Quote from: SacDuc on June 06, 2011, 08:49:12 PM
which begs the question: How can you have your country so close to France yet have your nation's "cuisine" rank right below Bangladeshi fare on the tasty scale.

sac

funny how a theoretical line in the sand (or Channel) can make a world of difference

one need only to look at our southern border to appreciate that the dirt is the same, the humans are the same, the sun, weather and sky are too....

but that line in the sand makes all the difference in the world when it comes to quality of life


That being said....you realize that Fraunce and England have been at war for several centuries now....

while the war is not as overtly prosecuted as it once was with gaily plumaged subjects lining up at several paces blasting each other to ribbons on open fields

it is nevertheless still going on...

When the Brits identified Mad Cow they knowingly exported the contaminated beef to Fraunce (steak tartare anyone?)....I imagine they felt that any nation that thought Jerry Lewis was funny was already brain-dead so little harm would come of their evil export strategy

...this was no doubt a move that was also a payback on the part of the Brits after the French sold those sneaky Exocet missiles to the Argentinians just in time/during the Falklands Island War...which resulted in some really ugly damage to the Queen's fleet

then again in the world of Monty Python-esque Fraunch-Taunting...we have the advertisements in the Gallic media....offering free food and accommodations for any Frenchman who wishes to cross the Channel to England and be sterilized

it seems that France still has laws on the books that forbid self-mutilation and other assisted forms of mutilation....

this statutory umbrella has encompassed Vasectomies....therefore the happily married frenchman who wishes to avoid impregnating his mistresses, hotel house cleaning staff (or possibly even his wife) must leave France for the procedure.


One must read the papers carefully to glean news of these on-going cold-war skirmishes..... so that they may appreciate the undercurrent of old provincial animus that runs so strongly beneath the veneer of public back-slapping and EEC blather

Wait a cotton picken minute.......no self mutilation?  Does that include fake boobies??  F that!


And Sac, "proper English breakfast"=

a proper english breakfast consists of whatever leftovers that are stale cold and preferably mouldy washed down with a few opened bottles of last nights unfinished beer. Thats the kind of meal one needs to start the day in that drab cold miserable place. And then there is the food one eats in winter....Boiled socks (used as a Mutton substitute)and dirty dishwater with porridge added to dilute it.Yum. Ahhh those were the days........

Quote from: badgalbetty on June 07, 2011, 05:56:00 AM
a proper english breakfast consists of whatever leftovers that are stale cold and preferably mouldy washed down with a few opened bottles of last nights unfinished beer. Thats the kind of meal one needs to start the day in that drab cold miserable place. And then there is the food one eats in winter....Boiled socks (used as a Mutton substitute)and dirty dishwater with porridge added to dilute it.Yum. Ahhh those were the days........

+1
Don't forget the brown sauce to hide what it is that you're eating!!  You can scoff at  Brown Sauce, SacDuc, but it does its job well.  I must have gone through buckets of brown sauce when I was living in Blighty, all in the name of tricking my brain into believing there was edible food on my plate.

Quote from: RAT900 on June 06, 2011, 11:22:07 PM

That being said....you realize that Fraunce and England have been at war for several centuries now....

while the war is not as overtly prosecuted as it once was with gaily plumaged subjects lining up at several paces blasting each other to ribbons on open fields

it is nevertheless still going on...

This is exactly the part that baffles me. Usually war ultimately results in a cross contamination of cultures. The French influence in Vietnam and the fact that the only decent take away in the UK is curry are two examples. If you tour any of the manner homes in the British countryside they are almost exclusively decorated with Louis XIV furniture. These are war spoils that simultaneously say make the beast with two backs You to the French and let the world know that your nobility goes back many generations. And until the industrial revolution British fashion, medicine, philosophy, etc, borrowed heavily from French thinking. And they had the good sense to by and large stay away from French architecture (other than the gratuitous use of misplaced flourishes, the fleur de lis being particularly abused). Yet the most elevated part of French culture, the food and wine, the Brits ran from like poison. I don't get it. In Paris Escoffier was codifying the greatest cuisine in all of Europe and a couple hundred miles away some middle class Brit as reheating last nights Spotted Dick. It baffles the mind.


sac

Quote from: SacDuc on June 07, 2011, 12:54:14 PM

This is exactly the part that baffles me. Usually war ultimately results in a cross contamination of cultures. The French influence in Vietnam and the fact that the only decent take away in the UK is curry are two examples. If you tour any of the manner homes in the British countryside they are almost exclusively decorated with Louis XIV furniture. These are war spoils that simultaneously say make the beast with two backs You to the French and let the world know that your nobility goes back many generations. And until the industrial revolution British fashion, medicine, philosophy, etc, borrowed heavily from French thinking. And they had the good sense to by and large stay away from French architecture (other than the gratuitous use of misplaced flourishes, the fleur de lis being particularly abused). Yet the most elevated part of French culture, the food and wine, the Brits ran from like poison. I don't get it. In Paris Escoffier was codifying the greatest cuisine in all of Europe and a couple hundred miles away some middle class Brit as reheating last nights Spotted Dick. It baffles the mind.
sac

You raise some interesting observations..tribal cross-pollination through war and conquest has often improved the lot of both the conquering and the conquered...(in the case of the conquered usually after a harsh ramp-up and transition period)

All cultures at the Macro (stereotyping) level have their blind spots....I would list some of them out but that would run the risk of my being adjudicated a misanthropic troll

I suppose in the case of the Brits it is a dietary blind spot...I don't think we will see Anthony Bourdain do a "No Reservations" episode of England any time soon.

I did a Google search of "British Cuisine" and the results were lamentable....Haggis was mentioned but that is more of a legacy desperate survival measure employed by starving Scottish Highlanders during various repressions...and was likely the last stop before resorting to gnawing on rocks and tree bark...or lapsing into cannibalism

and quite possibly it was the impetus for the invention of Scotch whiskey....whose purpose was two-fold....to deaden the brain and the taste buds in order to consume haggis....and to mitigate the awful digestive after-effects

It will always be a mystery as to why some things will be embraced and adopted and others shunned or dismissed in the commerce between cultures

for instance I am off to Montecatini next week....in researching this city I have learned that the Medici's invaded the city in the 1500's and finding little of perceived value they confiscated all the windows and doors from the city and marched off with them....

surely there had to be something of better value than used doors and windows....like maybe some of the women or something?

I suppose I will find out first-hand in fairly short order.........

I like Haggis.

Quote from: ungeheuer on June 08, 2011, 04:33:11 AM
I like Haggis.

as a source of nutrition or companionship?   

Quote from: RAT900 on June 08, 2011, 04:39:31 AM
as a source of nutrition or companionship?   

Thanks RAT...  You totally made my morning with that zinger!!!

Quote from: RAT900 on June 08, 2011, 04:39:31 AM
as a source of nutrition or companionship?   

Spicy McHaggis?


Dropkick Murphys - The Spicy McHaggis Jig

    Oh God...the dreaded Beer Goggles Syndrome

We used to call it..... "Drinkin' them pretty"

Quote from: RAT900 on June 08, 2011, 04:39:31 AM
as a source of nutrition or companionship?   

To the best of my knowledge its good for neither   

I likes it anyway  .

ahhh yes guilty pleasure foods....my weakness is Ox Tail Stew....once or twice a year I will whip up a batch....

any more than that is to fast track to a myocardial infarction

tastes well great (to me) but it tends to kill the appetite rather than satisfy it....not unlike the effect of White Castle "hamburgers"

and the digestive consequences are considerable....

my wife howls at me to dig a pit in the back yard to use rather than the indoor plumbing...

and to take the garden hose to my ass when I have exhausted my guts

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How to dress when in England?

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Colonic irrigation

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Quote from: ungeheuer on June 09, 2011, 05:22:54 AM
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How to dress when in England?

to...

Colonic irrigation

...all in the one thread.

We are thread-jacking GODS