When in Doubt, Add Butter. And Bacon.

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
~John Gunther

I'm not a breakfast person.

I take that back -- I love breakfast, but I am a confirmed night owl and I just am rarely up early enough to make a difference between breakfast and lunch. And I'm not usually hungry right after I wake up, so maximizing sleep before rushing out the door to work when I was working make breakfast near an impossibility.

But today, today I celebrate. For the past few weeks, I've had the darnedest time sleeping. When I get stressed, sleep eludes me, and then I'm up in the middle of the night and it's so quiet and calm, it's a shame to waste that island of calm in the middle of the storm with sleep, so everything gets off kilter and I feel even worse. And I don't get hungry. So sleep and hunger goes... not a sustainable method of living, huh?

But last night, I slept. 7.5 hours of blissful sleep -- while it was dark. At a normal sleep time. Of course, that means I woke up at 6:30 this morning, which oy, who's up at 6:30? My flatmate, but I digress. On the other hand, we have such thin walls, and she has such a pleasant alarm...

But I was up after sleeping and I decided -- I want breakfast. But not cold cereal and milk 'borrowed' from my flatmates. No, I want breakfast.



I want eggs cooked in real butter. I want bacon cooked to crispy -- or as close as I can get to crispy with the thicker cut bacon here. Seriously, streaky bacon is close to American bacon, but still cut too thick. And I want grits, that lovely taste of home. A croissant to mop up the runny egg and a delivery system for more butter.

Oh, and tea with a splash of milk. Hey, I'm in the UK -- I've developed a few British habits after all.

Tastes Like Home

Ah, spring break. That glorious time where students forget that they have work due soon and pretend that they are carefree. I'm going to take a couple of days and pretend I'm carefree!

Part of that carefree needs to grab some motivation to go to the grocery store because I am quickly running out of food. In an attempt to once again put it off, it left me scrambling to figure out what I had to eat in this place. Which then I remembered... I'd been sent grits in a care package. I could make breakfast.



For those who are not from nor have visited the southern US, grits are basically coarsely ground corn that when combined with boiling water forms a thick porridge. And it is amazing.

So I had grits and toast and it was like I was tasting home at that moment. All I'd need is some country ham and if I closed my eyes, I'd think I was home!

But it was surprising to me that food made such a difference when dealing with a little homesickness. It's amazing what grits, or American lemonade, or a Reese's cup will do. I needed that little taste of home more than realized, and the smile that ended up on my face from that little bowl of grits? Well, the Tesco can wait one more day.

Work It

When I say I'm going to the gym, I want people to assume it's because I'm totally into heath and keeping in shape and being the best me I can be, etc.




In reality? I'm a poor grad student, and I can't afford all of the luxuries I got used to by being a member of the working world. You know, luxuries such as soft toilet paper and television. Although I did find a solution to one of those problems. That solution was the University Sports Centre. All of the machines have televisions with a full cable package (not just the BBC) and the gym fee was cheaper than buying a tv and getting the tv license. I can go and watch live tv which I have desperately missed being a poor grad student in a foreign land and not feel so guilty for doing it because look! I'm running/jogging/... okay, walking at the same time! I'm doing something productive, not just vegging out in front of the tv.

Although the kicker in all of it? What do I like to watch on the weekends? High-minded drama? Informative documentary? News?

Oh no. As I exercise, I watch cooking shows. Specific Jamie's 30 Minute Meals, at the moment. I adore Jamie Oliver, and his 30 minute meals blow Rachel Ray out of the water. No shortening names to something cutesie, thank god.

So this is my workout confession. I go to the gym to watch cooking shows. And I have no shame. Although I DO have a great recipe for a Thai red curry with prawns and sugar snap peas now...

After Valentine's

The best part about Valentine's Day is the day after. Why?



Candy is at LEAST half off. Which makes the 15th it's own very special candy holiday. Think I'm going to shell out for chocolates in the days leading up to Valentine's just to have chocolate on that day? No sir. All I have to do is wait a day and I can get a cute little cheeky devil for half.



And that cheeky devil is made of milk, dark, and white chocolate. AKA it's made of deliciousness.

Now if only the kilo tub of Haribo bears was on sale, that would be divine...

The Aero Bar

I admit, I miss a lot of food from back home. Flavors, brands, the fact that salsa can have actual heat in the States, but every now and then I find something in the Tesco that makes me go 'why don't we have this in the States??'




Sweet mother of Hershey, why don't we have this in the States??

For those who've never had a taste of this amazing little concoction, it's a solid milk chocolate bar. Pretty standard. However! It's been aerated, so the bar is full of little bubbles. Why would you want bubbles in a candy bar? I'm glad you asked.

The bubbles make the chocolate melt. on. your. tongue.

It tastes lighter, melty-er, choclatey-er.

Mars bars are great, Galaxy bars good, but this... oh, sweet Aero bar, why are you not in the States and therefore present me with the sad fact that at some point I will have to leave you and not have you again? Not cool, candy gods, not cool.

I feel like I should mail a box home, just to share the love.

A Calendar Made of Chocolate?

Oh yes indeed, a calendar made of chocolate!

My Advent calendar -- complete with festive Santa and other arctic livestock.

In the States, the candy Advent calendar isn't nearly as popular as it is here in the UK.  To be honest, I'd never had one growing up.  We have a felt doorhanging calendar -- two, actually.  One with a cute little mouse that you move each morning (we would fight to get to be the one to move the mouse when we were little - what a breakfast/early morning conversation that was) and we had a newer one that had an ornament in each of the day pockets that we decorated the felt tree with until the star in the pocket of the 24th to top the tree.  Always a family thing, always in the kitchen, and always part of the decoration.

My flatmates were talking eagerly about which Advent calendars were the best (don't get one at Tesco because they're child sized, so the chocolate is child sized as well -- go for the Lindt ones because they're adult sized, even if they don't have Santa Claus or Doctor Who on the front) and I piped up that I'd never had a chocolate Advent calendar growing up.

They looked at me in sheer horror.

So, when in Rome, do as the Romans.  The chocolate shop in town was out of Lindt calendars, but they had these festive ones, which are obviously made for children, but the chocolates are good sized, so they pass muster.

When I brought it to the till to pay, the lady asked what name I wanted on the bar.  I replied 'Oh, I don't need any... Rebecca.  Put Rebecca on there."  Which makes me feel like I'm eight, but you know what?  I could use some good old fashioned child-like Christmas cheer at the moment.  Class is hard, my papers are a bit soul-crushing, so if getting my name in icing on my Advent calendar is going to put a smile on my face, gosh darn it I'm gonna do it.

And you know what?  It does put a smile on my face.  Simple things.  And the best part?  I get another chocolate tomorrow morning.

A Very British Thanksgiving

As my flatmates are all non-American, none of them had had the experience of the best of American holidays before -- Thanksgiving. A day where you celebrate food. (Regardless of original reasons behind the creation, nowadays we celebrate food. Gluttony, really, but let's just go with food)

So as a good American, I made Thanksgiving dinner for us. Which was a wonderful chance to one, bring out my inner Martha Stewart, and two, to have a nice meal, with all of us together, and let me enjoy a little bit of home here across the pond.

I tend to go with simple veggies and a rotisserie chicken (it was on sale -- turkey wasn't). Although it was funny wandering around St Andrews watching the Americans in town clamor through the Tesco looking for very American ingredients or trying to come up with a UK equivalent. At that point? Just realize you're not going to make it EXACTLY like it was at home. But that's part of the fun of it!

Anyway, I was a good day. Good food, good friends, and a touch of home. I hope everyone else had as good of a day!

Chips, er... Crisps

I will be so happy when these papers are turned in. I'm tired of looking at them, tired of thinking about them, and tired of contemplating natural law. I get it, I can find 2,000 words on it. Which is not many words at all in the grand scheme of things. But I don't feel like I have a real direction and I'm just kind of typing and seeing what comes out and going with that. I'll give it a bit more tonight but I have to go to bed at a decent hour since I have to be up early for hiking tomorrow. Yay, hiking!

But for a break, I wanted a snack. And potato chips are my weakness (crisps... I must remind myself to call them crisps). And what did I find in the Tescos?



Sweet Chilli!

For those who don't understand my excitement since we don't have this flavor in the States, if you've never tried sweet chilli, you don't know what you're missing. It's just the right amount of heat without a lot of bite and it is amazing. I was introduced to sweet chilli flavoring by my former housemate during the Olympics in February. McDonald's had a number of limited time international dipping sauces for the McNuggets and sweet chili was one of them. Now, she'd fallen head over heels for the flavor when she spent a year in New Zealand and she got ridiculously excited when the commercial came up. I asked what the heck she was yelling for and within 15 minutes, we were in the car, through the drive-through, and back tasting this amazing taste.

Oh Tesco, you've made my night. And I will enjoy you, dear, delicious, Sweet Chilli Kettle Chips, and you will making talking about Aristotle and Aquinas and Natural Law that much better.

And then I can't have another bag in the house, cause I'll eat the whole thing *lol*

When In Doubt, Bake

I spent Saturday in the loving academic embrace of Aquinas and friends, which meant that by the middle of the afternoon I was desperate to do something, ANYTHING, different from what I was doing. And since it was a nice day, it was worth it to walk to the big grocery store. It's amazing how differently you think about things when you don't have a car and you have to decide 'is a mile and change to far to walk today for the big grocery store' and 'make sure that I don't buy too much cause it would be too heavy to carry' and 'I could always grab the bus, now where's an extra £1.20 around here...' I'm very aware of how privileged I've been in the past now, as this is my first time without ready access to a car.

But it was a pretty day, I felt like doing some cooking, and they just didn't have all of what I needed at the Tesco around the corner. So I made the hike to the second of three grocery stores in town.



Why, hello Morrisons! And gah, perhaps it's not a terrible thing that I don't have access to a car. Unless my math is failing me, £1.14 per litre ends up just a little over $8 per gallon. Holy expensive gas, Batman! Remind me not to complain about $3 gas when I get back to the States...

Anyway, hello Morrisons. You had my sage, and my ziploc bags (I've lasted a month without them cause my flatmates didn't seem to need them, but again, I use the heck out of ziploc bags), but you didn't have the butternut squash that I was craving. Alas, no one's perfect. But you also had tea on sale, so I'll forgive you this time.

My desire to bake (and I'll use bake loosely because the precision of baking often eludes me) came about because of running across this recipe: Spinach Strata with Sage and Gruyere

If the name didn't entice you, how about a picture of the finished product?



One of the worst parts about my little student housing kitchen is that the oven doesn't have a window for me to obsessively watch it cook. But you mix it up, and then 45 minutes later you get this delightful creation. It's warm and carb-y and cheesy and tastes very much like fall. So worth the walk and the late cooking!

Spinach Strata with Sage and Gruyere

Ingredients:

• 1/2 baguette (to yield about 6 cups of torn bread)
• 1 tablespoon softened butter, plus 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons fresh sage, torn
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons)
• 1 1/2 ounces baby spinach (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 3 ounces Gruyere (about 1 1/2 cups, grated)
• 1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated

1. Cut the bread into slices about ¾-inch thick. Set on the counter for several hours to dry out, or toast the bread in a 400°F oven for about 5 minutes. Tear each slice into several pieces. You should have about 6 cups.

2. Grease an 8-inch by 9-inch casserole dish with 1 tablespoon softened butter.

3. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy. Whisk in milk, sage, salt, pepper, melted butter, and minced garlic until homogeneous.

4. Add the torn bread to the custard, mixing to make sure every piece absorbs some liquid. Stir in spinach and Gruyere. Pour the bread-custard-spinach mixture into prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle with Parmesan and top with more freshly ground pepper. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 1 hour on the counter, or several hours in the fridge.

5. Preheat the oven to 375°F (191°C) about 20 minutes before you’re ready to bake the strata.

6. Bake until the top is browned and slightly puffed and the strata is cooked through, about 45 minutes. Let rest a few minutes before serving warm.

Courtesy of Serious Eats

Nom nom nom...

Study Group Wednesday

After realizing that all of the other M.Litt programs had study groups while ours had none, the four women in my program decided that we needed a group. So the four of us have declared Wednesday study group day for ourselves. The readings are dense enough and numerous enough that it's always a good thing to have a second, third, or fourth opinion before we go into class and attempt to be the one to yell the loudest so as to get the floor and present an idea.

Plus, and this may be the women's college grad in me talking, but I think it's important for women to have a place to share ideas without having to yell over men in an attempt to be heard. We're four out of fourteen, and while that's more women than are usually in International Relations programs, it's still only four out of fourteen.

So Wednesdays will be ours.

That made for a productive afternoon, so what could make for a productive evening?



Fajitas!

One of the girls and her flatmate and I went out to dinner at The Grill House here in town in the search for something delicious. Now, there is a decided lack of Mexican/Southwestern/Tex Mex/whatever food here. This is understandably, as we are no where near that area. But you'd think with the obscene number of Americans here that someone would get on the ball and open up a Chipotle or something -- they'd make a killing. And of course as soon as something is out of sight, that's all you want. I'd been craving this for weeks now, and we stumbled in and found fajitas and enchiladas, and while no where near as spicy as the ones back home, still pretty darn good considering the alternative is nothing. Here's to you, fajitas.

I still plan on making you soon with my own recipe, though. You were good but not THAT good.