Across and Inside my Universe

Seeking British Food for our Olympic Opening Ceremonies Party

By party, I mean the three of us celebrate.  No one ever comes to anything we invite them to, except a scattering to birthday parties, except now those are held at the in-laws' houses.

So, we have made our own traditions for the three of us, and one of them is that whenever the Olympics come 'round, we either do a meal of just appetizers for the Opening Ceremonies, or we try to do native cuisine from that country.

We kind of put things off until the last minute this year, so tonight I did a search for British Import food shops, and found one surprisingly close to us!  It's actually South African, with some British stuff and several British or British-influenced menu items.

It's called Souties, and when I looked up the definition, I was a bit startled.  I'd never use the term, except of course as the title of this "hole in the wall" tiny menu'd charming, quaint restaurant/shop.

We actually didn't order any fish & chips; from the reviews in the Souties link above, apparently they are to die for!  We'll have to go back sometime.  The menu prices are also outstanding!

We did not get any spotted dick.  What we DID get:   Cadbury Flake, Nestle Aero, Nuttikrust Caramelised Oat Biscuits, Bakers Romany Creams - Crunchy Choc Coconut Biscuits, Fry's Turkish Delight, Bangers, two Cornish Pasty's and three Sausage Rolls.

We'll be having Bangers & Mash tomorrow, and Fish & Chips too (well, Opening Ceremonies are long!).  It won't be the healthiest supper and dinner ever, but it's a party!

We tried a Flake at the store while waiting for our freshly prepared scones.  It was good, and a texture like no other chocolate treat in the USA.  When our scones were ready, ooooh so luscious looking!   We took them out to the car and ate them.  My first bite:  Heaven!  Melt in your mouth, somewhere between a tender tender american biscuit and an american scone in texture; it was fantastic!  Halved, buttered, jammed, and topped with cream (possibly lightly sweetened, much lighter than Americans do).  Oh these were heavenly!  We had to wait while they whipped us up some cream, fresh!  We'll definitely be going back for these, from time to time!  There's only one halved scone pictured because my husband was driving and couldn't eat them until we got home.

If you haven't had a real, fresh English scone topped with fresh cream, you need to try it!

We'll also be drinking warm soda (the British do not put ice in their soda, it's served from the tap or a non-refrigerated bottle etc.) and putting malt vinegar on our fish & chips.  I've read that the British don't do tartar sauce, although apparently Souties offers it (a nice version with no pickle relish, perhaps the South Africans do tarter sauce).

However, I don't know which Bangers & Mash recipe to try, there's endless versions!  Guess I'll just pick one.

I may try a Yorkshire pudding recipe from scratch, before the Olympics are over.  Now to eat our Cornish pasties and sausage rolls tonight, with some fresh steamed broccoli on the side!  Hail, Brittania!

This n' That 6/30/12

Upon looking through a family Scottish cookbook, my daughter was reading out loud about Haggis.  I asked her, what does it say about it?  She said, "Haggis is a mixture of . . .EWWWWW!" and she backed away, as we all cracked up laughing for the next 5 minutes.

Apparently Haggis is a mixture of ewww.  I'd agree with that!

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After more than a week of no progress on the bedroom cleanout/organize project, I've made a leap or two forward by getting the area in front of the closet cleaned out.  SIX bags of stuff to go to the thrift store (toys, clothes, fabric) and four bags of garbage.  How did all that stuff fit there?  There'll actually be another bag for the thrift store after we finish washing the rest of the clothes to donate.

Progress is great!  Makes me feel good.

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We're trying to plan our Olympic meal/party for the opening ceremonies coming up.  We usually do a meal of a variety of appetizers, but this time we want British stuff, for at least part of it.  Fish and chips are the first thing on my daughter's list, and that sounds great to me too.

When I mention "spotted dick" to her, she screws up her face, says "ewww", and swiftly goes elsewhere.  I think she thinks I'm saying something different than what I think I'm saying.  It's a spongy sort of cake fingerish sort of thing, with currants in it I think for the spots.  So it's a wierd variation of a Twinkie, basically.

I just say it to tease her, though! 

I need some ideas for London food!  Welsh Rarebit is cheese on toast/bread.  I think.  I always thought it was a roasted rabbit when I was little.

See, I have Scottish, Britsh, Welsh, and maybe some Irish heritage too.  My maiden name is from a Welsh ancestor; means stone mason.  Which, funnily enough, my ancestors were, all the way down to my grandfather.

Oh, my married name, tradition has it, came from Ireland with a Mc in front of it.  Still not the easiest name to have, but I guess it makes sense.  So there's me some Irish (and Dutch Royalty too; if you go to St. Thomas or St. Croix, there's a Rum/sugar plantation and castle that's ours.  I mean, our Dutch Royal ancestors.)

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My therapist is back!  It was hard to prioritize what to talk about, and in fact it wasn't until a day after therapy this week that I remembered some of the important stuff I'd been going to talk about, and forgot.  I did pretty well though with what I did remember.

I'd been getting rather piled on by a variety of stuff, including one SIL who says I have a heart of gold but she doesn't want to be friends with me.  That was painful, but we're hammering out how we're going to relate to each other in the future. 

Part of me wonders, however, if I have a heart of gold, what's so bad about me that it drowns out the heart of gold?  But that's personalising; her choice is about her and what she wants in her life, and doesn't want.  It's hard to not take that personally, though.  It's sort of freeing to not be stuck in hurt at why she seemed to not give a fig about me; I can move on, now.

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A pet peeve of mine about blogs with alot of pictures, especially food and craft blogs; don't take 6 pictures from a zillion angles of your dish, cookie, necklace, scarf, whatever and post them ALL.  Really, one (or at most, 2, if one is a closeup or something) will do.  I know you're in love with how it turned out, and how well it photographed, but get over it.  Please.

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I tried a macaroni and cheese in a mug recipe that's popular on Pinterest.

Don't do it.  It sucks.

However, an Eggnog Pound Cake recipe I tried from Pinterest last Christmas, is now my preferred way to consume egg nog.  8^D 

Man, now I want egg nog, and it'll be months and months before it's available!

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Quote from Utah Governor yesterday, in regards to all the people rubber-necking the wildfires up by Herriman (and elsewhere in the state, like, 360,000 acres) and who are getting in the way of fire people getting to the fires:  "You can't outlaw stupid!"

You can possibly try, but you'll never get rid of it.

This 'N That June 18 2012

I'm going to from time to time do some posts that collect a scattering of thoughts, links, things I'm currently working on, anything that strikes my fancy that week, etc.  These won't be that often; maybe twice a month, sometimes, maybe every other month, other times.

I'll start with Zendala Challenge #9 at Bright Owl's blog; it became a chore after awhile, repeating the patterns over and over; Challenge #10 has even more sections to repeat, although I could alternate, I suppose . . . or I could do it the Zentangle© way, and not worry about how it looks at all.

That doesn't seem to fit the way these challenges are done, however, but it's up to me.

I used patterns of my own devising here; Nestabol, Quirk, and Fandana.  Those names don't seem to be used at Tanglepatterns.com, but I have no idea if they are too similar to tangles already in existence.

Patterns for these will be at the bottom of this post.

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My therapist is gone for a couple of weeks.  Can I go without therapy for a period of time?  Yes.  Am I feeling particularly fragile, volatile, and unstable right now?  Yes.  I'll get through it, though.

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New to me -  I never knew there was such a thing as a pretzel cone . . . nor cookie cones, either.  Think of the salty crunchy goodness combined with sweet, creamy ice cream . . . . mmmm.

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My favorite DQ Blizzard is Chocolate Covered Strawberry.  Although when DQ barely mixes the Blizzards, it drives me nuts . . .

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My bedroom cleaning/organizing project has stalled.  Time to figure out what to do next.

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My Tangle Patterns:

Fandana - the name, well, is probably obvious why.

Nestabol - same thing.  Try this one with wider bowls, with shallower bowls, or both.

Snake this around all over.  Or make it really skinny and tiny as in my Zendala Challenge #8 up above.

Quirk, well, my example isn't the best, but in the cluster of them, you can see some less wonky ones.

You can do a variety of variations of this one!

Zendallion - I was playing around with Z's and came up with this.  You need to be fairly precise, though.  It's ripe for embellishment!  Oh, I messed up the second step and did it in black; see the red line next to the black one, that indicates the second step (one line only, not double).  And woops the first step is missing.  I think you can see it though in step 2.

Happy tangling, fellow tanglers!  I'd be happy to see what any of you do with these.