As you can see, I've fallen behind in my posts. I'm enjoying my husband and a semblance of a personal life! As promised, here are more pictures from our trip to see the fam in Scarborough.
Here's Mark's grandmother, who is more than 90 years old, and his aunt Margaret.
We were on the way to eating fish and chips at Mark's 2nd cousin Elaine's restaurant. By the way, I like haddock more than cod! Fish and chips are great, and especially good with lemon malt vinegar. They are also possible the best thing about English cuisine, with Yorkshire pudding as a close runner up.
In 6 days, I learned more about the food terminology differences between England and the States. I thought I was safe, having left France, in knowing what I was eating since everything is written in English, but alas no. Chips are what we call fries. Not a big deal. However pudding isn't pudding at all. Pudding is a generic term for dessert, like how we say Kleenex even when it's Puffs. So pudding just means some sort of dessert. You find it on menus everywhere, however the exception to the rule is Yorkshire pudding, which is actually just a type of bread roll that you eat, slathered in gravy. So, trying to explain what we call pudding to Aunt Margaret was pretty funny. Mousse as close as we got to describing American pudding. Bacon is actually our ham, which isn't upsetting at all until you see the term bacon cheeseburger. I can't imagine eating a cheeseburger with a slab of ham on top of it! Sounds like a Carl's Jr. hamburger creation here to me. Meat on meat crime. Also, lemonade everywhere else in the world is generally Sprite. Lemonade is called Citron Presse in France, and it's just straight fresh lemon juice and not nearly enough space to put enough water or sugar to make it taste like what we call lemonade. Me and my friend found it once in France and then had to get a 2nd set of glasses and water and sugar to make properly sweet lemonade. The waiter thought it was funny.
English food, on the whole, is not as bad as people have described it to be. It isn't actually bad at all, but pretty basic and unsophisticated. It's all stuff we eat here in the States when we are in elementary school in the cafeteria. Orange Squash is like Tang, and adults voluntarily drink it in restaurants. Lots of dishes are mashed potatoes and ground beef and cut up carrots and peas. I'm not doing a very good job of describing it, but believe me, all the food we feed little kids in America (or anyone in jail or any type of institution) is similar to what you find at most pubs! After France, it was a welcome break, though. How much steak can one person eat. France is the highest of high and not much middle. I couldn't find chicken in a restaurant there to save my life. It's considered to low and basic to serve at a restaurant, at least in the regions I visited and everything was beef, seafood and ham. England is the exact opposite of the culinary scale.
After months of cold breakfast (with NO meat) consisting of yogurt, cereal, croissants, baguettes w/jelly and butter and a cup of something hot, I was SO looking forward to the English breakfast. That is, until I got to see what English breakfast actually is. They take it to the other extreme. France is so fussy sophisticated and it's all this cold spread, whereas England is all about meat and fried items. At our bed and breakfast, we had fried bacon (which was really our ham), fried eggs, a cooked tomato, fried mushrooms, pork and beans, a hot dog and fried bread (don't even ask me about that - I told you little kid food, or more accurately US Southern comfort food for kids).
On that note, I LOVED the desserts best. The puddings were always like some dessert from the South, from whence my parents hail, and way more varied than France. In France, you could go to a pastry shop and get a bazillion types of desserts, but in a restaurants, you'll see the same 10 hanging around. Timamisu, poire helene, dame blanche, ice creams, creme brulee, yaddah yaddah. In England, there was much more variety, and more leaning towards warm desserts. I got bread pudding once and then steamed lemon cake with lemon sauce on top AND ice cream (or a choice of custard). I can't remember the last thing I got, but it was never the same thing twice.
Did I mention how disgusting lemon meringue pie is in France? We got it twice and it's the most vile version I've ever tasted. I, the lemon queen on the world who can and will suck on a raw lemon, couldn't stomach the lemon meringue which seemed to have actual lemon peel grated into it. So it was the tartest, most bitter, green tasting concoction. Also, it wasn't all silky and gelatin. It was lumpy (at 2 different restaurants). And the meringue on top wasn't the same, although it wasn't particular gross, just different.
I didn't get the best impression of English culture, now that I mention it. We in the States think that everything English is classy and prissy and definitely above America. But I was shocked and horrified to find a couple things to refute that generalization that we are the trashy Beverly Hillbilly cousins we thought we were. Example #1: public drinking. Allowing people to drink on public transportation isn't the best of ideas. Whereas in France, people drink wine all the time, but are rarely drunk or disorderly, the English respond to alcohol the same way we do: badly. So on two of our train trips, unfortunately on a holiday weekend as well, we encountered two separate groups of drunken blokes who were loud and disorderly. The first group consisted of 20 yr old, blue collar thickheads who thought the whole train belonged to them, talked at top volume, traveled in herds - there were at least 7 of them and sexually harassed the ticket lady repeatedly.
The second group was a bunch of about 10 30-40 year olds. They weren't any better. Their conversation was just as profanity-laced, slightly less idiotic, still at top volume. And they played some games where they'd all scream and ooh and aah as if they were at a cricket match. Not a good representation. We even saw some misbehaving toddlers. It didn't look good. I think England has a big, big gap between the haves and the have nots. And we only meet the haves and they are clean and neat and mannerly. But their have nots give our average people a run for their money any day. Just my opinion after a week - not rocket science, but it sure seemed that way.
Back to France and french food again - we met a couple from Texas who were the stereotypical idea of what you'd think American Texans were. And they'd just come from the horror of being laughed at and toyed with by a mean French waiter. They somehow ordered steak tartare, which is raw hamburger shaped like a donut and a quail egg is placed in the indentation on the top. When they didn't know what it was and asked the waiter why they were being given raw beef, he laughed his head off. They paid and got out of there and were frightened and stressed out by the time we encountered them on the train to the airport. Eating in France can be dangerous to one's sanity if you don't know the vocab, and it's REALLY specific vocabulary. Whereas in English, we use a noun and just add adjectives to change it, in France they like to use TOTALLY DIFFERENT WORDS. So when I told a front desk lady that I wanted to get to the city to take pictures while it was still light outside, I didn't realize that what I actually said was that I wanted to get to the city to take pictures while there was still lamplight, or electric light. Sunlight is totally not related to indoor light. They have 2 totally different words and she didn't get it for a second and then informed me that lumiere is strictly used to indicate artificial light and soleil is sunlight. Period. So apply that type of logic to food and you'll see why having a really big GENERAL vocabulary doesn't help you a smidge in a french restaurant where you'd have to know that a poire helene is an ice-cream dish with a pear, or what a dame blanche is. All their dessert names are proprietary, proper-noun-having names, nothing generic or descriptive at all. So after blowing your 3 questions with the waiter, if you haven't gotten around to dessert, it's plain old ice cream or creme brulee.
More pics:
Me, freezing my butt of happily, in a park on the cliff above the beach and a place called the Spa.
Mark and his grandmother
Me and his Great-Aunt Ivy
