Saturday, July 27, 2013

Wow, I haven't cooked in so long!

     Dudes, it's been a while. It took so much longer to find a place than I thought. Britain makes that shit so hard. We arrived here in Bristol expecting to find a place within a week or two. In Vancouver that's pretty realistic, but since we're a couple we ended up teaming up with an awesome couple (one American, one Polish) to find a flat.
    We thought we had found a place, but the guys so SO sketchy, trying to get us to give him 1000 pounds and leave to photocopy the forms without a receipt or anything. We obviously told him that made us super uncomfortable and that we could photocopy the papers then give him the money after. He told us there was absolutely no way, and that we made him uncomfortable and he didn't want us as tenants. Such bullshit! Long story short, we almost got scammed. In the end we found a really cool flat with an agency, but had to wait two and a half weeks to get it.
     My point is this: I haven't really had a kitchen until now, so I couldn't make good food. I've missed cooking and there are some interesting differences here for people with stomach issues. Here is a list:
  • British people love sub-par Italian food.
  • They deep fry every fucking thing in batter
  • Kebabs. Everywhere.
  • No gluten-free anything, except one chain of sub-par Italian restaurants.
  • They sell goat's milk in most supermarkets! 
  • They use the French names for veg sometimes, and have no idea what it is if you say it in English. (Eggplant for example, is aubergine.)
  • British people have NO CLUE how to make a decent sandwich.
  • Every person ever grows rosemary and lavender
     So, when we moved into our flat, the first thing I did, obviously was cook. I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't super happy with the result, so I have to fiddle around with the goat's milk bechamel (a white sauce) and get back to you guys when I perfect that.
     But what I did make was rosemary and lavender chicken breasts. Omg, guys. It was so good. What I did was ninja some fresh lavender, rosemary, and hydrangeas from someone's garden. Rosemary and lavender for the chicken, hydrangeas for the centre piece. (I take other people's flowers and herbs because I suck at growing my own, sorry.)
    When I got home, I threw some oil in a cooking tray, sprinkled my chicken with salt, pepper, rosemary, lavender and lemon juice. Then I Threw it in the over for 15-20 mins. It was great. Unlike the rest of the meal. I was assured it was good, but it wasn't my best, so you don't get to see it.

     Stick around kids, next week I'm going to Belgium, so hopefully there will be posts about me eating mussels in Brussels, etc etc. Then when I get back, I'm gonna make some posts about the awesome cider here~ Bristol may not be a gluten-free place to eat, but they sure do love their cider! Also, maybe I'll get better photos because one of my roommates is a photographer, and I've basically been taking my pictures with a potato.

Later days,
Brittney