British Mexican

I love Mexican food, both the fake Taco Bell variety and the more hard-core "Oh god I got food poisoning in rural Mexico" variety. This is one thing I thought I would basically need to live without for most of my time in Hereford.

Not so! Even though the one Mexican restaurant over in Worcestershire is open, seriously, 2 and a half hours a day, and probably not worth the trip, the local stores do their best to provide some Mexican flare. A trip to the downtown Tesco (yet another grocery here - we have TWO of these!) provided us with some decent fixings for a Tex-Mexy meal, including the store brand taco kit, Mexicana cheese (tasted like the powder on nacho cheese Doritoes - good enough), red and green chilies of reasonable heat, and good ground beef (aka "mince"). Add to that some iceberg lettuce, fresh tomato, homemade guacamole from some weird kind of avocado with tiny seeds, and a can of Ortega Refried Beans (meh) and we had quite a meal. I wouldn't call it "real" Mexican but it served an important purpose. Tesco also carried dried cascabel, habanero, and ancho chilies (wow) - but they were more pence and more ambitious then last night's meal needed.

I noticed by the way, the only North American beer I see on a regular basis in stores here is Corona. You see an occasionally Michelobe, maybe a Budweiser, and oddly enough, both Fat Tire and Anchor Steam.

Fridge 2.0

Our moving company on the Chicago-side casually mentioned that they worked with a company in the Chicago suburbs that sold European-voltage appliances. We could buy a UK-ready fridge in the USA, avoid paying US sales tax, and ship it with our stuff. Seemed like a good idea. I did some price matching USA vs UK and found that refrigerators here ain't what we used to in the US. They are smaller, come in funny shapes, and they are really expensive. Based on that, we ended up buying a Maytag, a side-by-side fridge with ice and water in the door. Nice.

While the fridge was en route across the Atlantic, we came to the realization that that fridge was gigantic (seriously, nearly double the size of most) by English standards and that we really didn't have a good spot (if any) to put it in the Lilacs. Uh-oh. So then we tried to sell it -- we could sell it for half of what someone would pay here and we would still break even. Even at that price, we couldn't find any takers.

Saturday afternoon, we bit the bullet and decided to bring in the English über-fridge. This meant that the wife and I had to carry the fridge from the garage, then around the house, then get it in the door, and put it in place.

...

...

4 hours later... after we had to take the door off the house (which meant breaking the 60 years of paint off the hinges), then take the door and hinges off the fridge (the manual said to call an qualified engineer if this was required - whatever!), then remove a shelf (same paint issues), and so on and so forth... we slid the fridge into place and turned it on.

It took us about 10 seconds to decide we had made the right decision. The crammed little fridge in the picture was our temporary fridge that we borrowed from Rach's office. I'll give her packing skills credit but it wasn't the most convenient thing (and everything near the tiny icebox froze). And good luck fitting a beer in there.

The bottom picture is the new fridge, at least what I could fit in the picture frame. We made an extra shopping trip today to fill Big Ben (we named our fridge -- I think we miss our friends). We now have ice, cold beer, cold cider, meats, cheeses, salad dressings, pickles... it's beautiful! Now I can get that half a lamb I've been eye-balling over at the butchers.

Went Looking for Snail Tracks, Found James Bond...

Somewhere around Hereford there is supposedly a snail farm at which you can buy fresh and frozen snails for gourmet consumption. Today we went looking for the little snacks in a shell. The Internet references to Credenhill Snail Farm are plentiful but provided only a vague address (often the case with UK addresses, we find) and a phone number that goes to an answering machine. We figured Credenhill (a small village northwest of Hereford) couldn't be too big and this farm (sometimes called the National Snail Farm) should have some sort of sign, right? No such luck. We drove all over and never found the place. But I did notice some wierd signage along a fence with a large green space between it and the road. The sign said something about how this spot was included in some "Secrets and Silence Act of Cocksansuch 1932" and that any sketching, note-taking, photography, etc. was strictly prohibited and punishable by unimaginable tortures and so forth. Odd, I thought.

We gave up on the snail tracking (ha!) and went home, snailless. Later on, I did some more Internet searching for snails and found more ambiguity but also what I think is the reason for the funny signs about secrets. The British SAS, or Special Air Services, Regiment 22 is headquartered in Credenhill. This is a very substantial wing of the special forces here and is responsible for, among other things:

Medium and deep battlespace ISTAR and offensive operations, Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW), Counter-Terrorism (CT), close protection and defence diplomacy

I guess Hereford is full of surprises. But I would have rather found the snails.

Tatties For Boo

The EU's requirements for importing dog food are apparently so complicated and constantly changing that there is little hope for a American-based dog food to be sold over here. We couldn't bring Boo's food and we can't buy it here. Our defective pooch, Boo, is allergic to grain, which rules out the food we can find locally in Hereford. We considered just feeding her whatever we're having for dinner but those of you that know Boo, know Boo's gas, too. Maybe bangers and mashed washed down with a pint wouldn't be an ideal meal for her tiny little digestive system.

On top of that, we had been feeding her a very high-protein food -- most dog food doesn't have all that much protein in it and she was used to about 30% protein. We had a nightmare experience switching her to that diet (3 weeks, little sleep, lots of nasty)and we weren't ready to go back to low-protein for fear of the same issues.

I did some research and finally found a German-based manufacturer by the name of Luposan. They make a couple of products for dogs with allergies and we decided to try Luposan Sport, a grain-free, 25% protein food. Even better, we can get it delivered in about a day or two to our door.

So far, so good. The gas is still there but its potentcy seems greatly reduced. Allergies seem reduced (but that's always hard to judge.) And she has beautiful poop. For the dog owners out there, you know what I mean. The only apparent drawback of the food is that Boo is now a one-dog army in that she can "make" five times a day now. Good thing we have a big lawn.

These Pretzels Are Making Me Fursty

Yet another beer. The decision to try this one was based on name alone. Look at the little ferrets staring at the beer cask: it has to be good!

When doing some "research" on this one, I came across information in Wikipedia that explained some confusion I've had at some of the pubs around here. If you ask what they have on draft, they ask you if you want beer or ale (and sometimes cider). I thought ale was just a kind of beer (and I think by US standards, it is) but here I think I am border-line offensive when I group the two into one word.

A "real ale" (a term invented in 1973 by the Campaign for Real Ale -- hmm), like Fursty Ferret, can start just like beer as we know it. But, has these additional restrictions:

"(the beer is) matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide"

In plain English, this means that the yeast that makes all beer ferment isn't removed from the beer and nothing is done to kill the yeast. The live yeast is in the bottle or cask or keg when you open it and when it is served. In theory, this makes the brew more complex since it is maturing right up until it hits your lips. The same fermentation process also keeps the ale fresher. Most beer in the USA is filtered to remove the yeast and then flash pasteurized (heated) to kill the yeast action in the beer.

The second part of the statement above, regarding the use of carbon dioxide, means that almost all beers in the USA would be disqualified from 'real ale' status. Most bars in the US have tanks of pressurized CO2 that push the beer through the tap. To be a real ale, this isn't allowed. Many (if not all) of the pubs here have hand pumps for the real ales. They look like the taps in the US, but the guy behind the bar has to pump the tap to draw the beer from the cask.

A real ale is almost guaranteed to be fresh, since once a cask is opened, it has a life of only a few days before the exposure to oxygen makes it go funky.

Get all that? Good! Now sit back and enjoy some furrific advertising:

Pandora's Boxes

Whew. Our Chicago packers were quite liberal in their use of paper. This picture is one I took after about 2 hours of breaking down boxes and consolidating paper into 'just a few' boxes. That row of 14 large dish boxes in the picture is packed completely full of paper. I'd guess each box weighs 30 to 40 pounds. This is about a 1/3 of the boxes and paper that our stuff was packed into. The moving crew took another third of it when they left. The rest is still upstairs holding our clothes and shoes. And shoes. And shoes. And shoes. And some books. I sure do have a lot of shoes.

BTW - over the top left of the boxes, you can see the Lilac tree from a previous post.

What It Takes to be The Lilacs

The Lilacs finally revealed its namesake. The front gate had a rather plain tree next to it, sprouting out of the top of the hedge. Over the last week it dramatically burst into bloom: lilacs, of course! The fragrance counter-acts the occasionally wind from the nearby chicken farm.

Tintern, Again?

It won't be long before I think this is hilarious. Cheers!

Dead Ringer

FYI -- My USA cell phone is no longer active... email me and I can provide a UK mobile number and Skype number.

Beautiful Pub

The UK has an organization that celebrates beer called simply "Beautiful Beer". We took a break from unpacking tonight and visited a local spot (and there are only a couple in Herefordshire) that has won a Beautiful Beer award. The place was the New Inn and it won a Beautiful Beer Gold Award just this year. From the Beautiful Beer website,

"The Gold Award shows that the pub has passed a rigorous assessment of its beers, from the cellar to the glass."

The New Inn featured a mostly traditional British menu, with steak and ale pie and fish and chips on the menu, as well as a couple of Herefordshire steaks. They also had a "Food Charter" that explains that all of their food, where possible, is locally sourced. For items that cannot be purchased locally, like cocoa, they will only purchase from Fair Trade Suppliers (a first for Herefordshire). A feature I hadn't seen over here was an ever-changing beer menu featuring new beers each month. I had a Batemans XXXB. Good beer: a smooth, refreshing bitter.

For our meal:

Starters:
Mushroom Soup with Crusty Farmhouse Bread (2)
Creamy Garlic Mushrooms on Toasted Farmhouse Bread (2)
Mains:
Steak, Mushroom, and Ale Pie (3)
Cornish Fish and Chips (upgraded to Cajun chips) with Peas(2)

All in all, a good meal worth remembering. I'm sure we'll go back -- especially since we found out we can take Boo as long as we stay in certain areas of the pub and restaurant.