24th July - Come to England

[Mitra]

The sun is shining today - clear blue skies, and the temperature is a very pleasant 70 :D.

I'm floundering a bit wondering what food to serve you - some of the things that were mentioned when we went to Scotland and Ireland are also quite traditional in England - like smoked haddock (which is just delicious if you poach it lightly and serve it with scrambled egg). Lots of other typical English dishes are not very low carb :( - like Yorkshire pudding, and suet puddings (both sweet and savoury). Both raspberries and strawberries are wonderful at this time of year, though, and also blackcurrants. We've only recently started to eat blueberries, but we have a very small wild relative, the bilberry, and I used to love going out with my grandfather to pick them on the hills near their home.

Roast beef is so much of a cliché that I won't belabour the point, though it is still a favourite. The English breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon, mushrooms ... is pretty good. It used to be accompanied by one small piece of bread fried in the bacon fat, but these days you'll probably get a pile of toast. There are alternatives such as devilled kidneys or kippers. Boiled ham is a pretty traditional thing to have for "tea" (when I was a child, lunch was called "dinner" and was the main meal of the day whenever work/school permitted, and the evening meal was called "tea."). Tea would include boiled ham, tongue, cheese, pork pie, corned beef, boiled eggs, and a token salad of a few lettuce leaves and a tomato or two - and bread and butter. These days, the pastry is eaten along with the filling of pork pies, but they used to be made as a way of preserving the meat for longer, for sending to relatives in different parts of the country, or for taking on board a ship, and then the pastry was very thick and hard, and was just used as a way of sealing the meat, and not intended to be eaten. If you don't need to keep your meat unrefrigerated for weeks, you can skip the pastry altogether and just bake the middle like a chunky meatloaf. We've been having a chicken and ham one recently which is very nice, and makes a great lunch.

It's quite hard to pin down English food, because we've had so much to-ing and fro-ing with various neighbouring countries for the last couple of thousand years - the Romans brought sausages, which are still a great staple, though ours tend to be fresh rather than the cured ones (like salami) popular in France and Italy. For the last thousand years or so there's been a lot of contact with France - for a long time French was the official court language in England, so there has always been a strong French influence on the food, especially for the wealthier classes. Then over the last few hundred years, during the time of the British Empire, we began to adopt Indian food, too. Some of it appears in very Anglicised forms like Kedgeree (kippers, hard boiled egg and rice - not something that bears much resemblance to the rice & lentil kichadi you might actually see in India :lol:), but also, as Max mentioned yesterday, there are some towns with very high Indian/Pakistani populations, and masses of Indian restaurants. There's a look at English food on the Weston A Price site: Merrie Old England (http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/merrie_olde_england.html) and a collection of UK and Irish recipes that I linked to yesterday at the foody (http://www.thefoody.com/).

If you can't find something to eat from all that, we're now importing Macdonalds et al from USA, along with American muffins and the like :).

[Anniesnan]

Morning,

I've been having a bad few days...again:(

Out of sorts over I don't know what and feeling hungry. So, this morning, I'm having an extra egg (usually have 2), but I'm having them hard boiled.

Mitra, we called our evening meals "supper", but it was usually a full meal - protein (every Friday it was tuna fish, fish sticks, boiled potatoes), potato, and other vegetable - except on Sunday.

Sunday, we would have Sunday dinner - which we'd eat early (around 2), followed by a very light supper - usually cold cuts - sliced ham, sliced spiced ham, roast beef, cheese - with potato salad, cole slaw, macaroni salad.

I'm hoping to make today a good day!

[Ammy]

I didn't have time for the Scotch eggs I mentioned yesterday, but I should have plenty of time tonight to try them out!
Thanks for all the info, and the HISTORY Mitra. BTW, what is kipper?

I weighed the same today as I did yesterday. First day I haven't either gone up or down. I ate a LOT of protein last night...I was SO hungry I was shaky. I have to be careful not to use my evening meal as a time to INDULGE!!

I MUST get in my four shakes today, and since I drove my GF to the airport at 4, and had my first shake at 6:30, I SHOULDN'T have a problem!!

[maxlharris]

Let's see, when I think British food (this from someone who's only actual time in country was 5 hours in the airport) I think:
Prime Rib (with Yorkshire pudding... Dr. Atkins, in DANDR, has a LC Yorkshire Pudding recipe using Atkins Bake Mix {I bet you could use Carb Quik}, 1/4 cup wheat gluten, 3 eggs, whole milk, salt and drippings, at 4g net carbs per serving)
Fish & Chips (We have an Irish guy in our town, operates a very fancy restaurant, but also operates a slightly upscale fish&chippery cause he couldn't get in NoVa what he used to get in Dublin)
Bangers and Mash (I wonder if you could make with Mashed Cauliflower?)
Vindaloo (there's a soccer anthem about this)
Sweets (none for us)
etc.

At any rate, something interesting I picked up: London is the city with the most languages spoken there on any given day. I find this incredible, since my home city boasts the home of the United Nations, but if the Virgin Atlantic in seat TV monitor says it's true, it must be.

On plan for three days in a row. Making the switch. Was hard doing intervals this morning. But, I'm gonna be back on this game, hard core, before we know it.

[Claudette]

Mitra, thanks for all the food history. When I have time today, I will go there.

My great-grandmother, the one who married to Scottish physician, was a Hobbs and her family hailed from England. She lived to be 100, so I saw her at least weekly untill I was 12. Wonderful lady, wish she was still here.

She,too, called lunch, dinner and we had "tea" at night. Your tea menu brings back great memories. She did incorporate some Scottish items into tea.

Everything is planned today, snacks, lunch,etc.

Hugs,
Claudette

[Billie]

Mitra--THANKS!!! This is my last official day in the office and we are moving the last of the things tonight after dinner with friends to Chicago. The plane will leave tomorrow morning for somewhere!!! :)

Thanks everyone for being patient with me during this moving process, it has been one thing after another, including our new sofa not fitting into ANY of the doors, a car we bought that they were supposed to install a navigation system into 2 weeks ago and still not in---just those normal ups and downs of moving!

But starting tomorrow I have a week off, so we will be doing some traveling on the Protein Power Passport to our good health, see you tomorrow!

[maxlharris]

Oh yeah, I should mention. I committed to doing Italy tomorrow, so that's where we're going. The land of pizza, pasta, and panini. And some other good stuff.

[hawk]

YAY(for tomorrow)..I found Dreamfields in our local Kroger .I rarely go there except for carb master yogurt. I am looking forward to tomorrow and have been for awhile.

My grandfather was English...Hungerford. His mom was Daisy Kidman...What a name! They farmed for a living when they came here and cooked alot of potatoes and roast. My great grandparents had 21 children together. 1 set of twins. Grandpa was #6. Several of their grandchildren are older than their youngest child.(THE BRITISH ARE COMING!!!) I guess my great grandfather loved kids and always had some on his lap reading to them. Amazing. Our family reunions took up the whole park. I've been told the house was spotless and every one had a job to do. My great grandma came to my wedding and was around for the birth of my first son. We have 5 generation photos.She died at age 89.

I remember the fish and herring in cream sauce being served.Also the roast beef and duck and wild game. I don't know how english it all is.

[WakefieldWendy]

I'm here, haven't gone anywhere, eating on plan. Was out for work travel at the end of last week, and am leaving again this afternoon, so you won't see me for another week. But I haven't flown the coup!

Brew yourself a perfect cup of tea, close your eyes, and think of England. :)

[Anniesnan]

Afternoon everyone!

Since breakfast is the only meal I almost never have a problem with, I decided to have breakfast for lunch today - but I think I'll call it DINNER;) .

I know for many people it would be boring, but I had eggs again - this time with some sauteed bits of left over ham steak (with a little muenster cheese). Hopefully this will hold me for a couple of hours, at least:cool: .

I'm bringing some nuts with me back to work for a snack, along with a small thermos of coffee - save from temptation at the deli or soda machine:D .

Later

[Ammy]

Absolutely NOTHIN wrong with eggs...
They're my "fall-back" food, when I can't think straight enough to figure out what to eat...eggs and almonds...

...well, not together...but those two items:rolleyes: !!!

[Karole]

We eat a lot of eggs too. They are a decent supply of protein and go with so many other foods. And most importantly for the day-- I'll bet they have eggs in England so we can have them with our kippers hey?

Mitra, I was wondering about the flooding in England. Are the flood waters anywhere close to you? Hope not. It looked pretty bad for Tewkesburry I think it was. Not sure. Taking folks out by helicopters and every thing.

My youngest dd came over to visit this morning and just left a bit ago. We had a good visit. Don't see her to often as she works the night shift at the hospital and sleeps during the days.

We are expecting a son and family from Ky to arrive on Fri. so we will be busy over the weekend. All the family here will be over too and we always have a houseful, but it is fun. I will have to figure out what in the world I am going to eat, but that won't be too hard I'm sure.

Gotta go get busy again, see ya later this evening.

[Mitra]

Thanks for your concern about the flooding over here. I haven't been affected, nor have any of my family, but it's been pretty bad in some places.

Karole, yes, we definitely have eggs in England :).

Wendy, I think lying back and thinking of England was something different :eek:. Not on a family board ;).

Hawk, what a family! The food sounds pretty English - although the herring in cream sauce could be Scandinavian.

Max, I'm always up for some Italian food :cool:. You could serve cauliflower mash with your sausages, or mashed celeriac (celery root) or swede (rutabaga) all work and give you more for your carbs than sausages. I've seen some older Yorkshire pudding recipes, and they tend to have less flour and more egg than the later ones, so that can be doable with a little effort (toad in the hole - sausages in Yorkshire pudding - is pretty good).

Amy - kippers are smoked herring. The fish is gutted, then opened out flat, with bones and head still attached, then smoked. Some people don't like them because they have lots of little bones and can be a bit fiddly to eat, but I think it's worth it :nod: with a nice big dollop of butter.

Billie, hope you're getting through the trauma of moving :).

[gitfiddle]

How nice it is to rejoin the tour on England's day! It's been very interesting reading. My grandma made yorkshire pud like a pancake rather than baked, and she put corn syrup on mind so I'd eat it. :o She wasn't the best cook in the world. When I was a little girl, I spent so much time with my gran that I sounded like I was from Yorkshire, so I hear. I'm really glad I had the chance to visit the relatives because the whole generation of my mother's cousins are almost all gone.

I had my first fish and chips at Harry Ramsdens (sp?) and my mother knew to put vinegar on hers while I was looking around for the ketchup. I loved the Dales, just driving along (minding the sheep!) through the narrow lanes edged by the endless stone walls. They'd bring us right through people's farmyards and Lord help you if you met someone coming!

London was great and we made good use of the Underground. The bus system was confusing!

So it's Italy tomorrow? Well, it can't be all pasta and pizza, so I'll wait to hear what Max has to say. I could go back and read his vacation notes, but I don't have time today.

Cheerio!

[Anniesnan]

Hi everyone!

The eggs at lunch did it...I didn't come home ready to rip through house ... nor did I hit the snack machine:D

Karole - it's so wonderful to have family visit.

Carol - I worked for a man from Sicily - and one of his favorite one pot meals was a frittata - so I can have my eggs and still visit Italy:D
when we do Italian food, about the carbiest thing I get is eggplant rollatini for an appetizer - the place we go to doesn't use breadcrumbs
I haven't yet made low carb Italian cheesecake, but one of these days, I will try it.

[Karole]

Carol !! So good to have you back, sure have missed you while you were gone. Hope you had a great vacation.

You mentioned Yorkshire and it made me think --I have a Yorkie and so he is our resident English being here in the Ozarks. Your description of riding though out the country side also made me recall reading James Herriot's "All Things Great and Small" (I read the whole series) He gave a wonderful description of the life of a vet in countryside England.

Mitra , so glad you are avoiding the flooding. Hope has gone down some by now.

I had a yes for my Stamp today. Protein 123 ecc 27 so all is good.

See every one in Italy !! ciao a tutti a domani

[Anniesnan]

I get a stamp for today - hooray, hooray!

Spent the evening Annie chasing - and man am I pooped.

Annie got so dirty, I gave her a "stand up tubby" in my kitchen sink, using the spray attachment :lol: She really thought it was hilarious that I got water all over everywhere:lol: .

I guess I should be embarrassed, but instead I'm proud, my kids were always the dirtiest kids on the block when they got home (despite leaving the house clean:rolleyes: ).

[gitfiddle]

Thanks Karole! I did have a very good time. Played music for hours a day and saw friends I haven't seen in a year, others I see all the time. I sold two guitars and gave lessons to the people who bought them as part of the package. That more than paid for my camping fee, plus I have more room in my closet at home.

I've read Herriot, although it's been years. He was a great scene-painter and accurate as near as I could tell. I wish I could have stayed longer when I was there. It's a beautiful part of the country!

Agnes, I had forgotten a fritatta is Italian. I love them!

[Mitra]

Carol, my father is from Yorkshire. My parents don't live there, but his mother did until I was about 16, when she moved in with my parents. Before that, I used to spend a week with her each summer, and for several years we had our family holiday in the Yorkshire Dales.

English pancakes are made from exactly the same batter as Yorkshire pudding - they're sort of like a more robust form of the French crepe, not the thicker American style.

[Ammy]

As odd as it sounds...I DID stay within my protein/carb goals...but I certainly ate MORE than I planned...

It's 95 degrees here, dew point of 70...therefore it feels like 101. It's too hot and sticky to be outside...therefore I sit INSIDE...and what's inside?? FOOD!!!

ARGH!!!

[maxlharris]

Made food and exercise today. So, I got my English Stamp.

[gitfiddle]

Carol, my father is from Yorkshire. My parents don't live there, but his mother did until I was about 16, when she moved in with my parents. Before that, I used to spend a week with her each summer, and for several years we had our family holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. See? We're almost related!


English pancakes are made from exactly the same batter as Yorkshire pudding - they're sort of like a more robust form of the French crepe, not the thicker American style. That may have been what gran was making, then. I like mine (when I used to eat them) on the thicker side with whole grain flour, not delicate at all. DH likes his very thin and with a touch of vanilla. I haven't made them in a long while.