Florida is feeling more and more like my home now. I've been here for nearly five months, and England is beginning to feel somewhat far away. I still miss a few things about the old country, though.
- Sausages. Of all the foods I expected to miss, it's proper English sausages, with mashed potatoes I miss most. The stuff they call sausage here just isn't right. And salami and wurst, while they're also sausages, are just not what you need for bangers and mash. If I really felt like it, I could get some at The English Shoppe (sic) but I can't quite bring myself to go in there. When I get back to England, expect me to gorge myself on sausages for at least three days.
- Decent Indian food. The Thai food is fabulous here, and the Asian food in general is astounding, but I still haven't found a good curry. I love making it myself, but I haven't cooked a proper curry in ages, because I just don't have the ingredients. I've been told a few places to buy good Indian spices, but I do miss having a huge selection in every supermarket, and I really miss having Mill Road on my doorstep.
- Fish and chips. Yes, they sell fish and chips in the local Irish pub. It's not the same. It's really not. I crave Tommy Tucker's. (You may detect a food-related theme emerging here...)
- Top Gear. Yes, yes, I know you can get it on cable. And I know you can torrent it. But we don't have cable, and I can't be arsed to torrent it. Top Gear was pretty well the only show I watched on British TV in 2009, and I just used to like settling down on a Sunday evening with a beer watching the Hamster.
- Old stone buildings. I grew up in school buildings 600 years old. I went to university in buildings 500 years old. I owned a house with bits well over 400 years old. It's weird being in a place where anything older than me is called "historic". Orlando and Winter Park literally did not exist 120 years ago, and most of it is only a few decades old. I yearn for places where you can sense the passage of time. Maybe ancient Indian mounds will do the trick.
Tomorrow: things I expected to miss, but don't.
4 comments:
but you can still find marmite in the stores there, right?
Come up north. We've got proper Indian food up here, and LOTS of it.
Tari - see today's post! :)
Brian - how far north? I know we have pretty high standards for Indian food. What we get in Britain is, at its best, as good as anything you'll find in India. I was both surprised and disappointed when I was in Mumbai that the food was just like I could get at home - just a LOT cheaper!
New England north. We've actually got a rather high Indian and Middle Eastern population up here, especially in my area.
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