I love BBC Good Food Magazine. It was introduced to me by my now father-in-law when I first met my now husband. There were a lot of small gradual introductions into the English culture that I was exposed to when I first met my Hubby. Our first sort of date was hanging out at his house with his brothers and mum watching Phoenix Nights with the subtitles on as I couldn’t understand the characters Bolton accent. I was introduced to calling supper tea ( leading to all sorts of confusion about whether there would be food or just cups of tea), a family who had no idea what to do with perogies (they put pasta sauce on them) and BBC Good Food.
Looking at the food people eat is really a short form into understanding a nation. And England wears it’s food on it’s sleeve. Sticky Toffee Pudding, Full English Breakfast, Jaffa Cakes, Pasties, Victoria Sponge Cake. All things I had never heard of before we moved to England for a year. It was like learning a new language. Well, it is frankly. Just learning how to go clothes shopping took a month (shop girls do not say Hello, a tank top is a vest, a vest is a waistcoat, pants are trousers, underwear is pants…the confusion I caused when I asked for a little tank top to wear under a thin sweater…)
When we first moved to England (where I lived with my now husband for a year in 2006) I went into culture shock. This is a really telling point on how sheltered I was before. We’re not even talking a country with a different language. But I was terrified. Shop assistants didn’t say hello when you entered their shop, streets were small, cars were going the wrong way, I didn’t know anyone. My first trip to the grocery store was on my own, with the instructions from Hubby to “Get some nice things for lunch, you know, Flapjacks and things.”. The Grocery store was a mystery. The same in places, just enough to get you confident and then…A Liquor and Wine Section? In The Grocery Store? What is Biological and Non-Biological Washing Powder and what is the difference? Why are the bags of chips so small? Why are the eggs not refrigerated? What the hell is UHT milk? And where would one even begin to look for something called a “flapjack”?
Well, later I found that a flapjack is like a granola bar with just the oats and brown sugary binding and is very nice. The wine section is a fabulous things as you can shop for dinner and wine to match, and the grocery stores have store brand wine which is fabulous value and even looks as pretty as the other bottles of wine. Booze is killer value in general actually, thus the English love of drinking. Everything else came eventually. But just because you speak the language does not mean that you know a thing about a place.
It was so important for me to live in the country that my husband was raised. We have a common language and understanding and I know what he means when he speaks about things from home. I get it. I get why he loved it. But also why he now lives here. Although if I said “Let’s move to New Zealand!” today he probably would be right into it as that’s the kind of chap he is. And then we could BOTH figure out a new weird grocery store system. But I digress.
Every month, I got BBC Good Food Magazine, and still do, and one of the ways I settled was reading it and making the recipes. It explained to me where I was a little bit every month in such a cozy way. So maybe I am an old fart because I read food magazines all the time, but I love those food magazines. They were like a Sherpa to me for a year.
By the way, their blog is awesome and really inspiring to me, check it out here.
