Tuesday 29 November 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

I was rather sad to not be celebrating Thanksgiving with my family for the first time in my life. But my lovely new foreign friends were all on board with tackling a turkey and giving me a proper Thanksgiving meal.
 
Pie making!

The first step for me was to learn how to make apple pie from scratch, and I conveniently was able to use my colleagues as guinea pigs. We have a monthly bake off contest for team meetings. One person brings in a cake each month, and it was my turn in November. I requested special permission to bring in a pie as I had to be sure they wouldn't deduct points because it wasn't a cake! We score everyone's culinary contributions 1-10 and keep a running tally of who is winning the bake off. Happy to report that my pies brought me into 1st place! Competition isn't over yet... and I'm not sure we "win" anything other than bragging rights, but its all good fun nonetheless.

After having lasagne in our cafeteria for lunch on actual Thanksgiving, I was ready for the real deal by Friday evening for our planned meal.


Pick me!
 I came up with a menu with some help of my friend Rachel Ray (in case you don't know her, she's a chef famous for making things "easy peasey"!) as well as my grandmother's emails. We took a field trip to buy "Bob" the bird at Sainsbury's on Tuesday, along with all the other fixings we needed.

The meal was prepared at the house of a few co-workers, and thankfully one of them worked from home to do all the prep work during the day. It was a good thing, because our turkey was still slightly frozen in the morning when I popped by.  Not to worry though, all was well by cooking time.
  
We were a bit stressed, but we made it through the cooking process in a small kitchen, with tons of people milling around and Bob the bird was cooked perfectly in the end.
Ready to baste!
Bob came out perfect...

Frenchman vs. Turkey
The finished product
I celebrated my Thanksgiving with 5 Italians, 2 English, 3 Frenchmen, 1 Turkish girl + me the American. Everyone said what they were thankful for and of course, I was thankful I had made some fabulous new friends these past few months!

A success all around. Yet, I'm still thankful that my next turkey will be made by Grandma at Christmas in Chicago. I think once a year is enough for me!


Thursday 24 November 2011

A Very Hardy Groupon Deal

I couldn't resist... Today's national Groupon deal is for Ed Hardy Core t-shirts, available in 13 tattoo inspired styles for men and women. Normally priced at £90 each you can grab them at a steal, £25 a pop. It's a shame I saw this too late in the daily countdown. I could have stocked up for you all.



***For those taking notes, the appropriate name for the clubbing Ed Hardy t-shirt wearers in England is "Chavs". They are much the same as those that might wear the Hardy Core apparel in the USA... same idea, different accent.

Thursday 17 November 2011

Yorkshire Pudding

I don't understand Yorkshire Pudding. Let me explain...

Yorkshire Pudding is cooked by pouring a thin batter made from milk (or water), flour and eggs into oiled then preheated baking pans or muffin tins.


Yorkshire Puddings are a staple of British cuisine and are found frozen in the grocery store and on platters of food at the pub.

But why is it called Pudding? It’s a tall (no less than 4 inches tall), fluffy, yet rather thick and hearty pastry that’s cooked in a muffin tin so it always is the shape of a cup or a bowl with a hallow middle, but you don’t but put anything inside the middle space, so why is it shaped like a bowl? Why not fill the batter in completely and have it be a regular biscuit shape?

The name… Yorkshire. This I understand as self-explanatory, it is from Yorkshire. Pudding… this is a mystery. The Brits often refer to Dessert as Pudding. If you see “Puddings” on the menu, it doesn’t mean what Americans would think of like Jell-o pudding snacks. The term Pudding encompasses all Dessert type foods including a mousse, which is rather pudding like, or a cake, a gelato, a brownie etc….

So… why do they call this bowl shaped biscuit served with the traditional Sunday roast lunch a “Pudding”?

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Brussels, Brugge and Amsterdam

 

A few weeks ago, I met up with my friend Amanda from Chicago along with her mother and grandmother in Belgium. They were kind enough to let me join them for a few days of their Eurotrip and it was good to see some familiar faces. My housemate even remarked that my accent had gotten stronger after spending 3 days with Chicagoans!

I left my place at 5am, hopped a train to London, transferred to the Eurostar for a 2 hour train ride over land and under the sea to Brusssels to meet them arriving from Paris. It was my first time in the Chunnel and I barely even noticed we were underground. The train moved so fast your ears pop and then before you know it you're back in the daylight and you're in France.



  We wasted no time and were on a city tour of Brussels and saw a chocolate making demonstration that afternoon. That night we had an amazing meal, enjoyed some mussles in Brussels (ok, I just tried 2), drank some Belgian beers and bought lots of Belgian chocolates.

 


The next day we were off early to take a train to Amsterdam for the day. We took the hop on, hop off canal boat, which was a bust, because we got on the wrong line and had to wait around for a long time to get to where we wanted. We saw most of Amsterdam by boat, nonetheless.


Amanda and I headed along the canaled streets to the Anne Frank House & Museum for the afternoon. Being a rainy Wednesday in October we were happy the line wasn't too long as I'd heard some stories about waiting for multiple hours to get in the house.  I have always wanted to see Anne's home and with only a few hours on my first trip to Amsterdam, I was happy we were able to squeeze this in!


I've read Anne Frank's Diary at least twice but it's been years... it all came back to me rather quickly. The house is empty of furniture, the Nazis took all of the belongings.  Otto, Anne's father and the sole survivor, wanted it to stay empty, although at one point they did re-create the furnishings with Otto's detailed descriptions and direction. So they now have models and photographs of the secret annex furnished just the way it was when they were living there that you can look at while making your way through the empty rooms.



After navigating through the front of the building where Otto Frank's business had been run, you can climb a ladder like staircase and then it's there. The bookcase concealed entrance to the secret annex. They've posted this quote on the wall next to it:

Now our Secret Annex has truly become secret.  Mr. Kugler thought it would be better to have a bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place.  Now whenever we want to go downstairs we have to duck and then jump.
Anne Frank, August 21, 1942

It was reading that quote that gave me the chills... Reading those words and seeing the threshold to the annex, I was rather overwhelmed comprehending how she had to duck and jump out of the annex, through the door in front of me. I ducked and climbed up through the narrow entrance. The step behind the bookcase is about a foot and a half up, and the opening no more than 5 ft high. Knowing she had passed through this, and seeing her words describe it, was my first taste of that diary coming to life.


Inside, you walk into the empty living area with kitchen with a sink and small stove. This is where they congregated and passed most of their days and the Van Pels slept at night. On the walls, the original wallpaper throughout the house had to be redone in the same print due to deterioration, but they have preserved the original in some places. You can see the pencil markings measuring Anne and Margot's height on the wall and the map of Normandy where Otto tracked the movement of the alliance. In Anne's room, they've preserved the majority of the walls behind glass where Anne had posted some postcards to liven the dreary space.

Our little room looked very bare at first with nothing on the walls, but thanks to Daddy who had brought my film-star collection and picture postcards on beforehand, and with the aid of a paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into on gigantic picture.  This makes it look much more cheerful.
Ann Frank, July 11, 1942

Overall, it was amazing to see this place. I wished I could have been there without the crowds, but ultimately, the more people that see these historical locations and remember what happened to so many innocent lives, the better.

After Anne Frank's house we took off to the center of the city and did some souvenir shopping and ended the day with a walk back towards the train station through the Red Light district area... yup, everything you've heard is true.














The final day, we took a tour to Ghent and Brugge north of Brussels. Ghent is a sleepy yet quaint town, and Brugge has beautiful canals, lots of horse drawn carriages and a large square that was made much more lively with the hundreds of British Birmingham football fans having a rowdy rally in preparation for the Brugge vs. Birmingham football game that night.

 

We took a boat tour on the canal and saw the rest of the city with a very entertaining boat driver. I'll have to check out the movie "In Brugge", with all the places they filmed pointed out to us throughout the day...



It was a whirlwind 3 days but I was so happy to see a friend from home and go to 3 places I've never been. A few checks off my bucket list!