Saturday, November 10, 2012

Moonstruck

There's a bit in Moonstruck - actually it could be in any film featuring Italian people in the United States but I'm pretty sure it was Moonstruck - where the family sits down to eat mountains of spaghetti and behave like Italians. The film came to mind as I dithered between Spotted Dick and Lemon Meringue.

I'd been out all morning and I hadn't been anywhere near Spain. At one point there was a gang of us hanging around a petrol station just out of Barinas. I was one of them. I had an alcohol free beer in hand and I was enjoying the sunshine as I wandered around looking for a poster advertising the loss of a dog. A chap who was blowing up the tyres on his van shouted across to the pump attendant that the place had a very foreign feeling today. The petrol man just laughed.

We were on a car treasure hunt. This one was to raise money for Barney's dog rescue. There must have been about forty of us involved as we drove hither and thither counting the number of arches here and the purpose of the flagpoles there. Perfectly good fun. Our endpoint was the White House restaurant in Fortuna where I feasted on liver and onions. I even considered ordering a cuppa to finish the meal just to maintain the Britishness of it all.

I'm aware of my Britishness much more here than I ever was when I lived in the UK. I'm reminded of it every time I try to coax one of my students to pronounce would like wood and not like gwud and every time a waiter gives me that second glance as I order something.

I went for the mixed fruit cheesecake in the end by the way.

2 comments:

  1. So, is lemon curd the wonderfully gooey substance in lemon merangue pies? I keep passing up jars of it at the grocery store, not sure what it's for or how it'll taste. I do pick up imported, canned custard instead of making my own because--well, because my own never compares to good Devon custard. I'm not British, but sometimes I think that's just an oversight. I clearly should have been.

    I'm new to your blog, really enjoying!

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  2. You're asking the wrong person for food commentary. Lemon curd, is a lemon flavoured jam/jelly usually spread on bread or toast. It is not the lemon part of a lemon meringue pie. There's something called lemon cheese which is quite similar but smoother - I think that the difference is that lemon cheese contains butter whilst lemon curd doesn't. I could look it all up on Google of course but then so could you.

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