A Tour of Recent Foods
Our posts about the weird food we encounter here in the UK always seem to be a big hit, so we figured we would update you on a few more things we’ve eaten recently.
Wendy’s showing off a little piece of Hello Panda (distant relative of Hello Kitty, apparently) candy that we got at Manchester’s Chinese New Year celebration a while back. They were little cookies/biscuits filled with strawberry goo and featured little cartoon pandas on the outside - this was probably the high point of the stuff we got in Chinatown.
One of the other things we decided to take a chance on was Mochi, a Chinese rice-ball treat that’s marketed as a dessert but can contain fillings that include everything from green tea paste to sweet potatoes to red beans to sesame seeds to peanut butter to fruit fillings. There was a lot of variety, and most of it was weird - the texture of the things was the most bizarre: imagine biting into a jellyfish that has goo on the inside, and you’ve probably got the idea.
Now this is more like it: Wendy’s incredibly delicious homemade soup and rolls. Meals like this are how we made it through the cold winter… mmmmm.
I know I’ve complained before about what the Brits say passes for “bacon”, but here is visual evidence. This is what I got when I ordered a bacon and egg sandwich at the John Rylands Library cafe: floppy lukewarm ham over cold sliced hardboiled egg pieces. This photo probably looks better than it tasted, because it tasted awful.
From the department of weird chip flavours that are actually quite tasty: Bloody Mary chips! These were pretty darn good, though I didn’t think they tasted like a bloody mary. Our friends Katherine and Grant disagreed, though - they thought the flavor was pretty close, but it could pass for something like “sundried tomato” in a pinch.
We found a few interesting things at the Chinese Wholesale grocery store down the street recently. Anyone care for a Crusty Bun from Ho’s Bakery? (stifling childish laughter).
We found this in the back part of the store which was basically like a Chinese Sam’s Club, with huge portions of everything. I don’t even know what “condiment essence” is, but it sounds scary. Why does it say “corrosive”?!?! Is this why my stomach hurts after I eat Chinese food?
Yesterday our friends Rose and Josh Thorp invited us over for lunch and made us a traditional English dish - Toad in the Hole, which is a pan of sausages in a layer of Yorkshire pudding. This definitely wins the award for “British dish that sounds the worst but tastes surprisingly good” as it was quite tasty - Rose was even sweet enough to make a vegetarian version for Wendy.
