Oh, just Brit stuffs…
Welp, they do one of these articles about once a year. I know, because I always steal it to post: silliest placenames in Britain. Enjoy!
Food question
I refuse to believe there’s any part of a pig a Tennesseean doesn’t eat, so I suspect what we have here is a failure to communicate. On the menu this week at Badger Manor is gammon or boiled bacon. The internet tells me “Gammon is the leg from a side of a pig which has been cured. Ham is the leg which has been removed and cured separately.”
The internet also tells me “Gammon has been cured in the same way as bacon whereas ham has been dry-cured or cooked.” But, since British bacon bears little resemblance to the good American stuff of that name, I don’t think this is likely to be helpful.
So, the question is, what is this cut called in the US, and how do we usually cook it?
Also served with
The Brit version is, indeed, boiled (or pressure cooked, in our case) and is often served with pease pudding.
Not to be confused with mushy peas, often served with fish’n’chips. I like pease pudding and mushy peas just fine. They sit comfortably in the mashed potato slot.
When Uncle B asked me if we had pease pudding in the colonies, I said we have the rhyme, “pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine days old,” but really no fucking idea what pease pudding (or porridge) might be.
Does that tally with your experience?
Thanks for the memories
Last two Christmases, we were treated to a dead rat under the master bedroom floor. Or a dead something, anyway. As the floor is made of gigantic Tudor oak planks spiked into the support beams, there’s no chance of getting them up and extricating the corpse. (Some nights I lie awake and imagine the ancient rat boneyard directly under me).
We didn’t get one for Christmas this year. Looks like we’re getting one for Easter instead. Um, yay? My sense of smell is very poor, so I don’t suffer that much. But Uncle B sleeps in agony for the weeks until the smell goes away completely.
Spare his poor nose a thought this weekend. And have a good one your good selves! We saw the first lambs of Spring this week…
March 4, 2016 — 7:39 pm
Comments: 31
This important news from Great Britain
Beginning tomorrow, supermarket giant Tesco will cease to sell curved croissants in favor of straight ones, on account of Britons are too retarded to put butter on non-rectilinear objects. Or something.
I think Trading Standards should make Tesco sell them as “straights”, since the crescent shape is integral. Legend has it, they were invented in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Turks in the Siege of Vienna, the crescent shape in imitation of the Turkish flag.
Hm. Perhaps this is a sop to our Muslim friends. Or maybe — just maybe — it’s more efficient to make straight pasteries than curved ones, on an industrial scale.
Why we butter them at all is a mystery. Have you ever seen croissants being made commercially? There’s more butter than flour!
February 18, 2016 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 17
Yes, thanks
Shrove Tuesday — wot today is — is known as Pancake Day here in Jollye Olde. They make pancakes, traditionally, to use up flour and eggs before Lent.
Which makes no damn sense, if you ask me. Flour keeps forever (if it’s dry) and eggs is laid by chickens, who will presumably continue to do so despite anyone’s position in the liturgical calendar.
Anyway, you don’t see them eating pancakes here so much as running races where everyone dashes down the high street flipping one in a pan. And they aren’t pancakes, they’re crêpes.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a nice crêpe, except if a certain hypothetical weasel went into a Little Chef and ordered pancakes expecting to get the IHOP Big Breakfast. That was a sad, sad hypothetical weasel.
The English also traditionally had enormous football matches on Pancake Day, ruleless affairs in which the flower of each little town’s manhood turn up to kick the shit out of each other while a football looks on helplessly. A few towns maintain the tradition.
If you’re interested, Brit papers are full of pancake articles today, most of them illustrated by photos of American-style flapjacks oozing maple syrup. Which made Uncle B cross. Teehee.
NB: Zsa Zsa is spending her 99th birthday in the hospital. Is another longstanding Dead Pool favorite about to fall? Don’t count on it; that is one tough old broad.
February 9, 2016 — 9:07 pm
Comments: 16
These pretty little things
I don’t know how I wasn’t aware of these when I was in the States (they’re originally South American, after all) but I love them. Physalis. AKA uchuva, Cape gooseberry, Inca berry, Aztec berry, golden berry, giant ground cherry, African ground cherry, Peruvian ground cherry, Peruvian cherry, amour en cage (love in a cage, which is rather wonderful). Little sweet and tart orange fruits in a sweet little paper lantern.
Seeing as I was so fond of them (and they are so expensive), Uncle B reckoned he could grow me some. And so he did. Aren’t these awesome? Do check them out in color.
See? There are advantages to being a gardener’s moll.
Good weekend, everyone!
October 16, 2015 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 13
Mmmm…chemicals!
This ugly hobgoblin floated up in my FaceBook feed today. Not horrified yet? He comes with an earworm. (I swear that video gets more pixelated every time I see it. By next time, it’ll be downright cubist).
I listened to this stupid jingle all my life, but my version doesn’t include Mr Odom’s formula. That one predates me and you can tell it’s Fifties because they’re bragging about putting mystery chemicals in your food.
“We add a dash of X, and a pinch of Z, and for flavor and taste we add Y-9D!”
I wonder if there ever really was a Y-9D?
Anyway, I miss country sausage. There’s nothing really special about it, it’s just very peppery sausage patties, but ubiquitous where I grew up. The nearest it got to nationwide was Jimmy Dean’s Pork Sausage, which was a pretty adequate country sausage. Not like the homemade stuff, but not bad.
Bangers and mash tonight. Okay, bangers and fried potatoes, but close enough.
October 15, 2015 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 14
Food always looks so awful in black and white
I bought myself one of these last week. It’s a small plastic rice smusher which, like all silly and fun kitchen gadgets, cost me stupid money. I love it.
I squished the rice a little too forcefully and my, er, rice cubes were a bit hard. But if you don’t, they go to bits in the soy sauce.
Need more practice.
Oh, the ones in the back are smoked salmon and cream cheese. The ones in the front (with the turd-like inclusionis) are tuna and pickle. Thus proving I really don’t ‘get’ sushi.
October 1, 2015 — 10:30 pm
Comments: 11
Bad things happen when you fall asleep in public
I didn’t sleep well last night, for some unknown reason. So, while Uncle B went into Tesco’s for a few things, I decided to snooze in the car.
Bad idea. Left on his own to shop, Uncle B bought me a treat. Or, rather, a ‘treat.’ Viz., a box of Twinkies. Taste of home and all that.
I gather the cashier hadn’t seen such a thing before, and she and Uncle B took turns poking it with a stick.
And no wonder — look at the ingredients. All the things marked with an asterisk are genetically modified. I count six. Now, I’m not constitutionally averse to GMO’s, but I have to wonder why anyone would need to tinker with the genetic code for glucose syrup.
Tasted nasty. More that the texture was nasty. Kind of excessively springy. And either I’ve grown to gigantic proportions, or these things are about a third the size they used to be.
But I’m sure…I’m sure if they made Suzy Q‘s again, they’d be just how I remember.
September 15, 2015 — 8:46 pm
Comments: 25
Seven years later…
These are cobnuts. They are a variety of hazelnuts (or filberts, if you prefer). They aren’t dried, though — they’re served wet in their little wrappers, so they’re only available from about August to October.
Love me some cobnuts. Uncle B planted a cobnut tree not long after we moved in. It’s grown into a lovely, full, bushy thing. Healthy? Fer sure. Productive? Not so much.
This is our entire cobnut crop for 2015.
September 2, 2015 — 9:29 pm
Comments: 10
Fish ‘n’ samphire
Ambling down the high street today, I noticed samphire for sale at the fruiterer. Samphire is only around for about a month (and it has no shelf life at all), so gather ye samphire while ye may.
It’s not actually seaweed, though it looks it. It grows wild in the marshes near the sea and it is salty as a bastard. I’m sure it has all kinds of interesting minerals and shit, but mostly it’s nice with things that need lots of salt, like fresh fish and new potatoes. It’s become something of a trendy veg, but I like it anyway.
This ugly bastard is a European plaice. It’s the local flounder and nearby Rye Bay is famous for being stuffed full of them. It’s deelicious.
Fun fact: flat fish are born with eyes on either side of their heads like normal fish. Then, as they mature, the fish flops on one side and the back eye takes a mystical journey through the fish’s head and pops out on top. No wonder he’s making that face.
There’s a fish shop not far away, by the water. Once a day, a Rye registered fishing boat pulls up and offloads its catch, including loads of plaice. Often the poor bastards are still dreaming of the sea floor. I had him filleted though, so this guy isn’t dreaming of anything any more, guaranteed.
It’s plaice and samphire for this little mustelid tonight. I don’t usually blog my supper, but I thought this was local enough to be interesting.
August 13, 2015 — 8:43 pm
Comments: 12
No time to explain. Cupcakes.
So this is a picture of cupcakes I stole off the internet.
Our village fête is this weekend, and we always contribute cupcakes. It’s a joint effort. Uncle B is a better baker than I am, but cupcakes are my native cuisine. It’s always *much* more drama than expected and we usually find ourselves frosting the little bastards in the wee small hours.
They don’t end up looking like this.
The first year, it was three in the morning when we made up the buttercreme and I’d had a snootful of spiritous liquors and I slipped with the food coloring, making three dozen cupcakes of such toxic pinkness I have never yet lived it down.
In my defense, we sold out of them.
So, anyway…gotta run. Timer just went.
August 6, 2015 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 5