Cooper's Marmalade is excellent. I have never tried American jam or marmalade. It doesn't look tempting. I brought back three jars of marmalade made by my stepmother, plus c. 20 packets of loose tea.

I'm pretty sure I'm not ever going to like anything that includes kidney, liver, brains, and other yucky stuff. There's a passage in Ulysses where Bloom (I think I'm remembering the right book) fries himself a couple of kidneys for breakfast, and I recall a sort of cognitive dissonance: the description and his anticipation made it sound attractive, but yet...kidneys. I don't know about Two Fat Ladies, but I know I've been pretty disappointed in what I've seen of the past couple of decades of British humor.

OK. Sounds good to me.

Marmite was an austerity food. I don't know when it was invented but people spread it on bread and butter in lieu of having something like say ham or salami or roast beef to put on the bread and butter.

Try it with lettuce. If you don't love it with lettuce, give up!

The link isn't working for me, but I think the text of it is clear enough. In fact, maybe it's better that the link doesn't work.:-)

I passed up a can of spotted dick in Publix when I was selecting English foods. I really don't think I or most Americans could ever eat anything with that name. And anyway I expect it isn't supposed to be canned.

However: I just had an English muffin (should that be "English", I wonder?) with Marmite and...it was sorta good.

Black pudding!!! So yummy!!!! I think it's blood sausage. I really should have some soon. Haven't had any since I was a kid.

We used to eat black pudding with tomato sauce (ketchup). Nom nom nom...

I expect it isn't supposed to be canned

Quite so, indeed. Whatever next? Tinned toast?

Black pudding is delicious and nutritious, and certainly has less offal in it than any run-of-the-mill supermarket sausage or burger.

I think that link to the “liver, brains, kidneys” article didn’t work because I inserted a period at the end of the sentence and it got itself stuck in the link. Try it now: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6425129/Liver-brains-kidneys-its-offal-but-I-like-it.html

The full article is interesting, and you’ll learn that the French are really into offal: “In France, offal is celebrated, not least because the cheapness of the raw materials allows restaurants who serve it to make a huge mark-up. A few years ago, when the trade was on hard times, a marketing stunt even designated November le mois des abats – offal month – with what I believe are now called ‘signature dishes’ of various organs in restaurants all over the country.”

Of course, they like horse meat, too. Don’t think the English can abide that, can they?

It certainly isn't an austerity food now--or at least not here. Five dollars for 4.4 oz.

AMDG

I love apple butter, but I don't keep it in the house as a rule because it leads to the consumption of way too much bread and butter.

AMDG

Just the very words "apple butter" sound delicious.

Happy New YEar, y'all!

I resolved the 'eating too much bread and butter' with the apple butter problem this morning by putting the apple butter on my porridge.

I would strongly advise against the tinned spotted dick, for three reasons.

1) Tinned spotted dick will be revolting.

2) Spotted Dick is a suet pudding and if suet puddings had any appeal to even to a tiny minority of Americans, one could buy suet in some supermarkets or at least from American amazon. One cannot, so far as I can tell in South Bend Indiana, buy suet in the USA.

3) One of my favourite suet puddings is called Sussex Pond Pudding. I have made it for dinner parties, where it is invariably a smash hit. The only American cookbook I own so far is Laurie Cowan's 'Home Cooking'. She includes her effort to make Sussex Pond Pudding in the chapter entitled 'Kitchen Horrors'. The frightful thing is, however, that the pudding she describes as a disaster, which her guests refused to eat, sounds identical to my own, piece de resistance Sussex Pond Pudding, down to being shaped like a slightly squashed hat. This chapter has thus far put me off giving a dinner party in the USA, though I have had a couple of individuals to dinner.

Point 3 is my strongest reason: it gives me the impression that there are strong differences in taste between the British and Americans. One perhaps has to have eaten suet puddings in childhood to enjoy them through the rest of one's life.

I noticed it was available in the bird food section of a pet store recently.:-)

I'm not only at work but in a rather intensive programming class. On a 10-minute break at the moment. More about plum pudding etc. later. But one thing: Americans recoil instantly from "spotted dick". I don't want to get too gross and explicit, but it's like having a food named "staph infection" or something.

People probably wonder why I'm sitting alone in my office laughing out loud. You don't give us credit for being very discerning. 8-)

In a few minutes, I have to go to a prayer service for a student who is gravely ill and if I giggle during the prayers, you will have to pay somehow.

AMDG

I wasn't laughing at the condition; I was laughing at you.

AMDG

I didn't know exactly what it was, either, beyond that it was some sort of fat. The comments on that Telegraph (?) story you linked to a week or so were full of some alarming enthusiasms that make kidneys seem not so bad.

I was so inspired by all this talk that I bought a little jar of Marmite at my last grocery shop. About to try it now...

Actually I shouldn't say "people" didn't much like it. That was the aggregate--I think it was more that some people definitely liked it, some didn't much care for it. I don't remember anyone just saying "ewww, gross".

I think maybe there's a connection between English cooking and Southern cooking. I mean, we (Southerners) are well known for using lard and bacon grease in all sorts of things. There's the joke for people who are moving to the South: "start saving your bacon grease now, you'll be given instructions later."

I have been restraining myself from making an overly stereotypical remark about Midwesterners, but I will say that the blandest meant-to-be-spicy food I've ever eaten was in Cincinnati. But then they also have that onion-covered chili (yum).

Interesting. I think I may have seen Vegemite in the store along with Marmite, so I'll have to try it, too. Vegemite actually might be better known here, because of that song from the early '80s by Men At Work, something about "a land down under", that refers to it.

I'm a little disconcerted by the fact that I'm developing a bit of a taste for Marmite. A few mornings ago we were having boiled eggs and English muffins for breakfast, and I actually *wanted* Marmite on my muffin in preference to honey or something. Very tasty with the egg.

Heh. I know several Americans who sign off with "Cheers!", so if I should do it, don't give up on me. "Cheerio!", on the other hand, would be a bad sign, to be met with a stern reprimand. I rather doubt that English people even say it any more.

Mac: Americans tend to be unenthused by those, especially cooked raisins. More so now than in the past, maybe, as witness the widespread hostility to fruit cake, which I like a lot.

I learned shortly before the end of last term that a colleague *did not know what a mince pie was*. I brought back a box from England, which happened to be 'mini-mince pies', ie about 2/3 of the normal size. I took them into work and told him he could expect to eat them at lunch time. He was confused. He thought a 'mince pie' would be a whole lunch, 12 inches across. I explained a mince pie is about half the size of a cupcake. He tasted it, and didn't look disgusted. He didn't look delighted either, but he didn't demur when I urged him to eat a 2nd one and take one home for his wife. I can only think that either he is exceptionally polite (very possible) or that Maclins comments don't apply to him.

He asked me what was in them, and I read off the back of the box, raisins, sultanas, orange peel, lemon peel, spices, coriander etc. He said all those things came from the colonies. He then held up the mini mince pie and said 'this is the essence of the British empire.'

I don't know about the lettuce, but then I'm not especially partial to lettuce as a flavor.

Mince pie! I knew there was something I was forgetting in this general class of foods. It was a standard part of Christmas dinners when I was growing up, though it was called "mincemeat". I never saw the word written, but that was what people seemed to be saying. And I was always puzzled because as far as I could tell it had no meat in it. I always liked it, although it wasn't my favorite thing. But if I remember correctly most of my siblings and cousins (i.e. my generation) didn't much care for it. But I haven't seen or heard of it for many years now. I guess it passed out of favor at least in my family somewhere between the mid-'60s and the mid-'70s.

I think a pretty strong unconscious cultural connection must have existed for a long time between old southern families of British extraction, like mine, and the mother country. Watching Upstairs Downstairs I kept thinking that there was some sort of resemblance of manner between the Bellamys and a lot of people I knew growing up, the women especially. It's interesting that it was sustained, because as far as I know no one in my family tree came over here after 1800 or so. The Horton from whom I'm directly descended was born ca 1790 in Virginia. Not sure what went on before that.

We were a step removed from Anglicanism, being Methodist, but I think basically in that tradition. I don't think there was any conscious intention to preserve certain things, but they persisted. I wonder if more was preserved in the truly upper class of the upper South--Virginia, the Carolinas.

I've had occasion in recent years to become aware that a not-affluent (at best) rural southern culture (aka redneck or just country) extends up into what we normally think of as the midwest, for instance Indiana.

Why not both?!? with a decent interval, of course.

I'm leaving for the hospital to see the new grandbaby who arrived a couple of hours ago.

The "-mites" are delicious with egg! My Nan used to cook bubble n squeak and then put butter, promite and fried egg on top. Yum! I know what I'd like for brunch...

I tried to get bangers and mash at a tea room one time, but they were out.

AMDG

Yes. There is actually some sausage sitting in the Great Hall, smelling wonderful, and waiting for someone to come eat it; but I'm going to resist.

AMDG