Today's blog has to do with a topic very near and dear to my heart, food. Food here is, of course, not dissimilar from food at home but there are some marked differences. Before I dive in it is important to remember that America has regional culinary differences and all of this is from my point of view, having grown up in Wisconsin.
One thing I think all Americans can get behind me on is my confusion when I first encountered a can of "Squirty Cream." Squirty cream is, as the name implies, cream that squirts, in other words its canned whipped cream like reddi-whip. After talking to my flat mate and another classmate I learned that canned whipped cream is much more rare over here than at home and usually (In her experience,) when a British family wants whipped cream they buy heavy whipping cream and whip it themselves.
One major difference is that they have a wider variety of pickled goods here. The traditional pickle as Americans know them are almost impossible to find at most grocery store and usually the closest you can get is the sweet gherkin. Pickle relish in the American sense is nonexistent. There are many relishes for sale but they are generally made of pickled carrots and other veggies with no pickled cucumbers included. I did manage to stumble upon a singular container of American style pickle relish after months of hunting (as you might be able to tell I put more thought into pickles than I need to) and it was clearly branded as being "New York Style" and shipped over from the states.
That brings me to the fact that I'm still not used to seeing America itself as a branding. If you run into "American style chicken" in America you are going to think "wow, that's vague, I wonder what it actually means" whereas if you run into it over here it seems to make perfect sense. The word "American" is added to chicken, pizza, lunch meats and more as a way of trying to spice up the product image. Notably absent is the ubiquitous Vermont maple syrup that you can find in the states. Instead maple syrup in the UK is all labeled Canadian (Canada does produce more maple syrup than Vermont but of course adding a location descriptor to the name is a conscious advertising choice.) Unsurprisingly local products such as mik bore the label "Scottish" in the same way you can find Wisconsin Cheddar or Idaho Potatoes.
One common descriptor that appears both here and in the states is "Southern." Southern fried chicken means the same thing at a tesco as it would at a Walmart. I obviously haven't made it a mission to hunt out and try different "southern" foods but the general consensus is that it tastes the same in that generic way that most foods that you need to add the descriptor southern do. Of course there is variation but the variation is no different than in the US.
One cultural difference I ran into today was that whereas my family has always cooked by volume (cups, tablespoons, and such) my flatmate and her family have always cooked by weight. After a bit more talk we decided that her method was standard for cooking/baking here and as far as I can tell the volume method is standard at home( at least insofar as that usually when I google a recipe it asks me to find some cups not a scale.) As long as the proper proportion is used there is no difference in the outcome but the fact that we did the same things differently and never realized it took me by surprise.