Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

English food, American tourist (Part 2): English candy

My sister-in-law Sarah ruined American candy for me with two fell sentences.  "All you can taste is sugar," she said.  "It's too sweet."   I'm sure I've heard people say that before, but I guess I never took it in or fully realized the truth of it.  And I had never before had English candy.

Until fairly recently, when I developed a painful and no doubt karmic allergy, my approach to chocolate would have furnished material for any number of Cathy cartoons.  While I've gone through extended chocolate-free periods over the years, the disciplined times have been interspersed with no-holds-barred chocolate binges.

My sister-in-law Sarah ruined American candy for me with two fell sentences.  "All you can taste is sugar," she said.  "It's too sweet."   I'm sure I've heard people say that before, but I guess I never took it in or fully realized the truth of it.  And I had never before had English candy.

Until fairly recently, when I developed a painful and no doubt karmic allergy, my approach to chocolate would have furnished material for any number of Cathy cartoons.  While I've gone through extended chocolate-free periods over the years, the disciplined times have been interspersed with no-holds-barred chocolate binges.

English food, American tourist (Part 1)

[published in "The Flatland Oracles" on July 29, 2006]

* CAVEAT: not designed for people interested in fine dining.  If that's you, check out this site.

[1]  The myth.

Years ago, when I was first a bride and was trying to choose a  china pattern for my gift registry, I saw an advertisement in one of those bride-directed magazines that made a tremendous impression on me.  It was an ad for Royal Doulton china.  The ad featured a surpassingly beautiful plate with bits of unappetizing glop on it.  I can't remember what the food looked like, other than that it was mainly brown or brownish; and there may have been some extremely bright green beans or peas as well.  Underneath it said:  WE PUT THE WORLD'S WORST FOOD ON THE WORLD'S BEST CHINA (or perhaps it was "the world's finest" or "most beautiful" china).  The thing that stuck with me was the description of the food.

Tea. How it Happened to an American.

   [published on August 17, 2005 in "The Flatland Oracles"]

          When I was growing up, ‘hot tea’---so-called to distinguish it from ‘iced tea,’ which is what everyone had at every meal every day---was a drink that you had when you were ill or (if you were a girl) suffering from menstrual cramps. Seriously, that’s all it was: the cure for menstrual cramps.

My mom kept some elderly teabags in a canister for this purpose and for certain types of emotional crises.

At restaurants, you could usually order it. If you did, you got hot (but not boiling hot) water in a little tin pot, a cup with a teabag in it (usually Lipton) and a thin slice of lemon. (Americans don’t put dairy products in tea, hot or iced.) This produced a thin amber-tinted liquid, mainly lemon flavored. It was very good when you had a cold or a cough; it worked for cramps too; maybe the heat produced some sort of muscle relaxation or maybe it was completely psychological. Who knows? Not me.