Oh! those chips look bloody perfect! I could just eat some proper chunky chips!

The chips are fine, but shredded onion and shredded cheese between slices of white bread?

No UT. It's chopped onion and grated cheese.
Glad to have cleared that up.

Mmmmm, I'd love a cheese n onion sammich...but I suffer badly from onion breath for hours....so does everyone I guess....suffer from my onion breath ;)

Only just saw this - yay! Funnily enough, I put another one in the post yesterday morning, on the way to the woods.
Ummmmm, me too.
But the salad garnish had onion in too, so I figured I could strip the paint from the car and pretend it wasn't me. Also the other options weren't very inspired. I figured at least having onion in it allowed me to pretend it was healthy.

English sandwiches are an abomination to most Americans, especially those who live in Sandwichland (Philly, NY, NJ).

I had a sandwich in the UK once that was diced lamb in some sort of Russian dressing kind of sauce. Similar to egg salad. It was really good.

But I luuurve cucumber and watercress tea sandwiches! I replace the mayo with cream cheese...

We invented them goddamnit!
You and your obamanations can go to hell.

Oh yeah, and nom nom nom ;)

Yeah, yeah you invented football too... no world cup since 1966!

When I was in Scotland I found the pub sandwiches to be pretty dry. Perhaps to get you to drink more beer?

The other big difference was that both the meat and cheese were shredded rather than sliced. Dunno what that's about.

I requested and received mayo on my sandwich, but they must have been concerned about my cholesterol. It was thinly spread.

The atmosphere was a lot more pleasant than your average McDonalds, though.

Like the language, sandwiches have morphed since coming to America.

Tcha. Two world wars and one world cup. That'll do.
I can't say - another time another place. Personally I found the food lovely but the Scots unsuited to any service industry. I'd never dare say though (did I say that out loud?!) :) Meh - I was there in the summer holidays and all the staff I encountered were approx 15...
I accept that. And the sandwiches may have improved...

All baiting aside, we (the Brits, not just the English) obviously have very different sandwich ideals. When I get my own place you are only welcome for traditional English fare. Then you can't compare it. But I will take you out. Then you can goggle at how old the building is, in true American fashion, while I slip you warm beer and stale pastry.

we have an excellent shop here run by two ex-Brits and the cheese and oinion sandwiches are YUMMY.


they serve a proper high tea which is fun but $$$, coffee, tea, wonderful scones that put starbucks to shame. Lovely place but the seats...itty bitty and a tad dainty.

Called Central Perc, in Oakwood. Lovely.

Here:


Central Perc European Café is reminiscent of the English proprietors' home country: like a good pub, service is 'come to the counter', with food then delivered to table; no pence are squandered on posh garnishes, and you're likely to be drawn into the neighborly banter between the regulars and their British hosts.

English accents can be found in the food, as well. In example, an unusual sandwich was served for Afternoon Tea. Frankly, I couldn't figure out what the devil it was, and so I asked Mike Morgan, Central Perc's owner. He eagerly explained his passion for the pungent ingredient, which was dark English pickles, like those Bridget Jones reaches for during a feeding frenzy. The Branston pickles are chopped, mixed with sharp cheese and onion, and smeared on brown bread. Hmm. Delicious, indeed.

True to British tradition, Central Perc serves piping-hot tea in beautiful English teapots. In lieu of china teacups, visitors sip their tea from generously sized, heavy ironstone mugs. Mike Morgan enjoys blending loose teas for his clientele. His signature Central Perc Blend is a high quality, smooth black tea with a touch of Earl Grey for depth, and it is offered for sale by the half-pound. Bencheley and Forrelli teas are also available in several no-fuss varieties, such as English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Mint. In addition to tea, the café serves gourmet coffee, soup, salads, sandwiches and fresh pastries.

Mike and his wife, Rose, hail from the Wirral peninsula in northwest England, an area that produced the first public park in 1847, which served as the model for New York's Central Park. The couple met when Mike drove the bus that Rose took daily to work. They married and made several visits to the States, and, in 1996, opened the café.

Bringing a bit of England to the Midwest has been warmly embraced; visitors love Central Perc's popular Afternoon Teas, served from 2 to 4 p.m. and priced at $10 per person. Afternoon Tea includes generous servings of three types of tea sandwiches, Rose's fabulous homemade pastries, and baked-from-scratch scones, slathered in thick butter, strawberry preserves and whipped cream. The tea menu changes seasonally or according to Rose's whims. Mike is meticulous about steeping tea for five minutes, and instructs new customers about how to approach the imposing three-tiered stand of Afternoon tea goodies, saying, "Begin at the bottom, and work your way to the top." A pot of just-boiled water is also brought to the table, to dilute the stronger tea at the bottom of the pot, or to warm up a cuppa that's been neglected during thoughtful conversation or a suspenseful novel.

The café is located on a shady, well-manicured boulevard, among upscale shops, fringed by the gracious, historical homes of Oakwood, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. Shelves of English china perch high on the neutral colored faux painted walls, sparkling in the gentle sunshine that floods in from the shop's full-glass front.

Central Perc European Café delivers a charming English-style tea experience.

The shock of prices here would kill you - that's a bargain almost worth the airfare! :)

Yeah, Sundae. I realized that after I posted the review. To most Europeans, that is a steal. It's just that forty bux for lunch for four seems a lot, when, really, it isn't unless you're used to five bux a person for fast food - which is what most of us are doing. I'm gladly paying more money for better food these days. Six dollars a bunch for local grown strawberries versus 2 bunches for 4$ for those California monstrosities by Discoll farms.

The local strawberries are red inside. Driscoll's are white and taste the same way a forced December tomato tastes - yeeeeech.

We get a lot of strawberries grown in Spain. The type is Santa. They bounce. Seriously - there was a TV programme on teh evils of big supermarkets and they tested them. They are tough as old whatsits, they've been engineered that way to survive transit. And get this - the Spanish grow them for export to Britain. They won't touch them themselves. Bright red, flavourless, bouncy strawberries? Send them to the foreign devils! They eat big, squashy, untidy ones.

Yeah, you're spoiled for eating out prices. But then you add tax and huge gratuities I suppse. Still spoiled though :)

Even if we go to McDonalds it's unlikely we'll get out of it for under $50 for the 4 of us, and if we have a quick pub lunch or something like that, it can easily be over $20/head if you include 1 drink for each.

Fast food is much cheaper in the US than Aus thats for sure.

I have kinfolks who worked briefly on strawberry farms in Queensland.
The ones sent to the city were always the firm (to survive transit) ones, but they had generally been held in cool rooms for a week or two first until the market price was ready.
Meanwhile, the locals were buying bucketloads of fresh, ripe, soft, flavoursome strawberries at $2 per kilogram. "Seconds" were given away free to the pickers, and were sometimes used as compost or fertiliser, straight onto the garden, not because they were inedible, but simply because there was way too much. Life is hard, sometimes.

Life is too short to eat hard strawberries, I know that much.

My first job was picking strawberries for a local (large!) produce farm. 25 cents a quart. I never "liked" strawberries before that, but after being in the hot blazing sun for hours a juicy strawberry fresh-picked sure did taste good.

Now, my hometown has a huge festival every year. The first year of this festival, my mom was Campfire Girl leader and we sold snow cones. There were like 20 people in attendance. Now, you can't even walk through the darn thing.

Ahhh, the good old days. :)

Now I need to stop there and get a quart of berries and a bag of shelled garden peas (eat 'em raw right out of the bag, it's like candy.)

Hey! Shawnee is Strawberry Festival Queen! ;)

Yeah, I never go to that festival because I freak in ginormous crowds. I heard the line for strawberry donuts was continually 30-40 people long all weekend. Nuts to that.

I go to Hidden Valley Fruit Farm sometimes...more likely Dorothy Lane Market. Our version of "Whole Foods" if you will.

New Usertitle

We get good strawberries up here that's for sure. The ones from the glasshouse mountains are the best. A shop (that used to be local) sells them and they're the sweetest most delicious strawberries ever.

I do the almost hours drive to get them when they're in season...which will be soon. :)

Hahahahaaa...I haven't been to the festival in years, but in HS we loved it. We payed a quarter, I think, to have them page Mike Hunt. A few hundred times.

I used to go to the parade when my grandmother was alive, she lived a couple blocks away from a great vantage point and we could park at her house.

There are certainly tons of memories of my young days at that festival! That and the county fair. Sigh...good times!

C'mon S123 - get your usertitle on!

But but I like the one I have now.

Its not always about what you like, now is it? Bri went to a lot of trouble creating that for you. Its only polite to use it for the week.

Fine...you tell Conrad Birdie.

See now think of how happy she will be...

I can believe I just ate my third huge portion of hash browns and bacon this week. But it has to stop. And no, I'm not pregnant.

*throws rotten apples and bananas at monster*

SHADDDDUPPPPPPPPP I'm hongry!

A plate of egg and chips. Oh my God, it was the nicest meal I've had for weeks. Ma made it. Proper big chunky homemade chips (no uncoked bits sundae, they were done to perfection) with two (yes two!) fried eggs, with the yolks done perfectly. So nice I even ate the white of the egg, which I hardly ever do. Served with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and tomato ketchup and two slices of buttered white bread. *sighs* I am so full I feel like I will burst. Really, just burst. I couldnt eat another thing, even if it was just a wafer thin mint.

Mmm lovely.

Cube steak? with rice and gravey, fresh blueberrys.

Dana, how wonderfully English. :)

Yes! And to compliment that the next day I had our national dish: Curry *grins*

Was bloody lovely twas indeed. Mum again lol. She's an ace cook. Managed to make a vegetarian 'beef' curry with some kind of quorn type 'beef' substitute, which actually tasted like real beef. I'd have thought without the beef fat the sauce wuold have been lackiing something. I don't know how she did it, but it still tasted rich and savoury. Served with a beautifully creamy lentil dahl and her trademark fluffy basmati rice. And parathas on the side. Mmmm. I ate til I cuoldn't move lol.

Would your mum have used Ghee? You may or may not know that it's really just clarified butter, but it's used in a lot of Indian cooking if you're going to do it the traditional way. Obviously that sort of fat as opposed to oil gives you a richer flavour even in vego dishes. ;)

*smiles* oh I know all about ghee. Gran wuoldn't have conscienced cooking a curry without it lol. But no. She didnt have any ghee. I think she used olive oil and fried the spices up first and then fried the beef sub in that before starting.

Ghee is readily available over here, Ali - even in Aylesbury it's in the supermarkets.
Although in areas with an older Asian population (like Leicester) there are serious efforts being made to persuade people to cook with less damaging fats.

I've never used it myself, but many of the people and places who've cooked for me have done... It does add a certain something. But like frying chips in beef fat, I know I can enjoy perfectly well without the added health risks.

The other really nice thing about ghee is it is casein-free.[/public service announcement]

I don't think you use enough of it when you're doing a large pot of curry that it'd harm you that much, if at all. When it all comes down to it, we do need to absorb certain fats anyway, so a small amount is good. Just don't use too much. That's my view.

Ghee is still an 'exotic' ingredient over here. We don't have a really huge Indian population so it's a bit out of the ordinary. I like using it though. I think it makes the food taste more authentic. i'm sure if I'd never tried it I'd never know the difference though.

I can't believe I ate...today, as in in a single day...: two complan drinks; fried eggs, mushrooms, baked beans and toast; a Chicago something-or-other, a cheeseburger, an apple pie and a taste of someone's onion rings (don't say it. I know you're thinking it. Just dont :P) from McDs; a cadbury's fudge and two kiddie portion, fromage frais pots...


I won't lie to you, I feel a touch queasy. I think I may have gone two kiddie portion, fromage frais pots too far.

Hot dog sausages with melted cheese wrapped in pastry and baked AND mashed avocado from a dispenser on a service station hot dog.

*grins* sunds damn tasty....tho i ain;t never heard of avacao on hotdog before :P

Welcome to the Cellar casimendocina!

...my way through this gastro itinerary, yesterday.


Breakfast: Two mini fake Italian rolls, one with Lloyd's BBQ chicken, and one with an extra-long Nathan's hotdog, folded in half.

Lunch: PB&J on grocery store wheat bread, and re-heated mashed potatoes. A truly disgusting combo.

Dinner: Whiz fries, half of a cheesesteak (onions, American cheese), and two slices of DiGiornio pepperoni pizza.


I'm still not sure why this happened. I'm not pregnant either, and I wasn't even hung over.

There must be something in the air. I've been stuffing my face with everything that doesn't move. :(

But, had a delicious pig sandwich at my friends' party, they roasted a hog. Damn that was good!

Yep. sounds like hang-over food.

All of that would have cured any hangover, and then some.

Hot Dog with avocado
 

Specialty of the country that I'm in. There is avocado on EVERYTHING.

My guess is Chile?

My guess is Avocadostan?

rofl

Well....not really...not actually on the floor...but definately a lol.

Uh oh, you're in trouble now Dana. ;)

I know....what a double edged compliment that was huh? On the one hand I called her screen goddess beautiful...on the other I called her French!

Avocadostan
 

Correct.

Where else in the world is avocado a staple food?

Again, I'll have to go with Avocadostan.

Did you mean to post in this thread, or in the one where you suggested I'd just walked off a French film shoot? If the latter - I was ridiculously flattered. And Diz now thinks he's in Leon, and has developed an attitude to match.

I may be wrong of course. But as he doesn't post here, I'll keep it from him anyway.

My kitchen!



And on the topic of the thread... I just ate celery sticks filled with peanut butter and topped with spicy-sweet pickle relish. It was awesome.

I buy 4-6 avocados a week. Tacos aren't as good without them...

I had jacket potato (baked potato?), baked beans and an oven baked pork chop with the fat removed.
Healthy, yes, but about 3 times the size of any meal I've had in a while, where a potato on its own would count as the main meal.

Whew, do I feel bloated!