New Christmas Traditions

When Zach's coworkers learned that we would be spending Christmas here, they put together a basket of goodies to introduce us to some traditional English Christmas food.  There are some things we recognize, but lots of items that were new to us.   Considering Zach is in the middle of some extremely stressful and contentious union negotiations, this was a welcomed gift.  Look at that basket! It really is amazing, isn't it?

Sherry and whiskey, along with the usual wine and champagne, are pretty much standard Christmas drinks here in Britain.  We also got some pork & red pepper pate with altantic salmon which we are guessing would be served with crackers as an appetizer.  With a little help from Google, we learned that Scotch eggs are a hard-boiled egg enclosed in sausage meat and rolled in breadcrumbs then fried.  This actually sounds like something you would find in South Carolina.  I'm surprised it hasn't caught on sooner.  The back of the Haywards Red Cabbage and Traditional Onions was quite enlightening:

Red Cabbage:  "Put on top of mashed potato and serve with a hot meal"
Onions:  "Use in a Cheddar ploughman's for Haywards inspiration!"

( A ploughman's lunch (abbrev. to ploughman's) is an English cold meal which consists of cheese, pickle, and bread.^[1]Additional items such as boiled eggs, ham, and pickled onions may be added.)

Next we have some local pickles.  The back of the jar states that it would be "lovely a top a cheese sandwich."  We are inclined to disagree, but a hamburger might not be so bad.  The sausage rolls are the British twist on our sausage rolls from back home only these have a whole sausage stuffed inside a pastry.



This is a holiday flavor of crisps that apparently you can only find this time of year. And then we arrive at the sweets....which I (the resident sweet tooth) can totally get behind.  The British love their sweets especially their chocolate.  So in case you can't tell that is 5 boxes of chocolate, 4 large chocolate snowmen, a chocolate reindeer, and if that doesn't suit your fancy there's 2 pounds of cookies to boot.

 We are going to be stuffed this Christmas. We only wish all of you were here to share it with us.  We would offer you all of the above and brew you a proper cup of Yorkshire tea.