Things I Love About London, Part X: The Sunday Roast

A second blog about food I like in the UK? Well, yes, but I don’t think any of the food that is involved in a Sunday Roast (other than Yorkshire Pudding) is specifically British, so I’m not giving them credit for this one.

One of our favourite Sunday traditions while living in London has become sleeping in on a Sunday morning, only rousing ourselves around 2 or so that we can wander over to the pub and get a Sunday Roast. What is a Sunday Roast? Imagine a mini-Thanksgiving dinner once a week and you’ll be on the right track.

Traditionally, Sunday Roasts are served at pubs, but you can also get them at most restaurants and cafes. They’re generally served from about 12-5 on a Sunday afternoon and are perhaps the greatest hangover cure of all time.

A Sunday Roast usually consists of:

· Some sort of roasted hunk of meat (usually beef, chicken or lamb although we have found pork and vegetarian options in some places)
· Veggies (roasted or steamed carrots, broccoli, cabbage….)
· Yorkshire Pudding (*drool* see previous post)
· Gravy (enough said)
· Potatoes (mashed or “mash” as the Brits say or sometimes roasted)
· Pint of Beer (optional, but strongly encouraged)

After spending an hour or so at the pub eating your roast and watching a football (aka soccer) game, you’re just full enough to go home and go back to sleep- making your Sunday completely unproductive and incredibly perfect.

Things I Love About London, Part IX: Yorkshire Pudding

Since my time in London is rapidly coming to an end (less than a month now), I figured I should do a few final frantic blog posts on things I love about London. I often feel that there are too many to count, but these are a few I have been meaning to blog about for awhile.

Things I Love About London, Part IX : Yorkshire Pudding

You may have noticed that quite a few of my Things I Miss About America blogs revolve around food, but very few of my Things I Love About London blogs do the same. That’s because, quite simply, I find British food horrible. Everything is rather flavourless, deep fried, and overcooked. Yesterday, I saw a sign outside a restaurant advertising boiled bacon. Only the British could manage to ruin something as amazingly delicious as bacon.

There is one huge exception to my dislike of British food. That is the little bit of heaven that is known as Yorkshire Pudding. Now, let me start off by explaining that in England, pudding can refer to either a sweet or savoury bread-based product. Also, in England, all desserts are referred to by the general term “pudding.” So, it can be a bit confusing. What we (the Americans) know as pudding (aka- the custard-like deliciousness that is always associated with Bill Cosby in my mind) doesn’t really exist here- much to my disdain.

In the case of Yorkshire Pudding, “pudding” refers to a savoury bread-like product that is served with the main part of a meal. It originated in the Yorshire region of England (hence the name) in the 1700s because cooks wanted to make use of the leftover meat-droppings at the bottom of the pan after cooking a roast. They combined these droppings with batter, and Yorshire Pudding was born.

As these cooks found out, and I now know, batter + animal fat/juices = AMAZING. Today, Yorkshire Pudding is most often served with a Sunday Roast (see future blog post). If you’re lucky, it will come in little bowl shapes and be filled with gravy (*drool*). I should have let bobby blog on this topic, because he has actually made Yorkshire Pudding for me from scratch on a number of occasions. How something can taste so amazingly delicious and buttery without actually using any butter is beyond me.

Yorkshire Pudding may be the only culinary import I bring back to America.

Things I Love About London, Part VIII: American Holidays

This title may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but one of my absolute favourite things about London is celebrating American holidays here. I found that expats fall into basically two categories: 1- Those who have left the states, grow to feel more disillusioned by it, and plan on (or atleast say they plan on) never going back and 2- Those who have left the states, grow to feel more longing and love towards it, and definitely plan on going back (“once this whole European/African/Asian adventure is over”). I definitely fall into the ladder category. I have become a more proud and more defensive American than I ever thought possible while living in America.

One of the best ways I have found to express this new-found nationalism is to go all out on American holidays! This is great because, as it turns out, almost all the holidays we celebrate in America (save Christmas and New Years) are American Holidays. St. Patrick’s day- American holiday. Valentie’s day- American Holiday. 4th of July- well that one’s obvious. If the Brits don’t celebrate it, that means that the American expat community celebrates 10 times as hard.

Halloween is a great example of this (definitely an American holiday, as it turns out). The Brits have started to celebrate it a bit, but it’s still seen as a mostly American thing. So, this year we decided to go all out! Some friends and I went as the entire cast of the Wizard of Oz. I was the Wicked Witch (although I was trying to channel more of an Elphaba feel) and we had the Good Witch, a Cowardly Lion, a Tin Woodman, Dorothy, and a Scarecrow (bobby). We had a great time partying with other Americans and Brits who appreciate our festive sprit. We even won best group costume!!


I definitely see myself moving back to the states and becoming disillusioned by it again (Where’s the free healthcare??). But for now, it’s great to be patriotic.

Things I Love About London, Part VII: Afternoon Tea

My friend Nishant, who I actually met in London but now lives in America, came to visit this past weekend. And, because we needed lots of time to chat and catch up, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to try out one of London’s fabulous Afternoon Tea venues.



We went to The Goring which is a fancy privately-owned hotel near Victoria station, and I LOVED it. Despite my newfound love of tea, I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond to the whole afternoon tea concept. I mean, isn’t it just old ladies sitting around in fancy hats eating finger sandwiches? Well, yes, it is, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Nishant, Lynsey and I had a fabulous time despite the fact that we were the youngest people in the room by about 40 years.

The tea was amazing, the service spectacular, and the food, oh the food. Who would have guessed that scones and clotted cream could have been so fabulous! I must learn how to make my own. Perhaps Sarah's blog can help me? We opted, of course, for the Bollinger Afternoon Tea simply because it came with a glass of champagne, but I think even the Traditional Tea would have been superb.

If you get a chance to do an Afternoon Tea in London, I highly recommend it and would be happy to go with you!

Things I Love About London, Part VI: London at Nighttime

Every time I walk around London in the evening, I fall more and more in love with this city. Bobby and I were taking the bus home from Kensington the other night, and passed Parliament, Big Ben, and St. Pauls- all of which were lit up in their full romantic-London-at-nighttime glory. My heart ached at the thought that I would one day leave this city. While London is horribly crowded, stressful and overwhelming during the day, at night all of the hordes of people disappear and you are left seemingly alone in the city- always a magical experience for me.

Tower Bridge at night as seen from Strada

I have gotten in the habit of taking our visitors to the Strada at Tower Bridge on their last evening in London. The food is not amazing, but I don’t go for the food- I go for the view! I love sitting there staring at Tower Bridge at night. I think it’s more beautiful in the nighttime than it is during the day. We often walk from Tower Bridge to St. Pauls after dinner, because those are my two favourite places at night in London. You can frequently make almost the entire walk without seeing another person on foot. I’m not sure why there aren’t more tourists out at night in London- I truly think that it is the best time to see the city- but, for now, I’m happy to think that London-at-nighttime is my little secret and appreciate the one-on-one time with my city.

St. Paul's at Night

Things I Love About London, Part III: "Civilised" Office Parties

A welcome-back party at my old office in DC would probably have consisted of:
- a cake (probably ice cream)
- paper cups and plates
- awkward conversations with my manager(s)
- everyone leaving after getting a piece of cake and spending the obligatory 10 minutes standing around and saying “welcome back”

A welcome-back party at my office in London consisted of:
- a welcome-back hamper filled with wine, cheese, and crackers
- “proper” wine glasses and plates
- my co-workers and I having a 2 hour debate about the morality of law
- everyone talking about what a “civilised” party it is

I really appreciate the classiness of the “civilised” London office party, but I have to say, I miss the ice cream cakes.

Things I Love About London, Part III: New Traditions

One fun part of living in the UK is learning about and then adopting British traditions into our holiday celebrations.  If you read the blog/look at our pictures, you may notice that, around Christmas time, there are often pictures of Bobby and myself wearing rather silly looking paper crowns.  These come from my favorite and henceforth adopted British Christmas tradition known as the Christmas Cracker. 

Basically it's a little toilet-paper roll wrapped in Christmas paper.  You and a partner each pull on one side (very wishbone-like) and the cracker makes a rather pleasant popping sound as prizes jump out.  These prizes almost always include a paper crown, a ridiculously cheap toy of some kind and a joke or riddle.  

I don't know why I enjoy the Christmas Cracker so much.  I think its just a lot of fun to see everyone sitting around the dinner table in a ridiculous paper crown.  

Things I Love About London, Part II: Cadbury Eggs

As i'm sure you're all well aware, you can buy Cadbury Eggs in the states as well. But one thing I love about London is the period of time during which I can buy this, my favourite of all candy, in this country. I believe that, perhaps only rivalled by Mac n Cheese, the Cadbury Egg is the single greatest culinary invention of mankind. This Sunday, December 7th, I bought my first Cadbury Egg of the season. I will be able to purchase them until well after Easter.



In the states, Cadbury Eggs are purely an Easter Candy and you can, therefore, only buy them for maybe two months of the year. In London, I get to enjoy them for nearly 6!! It has always bothered me that I cannot buy Cadbury Eggs year-round. Like Girlscout Cookies, I think that if they were always readily available, I would, infact, always be buying them. Hopefully one day the British will recognize this and start selling Cadbury Eggs for the additional 6 months of the year, but, until then, i'll appreciate the extra time I get to enjoy them here.



If you do not know what a Cadbury Egg is, shame on you. Please let me know and I will send you some.

Things I Love About London, Part 1: The Accents

Since I thought post after post on things I miss about America would make our blog sound too depressing and convince people that we're not happy in London when, in fact, we LOVE it here, I decide to intersperse posts on things I love about London.



Things I Love About London, Part 1: The Accents

Really, these series of posts could be called "Things I Love About London: EVERYTHING", but then it would only be one impossibly long post, so i'm going to try to break it down a little more. Lets start with one of the most obvious: people have wickedly cool accents here. I'm getting better at distinguishing between english vs. irish vs. scottish vs. australian vs. new zealand, but it can be difficult sometimes and people get offended when you mess them up. The other side of the cool accent coin is that people think MY accent is awesome. I had someone tell me the other day that they thought, and I quote, my accent was "beautiful." I find this hilarious because, compared to the British people I work with, I feel like my english sounds rude and incorrect most of the time.

Bobby and I find that, most of the time, we have difficulty understanding people not because of their accents but simply because word choice is very different here. For example, they say things like "trebled" instead of "tripled" and "courgette" instead of "zucchini". Some words have different meanings here than they do in the states. For example, the Brits call a "vest" what we would call a tank-top (and they call a "tank-top" what we would call a vest), also "pants" mean underwear here. What we call "pants" the Brits call "trousers." This can be embarrassing when I take a bunch of trousers to the dry cleaner and forget to go into British mode and tell the man behind the counter that I have 4 pairs of pants to drop off.

Sometimes, however, I do have trouble understanding people because of their accents. When Bobby and I go to the pub and I try to eavesdrop on the conversations of the older gentlemen who hang out there all day spending their pensions on Guinness and the slot machines, I have absolutely no idea what they're saying. Seriously, i'll understand maybe 1 world out of 10. They might as well be speaking a foreign language (and sometimes I think they are). For the most part, I don't have this problem with the people I work with as they speak the very well-educated english that we hear in movies, but sometimes we do hit a language bump. For example, my boss and I were talking the other day and he said a word I didn't understand, so I tried repeating it. We both repeated the word about 15 times each and I ended up writing down "work." The word he was actually saying was "walk."

All in all, I love people's accents here. I'm sad i'm past the age where one picks up accents, because it would be cool to come back to the states sounding like a Brit. I probably will, however, come back calling "pants" "trousers" and spelling things with "s"s instead of "z"s (ie organisation vs. organization).