Need British Menu Suggestions

[Joywitch M. Curmudgeon]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Neil Ward" <neilward at d...> wrote:
> 
> British cuisine is confusing; that's it's appeal!

I just thought I'd leave this sentence in here to torture Neil.

> Boiled waxy potatoes with butter (or roast potatoes) and some nice 
garden
> peas would be appropriate (the pie is topped with mashed potato, 
but don't
> forget we Brits eat potato with potato all the time

This sort of reminds me of Brazil, where every meal is served with a 
huge plate of rice, even if the meal includes potatoes (usually 
fries), as it often does.
> 
> In modern times, people have perceptions of British cooking as 
either the
> cardboard collations Al described, so beloved of tourist traps, or 
the
> boiled-to-death meat n' two veg meals I recall from my childhood.  
Modern
> British cooking is varied, though, and draws upon the cuisines of 
other
> countries

I just thought, that in the spirit of fairness, that I would comment 
that traditional American cooking is very similar, at least in my 
experience.  When I was young there were very, very few places to buy 
fresh fruits and vegetables (at least in New York City), except in 
the supermarket where they were old and covered with 
plastic.  "Salad" consisted of iceberg lettuce, some tasteless 
tomatoes that came in a strange cellophane covered green plastic 
boat, and maybe some sliced cucumber, topped with Wishbone Italian 
dressing or some nasty concoction consisting mostly of mayonaise.  My 
mother, who grew up during WWII, was enamored of all 
the "convenience" foods which came out during the '50s and '60s, and 
we ate mostly reheated things out of boxes from the freezer, 
alternating with the stuff my grandmother taught her to cook, which 
consisted of large pots of fatty meats and overcooked vegetables.

A lot of people I know grew up in similarly food-challenged 
households.  Many of our moms cooked stuff from "women's magazines" 
which tend to have recipes involving strange combinations of 
prepared, processed foods -- usually casseroles involving Campbell's 
Cream of Mushroom soup and chopped up potato chips or Ritz crackers 
and/or canned peaches and some sort of cheap meat.

Fortunately, American cuisine has improved a lot, too, although IMHO 
we eat way too much processed food, most of which is no where near 
as "convenient" as it seems.

--Joywitch