meal was that the haggis, neeps and tatties were all the same texture.

Dear Reader, I have a cousin who when he was young had a number of food allergies.  I can remember the rest of the grandkids eagerly going after some holiday snack while he held back and asked my mom, "will that make me itch?" Given my current paranoia about possible negative reactions to all things edible, a surprising number of my recent posts have been about cooking or restaurants.  Evidence of food on the mind, I suppose. This post continues the pattern as tonight I joined 7 other diners at Charlie and Evelyn's Table , an Edinburgh supper club.  As I'm traveling, the best parts of this for me were a) they take eating preferences (e.g. an aversion to eggplant and gluten intolerance) seriously when they select a menu and b) it's a chance to have dinner out but not alone!  Tonight's guests were 3  transplanted English, 1 Irish, 3 Scottish and me.  The menu  (which you won't be able to read in the photo) also included fried haggis balls, which fo...

The medicine prescribed for me by my newly acquired NHS doctor wasn't intended to improve my mood.  It was intended to quell the queasiness I'd been feeling for weeks whenever I ate anything.  Happily, as a result of decreased queasiness, improved digestion or unintended side effects, over the past few days, I have been feeling more optimistic about life.  Which is a good thing, because my medication came with bad news. I've had intermittent digestive problems  for a couple of years now. (Really, do you want the details?  No? I didn't think so.)  I finally got motivated to see a doctor when the aforementioned queasiness began; because I had lost all desire to eat, I was beginning to lose weight. Medication seems to have solved the immediate queasiness problem, but to investigate the longer term problem, the doctor wants me to go wheat-free for 4-5 weeks. Two words: Christmas Cookies. I haven't yet managed a wheat free day.  ...

Australians side with the Americans. Eggplant is Eggplant.

Consider: The English were responsible for coining the name "Eggplant" in regards to a variety with egg shaped, white fruit that they became familiar with, yet strangely, they refer to them today by the French name of Abergine[ sic ], which is a corruption of the Catalonian name "Alberginia". from http://www.seedfest.co.uk/tips/eggplant_basicoverview.html Now, we know that Americans call eggplant eggplant, and the English call eggplant aubergine. Botanists of course call it Solanum Melongena. What do Australians call Eggplant? Submit your answer; win your postcard! ~~~ LeAn

Pub Quiz Question #1 was: What do the English call English muffins? The answer: Muffins As evidence, I offer the following link to the Kingsmill baked goods website, specifically, the muffins page. To confirm, I also showed an English muffin* to an English co-worker and asked, "What's this?" Her response was, "It's a muffin." So there you have it. Unfortunately, there were no correct responses. But don't worry, Pub Quiz Question 2 will be posted soon... ~~~ LeAn *I'm American, so to me, these muffins will always be English.

Dear Reader, To encourage blog participation, I am going to begin posting the occasional pub quiz question. The first correct answer will win a postcard from my extensive collection of postcards-bought-with-you-in-mind-but-never-sent. So submit your answer and get what's rightfully yours anyway! If no one submits the correct answer, I'll post it about a week after the question goes up. Today's question: What do the English call English muffins? With pen and postcard in hand, ~~ LeAn

I went to dinner with American friends last night, one of whom ordered a pint of tea. I know what you're thinking. Tea comes in pots not pints. Unless it's Traditional English Ale . I tried it myself, just for the pleasure of ordering "a half of tea".

Salsify is a perfect word for the game Balderdash.* My definition would be something like this: Salsify: verb. pronounced "saul-si-fI". Often used in Mexican cookbooks as in, "Start by salsifying the tomato, onion and chilies." You would be very wrong to vote for this definition, though. A saul-si-fee is a root vegetable that looks like a skinny parsnip. (This is someone else's idea of a good description. A picture is worth a thousand parsnips: salsify image .) I had the pleasure of trying salsify gratin at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this past week. If I hadn't known that it wasn't potato, I would have thought it was potato. But supposedly it tastes like oysters. I'm going to pretend that I was distracted by the music. ~~LeAn *If you've never played Balderdash, contestants submit definitions for unusual words and then choose what they believe to be the correct definition from among the submissions. You get a point for submitting or choo...

Several blocks from my flat is a fudge shop which hires a crier to offer free samples to passers by. Yesterday I heard him say (not loudly, but audibly) Try my fudge. It's better than child slavery!

Since I've moved to the UK, I have been away from home for more days than I have been at home, and I have been lax about cooking. As evidence, I offer a single fact. After I had boiled the rice and chopped all the other ingredients, I opened my cupboard and failed to find soy sauce. Had I been home for more extended periods of time or had I been more inclined to cook during my brief stays here, this could never have happened. And the grocery store closes at 5 on a Sunday. What's a girl to do? Go to the 24 hour Corner Store, which purveys all manor of ingredients one might need on short notice as well as providing a hang out for the male family members of the Pakistani (?) guy who (I assume) owns the place. Him ->"Soy sauce. This is for making Sushi?" Me -> "Sort of. Stir fry." Him -> "That's the opposite of Sushi! With cooked food it makes sense. But even the Sushi places give the little packets of soy sauce." Me -> "We...

On the flight from London to Sao Paulo, they served yogurt for breakfast. I looked at the expiration date and read 02 Jul 17. That's some seriously long-life yogurt. Actually, upon second reading, it was 02 Jul T7. Whatever T7 means. I ate the yogurt and I feel fine.

Preface: I am currently working from my old office. Because I have no real US address anymore, I asked the British visa processing center to return my passport and visa to my relatives address. For the last week and a half, I've been answering the questions "Why are you still here?", "Didn't you leave?", and "How's the UK?" every time I turn a corner at the office. I've been fantasizing about my big UK apartment and the convenience of paying my rent with pounds paid to me directly instead of transferred from the US. So, you can imagine my excitement when I spoke to my aunt yesterday and she told me she had a package for me of unknown origins. Providentially, I already had plans to meet the relatives for dinner. (You can't get good hot wings in the UK, so I'm eating as many as I can before I go.) I ripped open my UPS package and dug out my passport from beneath a stack of returned original bank statements and pay stubs. There i...

Those who know me know that my general level of fitness is about the same as that of moss. I consider eating fast to be an athletic activity. Therefore, do not be shocked, dear readers, to learn that while in Phoenix last week, I bought myself a pair of athletic pants. Athletic clothes come in all sorts of moisture wicking fabrics, temperature comfort levels, sports categories, and - I expect this applies to women's clothing more than men's - gradations of support and coverage. All these things are lost on someone who has avoided gyms for years because you simply can not be comfortable there in jeans and a sweater. Without the necessary background, I fell back on my somewhat more extensive knowledge of fashion and economics; I bought something with a recognizable logo from the half price rack. These blue pants with yellow stripes had their public debut yesterday. Granted, it was only because everything else was dirty and I needed to wear something to the hotel laundry ro...

Packaged snacks could destroy Australia. This had never occurred to me until I arrived at the Sydney airport this morning. After queuing to get a stamp in my passport, I mobbed with all the other recent arrivals into the baggage claim hall and then after that the Quarantine hall. Notice I do not refer to this as Customs. Other countries refer to this as Customs, a process whereby officials can search your bags and charge an extra custom if they find excessive amounts of alcohol, cigarettes or foreign currency. The proper disposal or declaration of fresh fruit, raw meat and soil specimens is a secondary purpose. In Sydney, these things are reversed. The predominant goal of Quarantine officials is to make sure that nothing potentially hazardous makes it into Australia. And by hazardous, I mean not only obvious things like animals, bushes, and mexican jumping beans but also food of any kind. Like trail mix. The Quarantine offensive begins on the plane. There is a special video whi...

This link is dedicated to those of you who think that British cooking is boring - or that there's a better way to defend your bird feeder. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/07/style/07squirrel.php