Erieversible

Our opening offer on the house we are after was rejected.  That was expected.  They’d have been silly to accept that first offer.  They have come back with a counter-offer which we have accepted.  It was a lower counter-offer than we were expecting, and to negotiate further would only be for small change and would probably create bad feeling.  So, we accepted.  Being a weekend, and the weekend after Thanksgiving, it is almost impossible to get things done so it looks like the next set of paperwork in the process will take place on Monday.

We spent Thanksgiving round at family, so we didn’t cook.  yesterday in Wegmans we saw free-range, top notch fresh turkeys at 99c a pound.  So guess what we had for a meal today?  We invited some family round and recreated Thursday.  I used local (US) stuffing.  We’ve got some Paxo stuffing hidden away but I’m saving that for Christmas!

So, slow progress, but progress.  Inch by inch we are moving towards settling in a family home.

I did promise another post about UK food ordering, so here it is.

Let’s start with the basic bird.  Would you like “Whole Organic Free-Range Devon Bronze”?  Or just “Organic Free-Range Bronze”?  Or just “Free-Range”?  The most expensive, (the Devon Bronze) comes in at 53 pounds sterling for 4.2 kg of turkey.  Or $85.33 for 9 1/4 pounds with today’s exchange rate.  (That is over $9 a pound, so it better taste good!)  The least expensive option gets a similar sized bird for only $42, so a bargain!  The Brits do tend to take their meat a lot more seriously than their American counterparts who will just buy any old frozen bird at the supermarket as long as it is cheap.

Of course, that doesn’t include options like having the bird pre-stuffed, getting a boneless whole turkey or just a boneless breast joint.  Then there are other options like duck or goose.  Or, if you really want to go all out, get a “Free-Range Turkey, Goose, Duckand Chicken Ballotine.  That costs $160, and feeds 10 to 14 people.  There are other options, say for Boxing Day (26th December) or New Year, such as beef, gammon or pork as well.  And loads of differnt sorts of salmon, which is very popular in the UK.

You also have the opportunity to purchase your vegetables and potatoes, again, all prepared and ready for the fridge, nothing frozen.  In the UK, a typical Christmas meal would include roast potatoes (potatoes cooked in very high heat fat, generally roasted with the meat, they get very crispy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside), roasted parsnips, carrots, and sprouts.  And balls of stuffing baked seperately from the meat.  And little tiny sausages with bacon wrapped around them.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but hopefully I’ve given you a feel for some of the differences between a typical British Christmas meal and the usual American one.  Maybe next time I’ll tackle a few “traditions” that are different.  Potatoes in the toe of stockings for a start! 

No really, we just received a brochure from Marks and Spencer (forwarded all the way from the Isle of Man), about ordering your Christmas turkey and other foods now.  Okay, there is no panic as they will accept orders up to the 12th of December, but you can get in early if you want.

First I should explain about Marks and Spencer for the American readers.  Imagine a large and very nice department store, then add a food hall that does very good (somewhat expensive) food as well.  M&S is a British Institution, to the extent that at one point it was estimated that on any given day something like 95% of the population would be wearing M&S underwear.  They have more competition these days, but they still dominate the high street in many parts of the UK and certainly on the Isle of Man.

But back to Christmas turkeys.  In the UK, the turkey is pretty much the traditional Christmas meat.  Years ago it would have been goose, but that has lost popularity and turkey has taken over.  With no Thanksgiving to celebrate in November, they aren’t sick of turkey by Christmas, you see.  And frozen food is less common in the UK.  So you get a fresh turkey a few days before Christmas and leave it in your fridge until you want to cook it. 

But if everyone wants fresh turkeys, it is harder for the stores to order loads in.  If they don’t manage to sell them, what can they do with fresh turkeys that are going off quickly?!  So in the UK you need to pre-order your fresh turkey before the big day.  And there are lots of choices to make when you get your lovely, full-colour, glossy food catalogue as well.  But that is for another post altogether.