English Treats
Look at all the wonderful English treats I picked up at the British Food Centre in Campbell. They had one of the two items I was dreaming of: Malt bread. Malt bread is a sticky dark bread you have sliced with butter along with a nice cup of tea. Alas, no Hula hoops (ring-shaped potato snacks that nothing comes close to taste-wise).
I opened the Jammie Dodger biscuits as I started this post and my son has now consumed half of them and keeps taking the one's I bite into and put down by my computer to type. Jammie Dodgers consist of two round shortbread cookies, one of which has a little heart cut-out in the center, stuck together with jam. Yum!
The snowballs, soft marshmallow domes covered in chocolate and coconut, are now just a memory. We have yet to open the other items. I'll savour them slowly.
If you can't make it to Campbell (outside San Jose), you can order online from the British Food Centre. The food pictured above set me back about $20 (ouch!). I had both kids with me so I just grabbed a few things off the shelf. I did notice they had special order forms for English Easter sweeties.
We stopped at the British Food Center on our way down to Aptos (by Santa Cruz) to visit my mum. We enjoyed frolicking on the beach in the beautiful sunny weather and attempted to fly the world's smallest kite:
Yes, we thought it was folded in the package, but apparenly not.
We enjoyed some take-out from Bangkok West ( a highly ornamented Thai restaurant in Aptos, with a beautiful entryway with golden statues, plants and flowers, and a fountain) that included this colorful sweet and sour tofu with vegetables:
.The biggest score, however, was I got to borrow my mum's Good Housekeeping's Cooking Compendium, originally published in Watford in 1952. This is the cookbook I grew up with. It has "nearly 2000 photographs of which 52 are in wonderful natural colours" and 1500 recipes. This volume contains almost all of my first baking recipes -- flapjacks, butterfly cakes, queen cakes, Victoria sponge. And, of course, lots of great looking recipes I haven't tried. Stay tuned!
posted by Catherine at 4:40 PM
5 Comments:
No good for my diet!
I miss skips and quavers! hula hoops would be good too.
I grew up with Marguerite Patten's every day cook book and I don't think there is any way on the world my mum will lend me her copy!
Hi Sam,
It's sooo good to have you back! Not good for my diet either, but I reckon if I space them out....
Ahh yes quavers. But hula hoops are my childhood friend. I remember getting them for 2P at school. They seem to be very hard to get here.
I'm so excited about this cookbook. There's all the photos of dishes I made as a "young person" (in B&W). I've lost the original recipes from my first cooking class when I was six or seven. I remember making Cornish Pasties, though. I'll be working on veggie versions of those.
Those treats look very yummy ... great blog!
Catherine:
Have you shopped the Brit section at Mollie Stone in Greenbrae? I have found lots of sweets there, as well as somr savories.
Just came across your blog and I will return to it!
That malty bread brought back memories. We used to have it as kids for a treat. I'm English living in South Africa and now I can relate to my American blog friends in Europe, raving about unlikely looking packaged foods - it's the nostalgia kicking in. Glad to have found your blog, I'll keep reading.
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