Food : Taco Dinner or Taco Disaster

Taco Disaster.

Well, not entirely. Just mostly.

Needless to say, taco night, requested by RM, ran into a few challenges.

Even though I could find Old El Paso online at Tesco's, I couldn't find what I would consider pretty basic things; like mild taco mix or taco shells. In the US, I would just get basics or a couple of taco kits that included either (or both) hard and soft taco shells, seasoning mix, and red salsa. Not being able to find what I was looking for individually, I went looking for kits and with some relief, I found one.  The "taco boat" kit, complete with taco boat shells, taco mix, and seasoning packet. Close enough. So I added two to our basket.

However, they didn't have two when our order was filled. They had one. And substituted the other with a nacho kit. Which would have been fine if the nacho kit had been for "meaty" nachos and included taco mix, but it wasn't and it didn't. So I had one taco mix packet for 2 pounds of meat and it takes two.  The extra seasoning packet that came in the kit was a ranch powder to put on top. We sometimes used a ranch salsa, so that didn't throw us off, but no one put the powder on their tacos.

The taco mix that came in the taco boat kit wasn't the dry mix we're use to. It was a gelatinous sauce. The nacho kit came with two salsa packets, so I attempted to mix some of the salsa (which was a rather odd orange-ish brown color, not red, gelatinous sauce) into the meat. I can't say that it worked. 

What amused H and I was the packaging. Looks similar to the US, but the directions were another thing.  Add cucumbers and carrots? Umm. Not usually.

On top of the struggle with seasoning, shredded cheese (aka grated cheese) over here is hard to come by unless it's British Cheddar. I guess I should say, hard to come by when shopping online. I couldn't find queso, Monterrey Jack, or even Colby. Not even in chunks that I could grate myself. Perhaps I will be able to find some later, but I got the cheddar just to have some cheese. Let's just say that British Cheddar is not the best cheese choice for poorly-flavored taco meat (and I'm just going to guess fully flavored taco meat too), but is exceptional otherwise.

The lettuce was exceptionally bitter. We gave the remainder to the hens.

B and I love guacamole and I found some "smashed avocado with a touch of lime". I think it was more lime with a touch of avocado, but I like both so it was a small bright spot. Still, I think for our next attempt at taco night (and yes, there will be one after I can get to the store in person), I will get avocados and make my own guacamole. It's always best homemade anyway.

The true gem of the evening, which was in dire need of something to shine, were the tomatoes. Given to us by Jilly, a friend who grew them in her garden, they were tomatoes on steroids. Absolutely BURSTING with flavor.

The good news is the men declared, "Not what we're use to, but not bad!" and ate it anyway.

The girls, including myself, were a bit harder and declared it, "Horrible!"

Needless to say, we will try, try again. When I can explore more than one store. In person.

Food : Bake in a Bag

While searching through Tesco's online, I stumbled on this.

A butter and parsley basted chicken that bakes in the bag. 

Never done that before! So, into the virtual cart it went.

I know there are ways to bake in a bag in the US. I also know that you can get prepared chicken, but I've never really seen a prepared whole chicken ready to cook in a bag before. (Was I blind? Possibly, but I don't think so.)

Plopped the whole thing into a baking pan (at least 5 cm deep) and stuck it in the oven for 55 minutes. Then, I had to take it out, cut the bag open, and baste the chicken with the melted butter. Back in the oven for 20 minutes, then out of the oven and covered in tinfoil for 10 minutes (which I still don't have, so I cover it with a towel).

Before cooking, however, E&W googled the oven for me. The bottom oven is a fan oven (aka convection oven) which cooks by circulating heat around the oven. The top oven is a conventional oven. It cooks by heating to a desired temperature and "blanketing" the food with heat. Hallelujah! At least I could figure out what temp to cook the chicken at properly.

The above picture is from meat and haggis pies, but shows how packaging here gives 3 temps for cooking dependent upon your own oven. This one doesn't show a fan setting, but the chicken one did. For the record, 180° C is 356° F and 200° C is 392° F; close enough to what I'm use to, to work. Now I just need to commit it to memory (although I think I've got it as I did that off the top of my head and when I double checked for accuracy, I was right.)

We had roasted sweet potato wedges and pan-fried Brussels Sprouts with the chicken.

I apparently still need to figure out the upper oven as I decimated our poor roasted sweet potato wedges. I think I put them in too early or at too high a temp or, frankly, a bit of both.

The sprouts were about half the size of the ones I get in the US.

The chicken didn't brown properly which is my fault. Not really thinking about it, after basting it, I put the bag around it again when I should have pushed it down. You can clearly see where the bag didn't cover the chicken  and how beautifully it started to brown. 

But it's actually irrelevant.

It was so good! So much flavor! The Brussels Sprouts were just as delicious and the sweet potatoes had a bit a flavor even after burning them.
Highly suspect that they would have been superb cooked properly.

Here's the thing I'm wondering now though . . . In the US, affordable chicken was huge and often completely flavorless; how it's cooked adds the flavor. But the chicken here was slightly smaller and brimming with the flavor of chicken. Perhaps growing chickens too quickly with hormones and plumping the meat with injected water and broth is killing the proper size and flavor of chickens in the US.

I guess we'll find out for certain each time we have chicken in the future, which I'm looking forward to.

As a lovely side note . . .

This is in our kitchen.

After talking with Anne, who is married to our landlord, Anthony, I know exactly what to keep for the hens. Last night's Brussels Sprouts cut-offs and leaves as well as sweet potato ends and scraps are going to the hens. Apparently, they'll eat anything, including spaghetti, but meat and eggs are a no-go (duh!). 

The hens are located on a part of the farm that is quite busy with people, so we will not be able to meet them until next week. But once we are out of quarantine, we'll be able to meet them, feed them, and collect eggs ourselves.

I'm so excited!!

One of the girls said, "Is this a Peabody duck thing again, Mom?"

I cried when I got to ride in the elevator with the Peabody ducks at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis for my birthday. So clearly, my answer was, "But, of course!"

The Post About Food

A lot of people have been asking about food, so let’s talk food; one of my favorite subjects so probably the first of many posts.

Food has presented PLENTY of challenges and taken A LOT of planning.

Our friend, Lee Montgomery, asked if I will be translating my own recipes or working off of what I can find here.  The answer is a bit of both; what I can find here initially and eventually translating well-known and well-loved recipes as time goes on. 

Even though I have been to the store here many times during past trips, I have never done a full shop for 5 people and a dog for a lengthy amount of time at a store I’ve never been to in a country I’ve only visited. However, I went into this knowing it would be a learning process so it hasn’t bothered me too much. I like learning new things and this is just simply a part of moving any where outside your local community. Has it been frustrating at times? Sure. But we also aren’t complete Scottish noobs.

Our first challenge was getting groceries while not permitted to go to the store because of quarantine. Luckily, we were told by friends that everyone here has their groceries delivered because of covid. Anthony, our “landlord”, let us know which stores would deliver to the Cottage. We signed up with two, Tesco’s (similar to Kroger in the US) and Morrison’s (similar to Publix). However, because nearly everyone gets deliveries, the delivery slots fill up quickly; at least a week in advance.  I had two deliveries booked before we ever left the US.  (I have to have at least £50 in the basket to book a time for a certain day. I then have up until 24 hours before delivery to change the order. I can also pick another slot and start another basket which is how I book multiple deliveries.)

The challenge after figuring out getting groceries delivered was knowing what we might need immediately versus what could wait. Sometimes it was just a guess. Related to that, but different was not knowing what was available in the kitchen at the Cottage until we got there (while having to order food before we got there).  We were told “basic necessities” by Anthony. We assumed plates, utensils, pots, and pans. But casserole dishes? Big pots for pasta? Measuring cups? How big was the refrigerator? How many days of food would it hold ? (As it turns out, a fourth the size of our old one.)

I had to plan what to eat each day, two weeks in advance. Honestly, not a big deal as I often planned a month in advance during our busy times. The challenge really was shopping in an unknown store online. Finding alternatives and substitutions is far easier when you’re standing in the store looking for what you need; especially when you don’t necessarily know the alternative term or name.

I decided to go with basic family meals, like frozen lasagna or frozen Salisbury Steak.
Except I couldn’t find any. 
So, “What’s another word for . . . ?” or “What’s the Scottish word for . . . ?” were often asked.
Sometimes I knew (biscuit instead of cookie, crisp instead of chips, chips instead of fries); sometimes I didn’t.     

Many conversations went something like this:
Me to E&W: Hey, what’s a British word or words for frozen family meal?
E&W : What to do you mean?
Me : You know, pre-made, frozen, feeds a family, not just one?
E&W : Did you try premade?
Me : Yep, tried it. Nope, wasn’t it.
E&W : Oh, do you mean “ready meals”?
A few clicks later, Me : Yes, apparently, I meant ready meals.

Then came the challenge of finding ready-meals that would feed a family of 5. There really weren’t any.  So, I had to buy in multiples. The question was how many?  Not as easy as it sounds since the UK system of measurement is a hybrid, albeit mostly metric (grams and litres), and the US is imperial (ounces and cups; and what I’m use to).  I had to trust A LOT.  If it said “Serves 2”, I bought 3.

But for other items, I had some converting to do. Luckily, I landed rather quickly on 500g equaling about 17 ounces, close enough to one pound or 2 cups to work for me. It threw me when something was in kilograms and let's just talk about litres later.

In addition to a couple ready-made meals, our first order contained A LOT of well-known favorites that we can only get in the UK. Prawn sandwiches, Jaffa Cakes, pork pies, picnic eggs (miniature Scotch eggs), sausages (amused because the package we got called them “Dinky Posh Dogs”) that we usually had for lunch.  I also tried to include enough of “home”  to help the kids know they weren’t losing all their favorites.

In addition to human food, I managed to find our dog's regular food, her favorite treats, and new food to try.

Our first delivery arrived the morning after we did (we arrived very late and had a picnic dinner on the road to the Cottage). The driver delivered baskets to our door and I retrieved the bags from the baskets and brought them into the house. He was exceptionally friendly, bemused by our quarantine, and his heavy Glaswegian accent threw me at first, but I managed to catch on fast enough.

So, on to the real question, what have we had to eat?

The first night we had pre-packaged ready-meal Fish Pie and Roasted Asparagus. The fish pie came in these little bamboo / wooden baskets that were used to cook them in. 

 

Servings here are smaller and I wish I’d gotten a third package of asparagus, but no one starved, and the fish pie was actually very good.

As an aside : Food here doesn’t have all the chemical and preservatives in it and is held, generally, to a much higher standard than in the US, so it will go off faster than food in the States. Therefore, buying for a week at a time, doesn’t make sense. I felt I was pushing it when I purchased for 4 days, but it worked. However, 3 days might be the magic number because of the build up of items over time (ie mayonnaise, butter, etc.; things you have on hand in general), that take up valuable real estate in the college fridge.

The second night we had Bangers and Mash (sausages and mashed potatoes) with Broad Beans. This was a hybrid meal. I learned to cook A LOT of easy, comfy British meals from scratch before E&W and I married; Bangers and Mash was one of them. It seemed a pretty easy recipe to cook (partially) from scratch. I bought pre-made mash because I didn’t know what the Cottage would have on hand as far as being able to actually mash the potatoes. Now that we’re passed that moment in time, it seems silly to assume a Scottish house would not have a masher. There are two.  The broad beans were good, but could have been better.  I remembered to get chicken broth/stock for the gravy, but forgot to get some to cook the broad beans in.  Still, no one went hungry.

Then we had Pasta Carbonara, another hybrid meal. I cooked part and purchased part.  I bought the sauce (because we have “white” sauce in the US; usually alfredo, but this specifically said “Carbonara” and E&W and I love carbonara). I added extra bacon, onions, and peas.

Last night we had steak pie and goose fat roasted potatoes. Both items were frozen and cooked in the oven, which is a whole 'nother thing. Instructions here give temps in 3 or 4 different ways; Celsius, fahrenheit, Gas, or Fan. I know the oven here isn't gas or Fahrenheit, so I usually cook it according to Celsius or fan settings (which are sometimes different on the same package). The Steak Pie was no longer frozen, but still cold when it was suppose to be done, so clearly my setting was wrong. I put it back in and then managed to burn to the top, which wasn't entirely my fault. The directions said it needed to be covered in tinfoil but I didn't know that having never made it before, so I didn't order any and the cottage didn't have any. I covered it with oven paper instead. It worked right up until the end. The entire top burned and I had to cut it off, but the steak filling and potatoes were really good. Sorry, I didn't get a picture.

Tonight's culinary masterpiece was frozen pizza because 3 teens wanted comfort.  It was very good as far as pizza goes. I, personally, don't care much for pizza, but tried it anyway.  It'll do for future teen comfort.

Upcoming meals include baked chicken with Brussels sprouts, baked spaghetti (requested by Helena, for which I did not order enough sauce) and tacos.  Tacos are one of Rhu's favorites and while I was able to find a familiar brand, Old El Paso, I wasn't able to find exact equivalents to what we have at home, so taco night will take on a new twist.  

And that is food . . so far. 

Well, except for the steak and haggis pies that are waiting to be eaten. By me, because pizza.