Can I offer you a Petrovitch?
While only my fraternity buddies from Purdue, and possibly a few others, will appreciate this, I had to post it. Prior to Christmas we found these at a local food shop. Although not spelled the same (as far as I remember), I thought these were an interesting tribute to the brothers from Munster.
As you can probably see, these are fruit jellies filled with liqueur. They are also very sugary and a little goes a long way. Anyone interested in trying these can find them at Lakeland Limited.
Wednesday's British Word of the Week
For those wondering where I've been, I was on holiday (that's a vacation) in the States for a couple of weeks at Christmas, and I've spent the last few weeks recovering from all the running around trying to see everyone.
Anyway, this post is the first of a new feature for the blog called "Wednesday's word of the week". So until I run out of new British words, or people stop saying things I don't understand, there will be a post similar to this every Wednesday.
Today's word is:
Crisps - Crisps are what we Americans would call potato chips, which shouldn't be confused with UK chips (think Fish and Chips), which we would call French Fries. If you click on the link, you can get a brief history of the crisp. There you will learn that the flavoured crisp was first developed in Ireland. The UK has continued with this development, taking flavoured crisps to the extreme. If you can think of a flavour, they probably have it here, along with several others that you would never think of. Walker's is probably the biggest crisp manufacturer. Some of their flavours include:
Chargrilled Steak & Peppercorn Sauce
Four Cheese & Red Onion
Oven Roasted Chicken & Thyme
Roasted Onion & Balsamic Vinegar
Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper
Slow Roasted Lamb & Mint
Thai Sweet Chilli
BarbecueBeef & Onion
Cheese & Onion
Heinz Tomato Ketchup
Marmite Yeast Extract
Pickled Onion
Prawn Cocktail
Ready Salted
Roast Chicken
Salt & Vinegar
Smoky Bacon
Worcester Sauce
Paprika
I've only been brave enough to try the Salt and Vinegar, Ready Salted, Prawn Coctail and the Ketchup, all of which were pretty good.
They also have special holiday crisps. At Christmas time you can get several turkey flavoured variants.
Long Time No Blog
Sorry for the lack of activity on the blog lately. J & J, I'm sure you were about to give up on us. Yankee and I were in the States for the Christmas holiday. Yankee came back on New Year's Day and I just returned Tuesday from a month-long visit. I had a nice visit with my sister, brother-in-law and niece in El Paso, TX before backtracking to Indy to meet up with Yankee. It was definitely nice to be home and especially nice to spend time with our dog. Here he is with his new blanket he got for Christmas (Thanks R & J!!!).
The trip back here went much smoother then the trip there. It's a long haul from Nottingham to El Paso, especially when dealing with weather delays in Newark and Chicago. After having to get off one plane and literally run to another terminal in O'Hare (was the first time I heard my name over the airport intercom) I made it to El Paso after 22+ hours of traveling. Not recommended. The only snafu coming back happened before I even left for the airport. Some of you may know I have had some trouble with the stairs in our house in the past. Specifically, I have fallen down them on more than one occasion. Now before anyone goes calling the Spousal Abuse Hotline on my behalf, I don't "fall down the stairs." I have always been unassisted. Plus, I would only "fall down the stairs" once before Yankee was involved in an unfortunate "accidental shooting." Catch my drift? Anyway, this time I fell down the first five stairs carrying one of my suitcases down. No major injuries, just a hideous bruise on my arm. Perhaps I should be supervised on the stairs from now on.....
So, other than nursing my arm back to health, not much has been going on here since our return. We just booked a trip to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. That should be a lot of fun. Yankee is really looking forward to visiting the Guinness factory and having some fresh-as-you-can-get-it Guinness. Not me - I'm just hoping they have the Guinness Bitter on tap there. Now that is some good stuff. In addition to Dublin, we have a few other trips planned so far this year. We'll be spending a week in Italy in April, then I believe Yankee is going fly-fishing in Scotland with a friend from the States. My parents, sister & brother-in-law will be coming over to visit this summer or fall. We'll be doing some traveling while they are here, just not sure where to yet. Amsterdam is looking promising.
