Living in a new country, you are granted a new pass for foods unexplored and names you’ve never heard creep into your vocabulary. When I first moved here, my boyfriend at the time wondered aloud what to have for tea. I glibly responded “Tea” not realizing until he laughed at my naivety that tea was another name for dinner. He also gave me a taste for a chip butty – chips in a roll with ketchup. Seven years ago I would have grimaced at the thought of eating that but since then have converted many a Canadian to the joys of fried carbs with more carbs. With a kebab shop on every corner, it’s an easy thing to find and something you’d never get at home.
I’m most fascinated though with all the names for bread – we call bread rolls buns in Canada whereas buns here are sweet things. Then there’s cob, bap, butty, barm – all names for the same thing whose use can betray where you come from. Suddenly there’s a new vocabulary of foods known by one name here and another at home. Ask for zucchini or eggplant and shop assistant’s eyes look at you blankly. But say courgette or aubergine and everything becomes magically clear.
Now I must confess, I love food. Love, love, love it and being in England, I’ve got a whole new range of food I eat...kinda. Some people who know me may be surprised to hear this as I’m a strict vegetarian – kinda like a vegan but not too overzealous. To those in question, a vegetarian, especially one who doesn’t do dairy and cheese and cream and eggs, etc., can’t love food let alone a range of it only because I don’t eat most of what THEY love. “Live without bacon sarnies and full fat fry-ups? Sunday roast or proper Christmas dinner? Gasp, shock and horror! It’s if the world will end without those food groups – or at least mine will.
I didn’t start out this way. I was born to omnivore parents in the heart of Alberta, a place known as much for its beef as its oil. There are more bumper stickers than I can count that say “I LOVE Alberta Beef” and how could you not? We didn’t grow up with a lot of money so other than Christmas, when we got all the food we couldn’t afford to eat the rest of the year, we had cheaper meat choices and mechanically prepared frozen vegetables gracing our table. As a side note, I blame my mom’s overzealous use of these veggies in all our meals for my current aversion to square shaped carrots and sweet corn.
Anyway, it wasn’t until I was twenty and living with a boyfriend that my true experience with meat began. He had an unfortunate (and deadly) allergy to chicken, fish and turkey so ours became a red meat house. Over the next year I ate more red meat then I’d ever had in my entire life – I gained a good stone and a half and didn’t feel my best by any means. One break up later and meat once again became a casual thing but now my taste for it was gone.
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