Foods from the olde country

[JudyJB]

I have a couple of questions for Steve and Jackie, and maybe some of the rest of you might be interested in their answer or want to give an answer about yourself if you bounce around the country or the world, as they do.

1. When you come here from Scotland, are there any foods or condiments or anything that you always bring with you because you will miss it while you are gone? (For example, when I go back to the Detroit area where I grew up and lived for my entire life, I stock up on Awrey's Long John Coffee Cake and fresh kielbasa. When I am away from Michigan, I miss the ethnic food that I cannot get in the rest of the country, like good Middleeastern stuff.)
2. When you go back home from the U.S., what U.S. things do you take back with you?

This a question that could apply to anyone who grew up somewhere and is now away from it while traveling or maybe just because you moved away.

 

[jackiemac]

Judy

We don't bring or take any food in either direction apart from anything we might buy at the airport.

I know some golks do bring things @TonyL Brings tea bags and curry powder i think.


We do miss some foods like haggis, black pudding and sausages from our local butcher and bread rolls (totally different from anything here - most breads here are sweet yuk).

We do miss American bacon when home. Ours is very thin.

We will take back a few souvenirs and those tend to be art - prints, metalwork, jewellery, or books. I try to only buy things actually made in America or Mexico.

I se many, many things I'd love to buy, but some very large or heavy and/or expensive. Right now we'd rather use the money to keep on travelling and having great experiences. I have thought about getting an extra suitcase- maybe one day.

Interesting question.

I know you bought loads in the UK - what??

 

[Tom]

I have a couple of questions for Steve and Jackie, and maybe some of the rest of you might be interested in their answer or want to give an answer...
This a question that could apply to anyone who grew up somewhere and is now away from it while traveling or maybe just because you moved away.

A different part of the UK, but we used to bring UK tea bags, until Chris was eventually weened off them. Malt vinegar was one thing we'd bring, until they eventually started selling it in supermarkets here. Still a big 'miss' for me is laverbred (a form of seaweed harvested on the South Wales coast); Best I've been able to do is bring cans of it when someone travels to/from the UK, but it's not the same as the "fresh" stuff. Laverbred is accompanied by cockles, but baby clams are an OK substitute.

Some other traditional foods from the homeland on my site of the Welsh valley where I grew up:

Traditional foods – Friends of the Afan

afanvalleyangling.org

 

[TonyL]

What foods you can carry across international borders is limited, but as Jackie said, we do bring teabags, curry sauce powder and gravy granules. Yes, we can get tea and gravy here, but it's not quite to our taste. Unlike Jackie, we cannot get used to US bacon, it's too thin and fatty, we much prefer English thick cut back bacon, and thick UK sausages. Sausages in the US tend to be a little spicy for us, but when we caught up with Mike and Linda (Boat addict), they kindly gave us some sausage from their home town which was very tasty. What we miss when we are in the US are pickled onions, pork pie and ham and egg pie for a good salad, we just cannot find them anywhere in the US.
That said, the scenery and people far exceed making up for any culinary lapses.

 

[ferfer]

English thick cut back bacon

Check out RJ Balson & Son as a USA source for Pork Back Bacon & bangers. They also have a location in England.

RJ Balson and Son -- Buy Quality British Bangers & Bacon from RJ Balson & Son, England's Oldest Family Butchers

Buy classic British food online in the U.S. British Bangers, English and Irish bacon and English Irish bangers and sausages. Traditional British food and English breakfast recipes online from England's Oldest Butchers.

www.balsonbutchers.com

Your style bacon has my interest.

2 US pubs are listed in the wholesale tab and the second mentions pork pie.

 

[Tom]

What we miss when we are in the US are pickled onions, pork pie and ham and egg pie for a good salad, we just cannot find them anywhere in the US.

Tony,
Some of the things you crave can be ordered online from sites such as:
British Food Shop
There are others (try Google). They won't be cheap and you'll pay shipping.
We sometimes find stuff at Trader Joe's and even at our local Safeway supermarket, including 'British bangers'. But availability of some stuff is not consistent.
If, like me, you enjoy Cornish pasties, look for a town or village with a Cornish mining settlement; Many Cornish tin miners came to work in the gold mines. The nearest such community to us is in Grass Valley, CA and they make/sell Cornish pasties daily at Marshall's Pasties - Downtown Grass Valley
Not as good as the pasties my Aunt in Bodmin used to cook, but an OK substitute.

 

[jackiemac]

We buy the thick bacon but it's true that it's the streaky type which has more fat. Crispy is how we like it so most fat cooked out.

 

[ferfer]

The British Pie Company makes and ships pork pie. They also have English bacon and sausages.

Order National British Pie Delivery - Buy English Food Online - British Pie Society

At bottom of page click PRESS for history and location of stores.

Jennifer

 

[Tom]

We buy the thick bacon but it's true that it's the streaky type which has more fat. Crispy is how we like it so most fat cooked out.

Sounds like the way Chris likes it cooked. I like my bacon 'pink' and I either cut off the fat (not much meat left), or put up with it.

 

[Rene T]

We buy the thick bacon but it's true that it's the streaky type which has more fat. Crispy is how we like it so most fat cooked out,

One time when I went to Scotland I ended up staying with a real nice family at their B & B. They use to cook breakfast every day and they cooked bacon about 1/4” thick. That was great.

 

[jackiemac]

Saw this in the Post a Joke section the other day

 

[JudyJB]

I much prefer British bacon when in the UK. Often, a restaurant will ask me which I prefer, and I like my bacon NOT crisp! I like British fish and chips, but the portions are usually too big for me, so I prefer takeout from a place like Pret a Manger, which is an organic takeout place located about every two blocks in London and throughout the rest of the country. I am a slow eater and used to have problems eating regular portions, and still prefer to eat small amounts more often.

From my last trip, I was thrilled to find Thornton's famous toffee at Heathrow Airport because most of the Thornton's candy stores are closed. It is delicious, but you can break a tooth on it, so I hit it with a hammer and soften pieces in the microwave. I also brought some "Tablet" for my grandkids from Scotland. It is a kind of blond fudge. The best kind has whiskey in it, but I got the regular stuff for the kids. I also brought them some "Peedie Tatties" from Orkney, which is a series of islands north of Scotland, but still part of Scotland, although the people there prefer to think of themselves as being Danish! All my grandkids are teenagers now, so I decided to buy them candy they have never had. Here is what Peedie Tatties look like: Peedie Tatties - Jollys of Orkney

 

[JudyJB]

Oh, and a lot of those Cornish miners migrated to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, so pasties are very common in my home state. I make my own, and can guarantee that they are very, very close to the originals i had in St. Ives and other small towns in Cornwall a few years ago. Basically, they are a whole meal in a pie crust. You take equal parts of coarse ground beef, and cut-up potatoes, onion, and rutabaga (aka "Swede" in the UK). Wrap all the raw ingredients in a pie crust and bake. (Don't use turnip or anything else in them.) Here is what they look like: The Perfect Traditional Cornish Pasty

I make pasties several times a year and freeze them. If you are in Michigan or London and someone tries to sell you a chicken pasty or a vegetarian pasty, RUN!! (I use plain hamburger or what is called "chili beef" for mine, not skirt steak, and you have to use raw ingredients, not precooked.

I am a purist, so I just open mine up and add butter, salt and pepper. Some people in Michigan add gravy or ketchup, but I think that ruins them.

 

[TonyL]

We actually tried some pasties when we were in the UP. I have to say that they were a poor imitation of the real thing, the only similarity was the rip off price!
To me, a pastie (tatty oggie) should be half round with a good crust around the circular edge which is what the miners used to hold it with. The UP pasties never had the crust, they also use a different vegetable for swede than we do but it tasted similar.
It's not so much the cut of bacon in the US, but the over cooking to rid the fat I don't enjoy. I like to be able to cut it rather than snap it in bits to eat.
At the end of the day, each country and its people have their own culinary styles. If everywhere was the same, what would be the point of traveling?

 

[Tom]

It's not so much the cut of bacon in the US, but the over cooking to rid the fat I don't enjoy. I like to be able to cut it rather than snap it in bits to eat.

Tony, if eating bacon at a restaurant, just tell them how you want it cooked. Just like when ordering a steak, although they don't ask how you want bacon cooked. I too dislike 'crispy' bacon, but that's the way Chris likes it. It's not necessarily a 'national culinary style'; My other half is a Welsh girl with different eating preferences from me.

 

[jackiemac]

I much prefer British bacon when in the UK. Often, a restaurant will ask me which I prefer, and I like my bacon NOT crisp! I like British fish and chips, but the portions are usually too big for me, so I prefer takeout from a place like Pret a Manger, which is an organic takeout place located about every two blocks in London and throughout the rest of the country. I am a slow eater and used to have problems eating regular portions, and still prefer to eat small amounts more often.

From my last trip, I was thrilled to find Thornton's famous toffee at Heathrow Airport because most of the Thornton's candy stores are closed. It is delicious, but you can break a tooth on it, so I hit it with a hammer and soften pieces in the microwave. I also brought some "Tablet" for my grandkids from Scotland. It is a kind of blond fudge. The best kind has whiskey in it, but I got the regular stuff for the kids. I also brought them some "Peedie Tatties" from Orkney, which is a series of islands north of Scotland, but still part of Scotland, although the people there prefer to think of themselves as being Danish! All my grandkids are teenagers now, so I decided to buy them candy they have never had. Here is what Peedie Tatties look like: Peedie Tatties - Jollys of Orkney

We used to get cinnamon tattie sweets when I was child so not sure they're unique to Orkney but the recipe might be different. They were quite hard and used to have a plastic toy encased in the. - usually a trolley if i remember correctly.

 

[JudyJB]

They were crunchy and really had a lot of cinnamon on them, but no toys. Maybe they eliminated them even where you lived because I'll bet some kids swallowed them!

 

[Tom]

FWIW Chris has made her own traditional (English) pasties and her signature "pasty pie" for many years. I've never seen her use swede and, being curious, I just asked if she'd ever used swede in her pasties. The response was a very quick "never". I dislike the taste of Swede, so I haven't missed anything

What's the secret to freezing pasties (something we've done multiple times over the years)? It doesn't have good results when they're defrosted; the pastry loses something in the freeze/defrost cycle.

 

[JudyJB]

I also once had some really bad pasties in the UP. They put in cooked beef, and I don't think they put in rutabaga or Swede, which is the same thing. I tried to eat one and tossed the other one I had bought to freeze. And the good ones I bought up there always had crusts. My cousin belongs to the Lion's Club in a small town south of Cadillac, MI, and they bake several dozen pasties each week and then freeze and sell them. I am always happy to get him to save me some if I happen to be in that area.

I talked to a guy in a grocery store a few weeks ago, and he was unhappy with the pasties he made. He said he puts in turnips and parsnips instead of rutabaga!! No wonder. I admit that it is sometimes hard to find a rutabaga.

 

[Tom]

We used to get cinnamon tattie sweets...

Another taste I dislike, but many folks love it.