On Thursday, when he went to see his Neurologist, I told him "when you go and poke around Borders (the book store), get me a magazine for vegetarian cooking. He said "no problem".

LITTLE DID I KNOW!!

He comes home at 3 p.m. walks over to me and hands me this BIG magazine and says to me "Merry Christmas".

So I take the magazine and in big bold letters at the top of the magazine it says 'VEGETARIAN CHRISTMAS"

So I said "wow, they made a magazine just for vegetarian holiday dishes"?? and Alan says 'yeah, I looked inside and the food looks great!!"

Here are the names of some of the recipes. Let me know if you get the joke yet!!

Leek, Stilton & apple wrap with watercress & rocket pistou

Celeriac & potato dauphinoise

Aubergine timbales with goat's cheese

Croustades with Dolcelatte & roasted cherry tomatoes

Cumberland sauce

I had no idea what he had brought home. I never heard of any of these things. Then I scrolled down to where they gave the recipe. This is where I was really confused.

850 ml vegetable stock, 500 ml semi skimmed milk.
2 x 410g cans mixed beans in water, drained.

I asked him "what the heck is 2 x 410g cans mixed beans and what's 850 ml vegetable stock?

He looked at me and said "how the heck do I know, you do the cooking".

I kept turning the pages, and all the recipes were like that.

350ml passata (what the heck is a passata anyway).
450g orange sweet potatoes.

Can you get what is going on here?

I took another look at the front page of this magazine and I burst out laughing.

At the top of the page it said BBC GOOD FOOD VEGETARIAN.

I looked at Alan and said "This is an English vegetarian magazine" and he goes (get ready for this).

"Yeah, I know, isn't it amazing, it only cost $7.50 and I saved two bucks, imagine what this would have cost if it were in England?" I said "are you out of your mind, I don't know what any of these recipes are for, I can't understand them".

and he goes:

BUT IT'S ALL IN ENGLISH AND YOU SPEAK ENGLISH.

lol lol lol

Ithink they do that on purpose so we don't ask them to do things for us again.



Most cans do have the metric measure on the label - if you can read that small.



But if you want to make a certain dish, but veggy, try looking it up online. I learned most of the ones I know that way.

For example you can make most common cookies vegan by substituting 1/4 apple sauce for 1 egg, and using non dairy margerine.

Sorry Can't help with the weird foods - maybe wikipedia can explain. We have that here too, with dd's asian preferances. I can't even say if this stuff is mineral or vegetable. I can't pronounce the names lol.


The labels sure are pretty though.

I would often go to my English neighbor for translation and for some things had to go to little English imports shop. Cooking temps of ovens also phrased differently than our. But sounds like your mag. is for Hoity-toity English Vegatarians. Those kind of foods are not inexpensive, especially in England (an island where much must be imported in - the price of gas all the time would make us long for when them ours was only 4$!!) And Goat cheese is an acquired taste I think. Water cress!! They don't eat that at the ports of Liverpool!!

I have a very funny story to tell you about a friend of mine named Mary (long long time ago). I had never met a person from Great Britain and I was about 21 years old.

She had this delightful accent. She grew up in England and was born in Scotland and kept telling everybody she was NOT SCOTCH, that SCOTCH was a drink!!

I remember being in the elevator with her and I asked her 'what's it like to have a Queen, that must be fascinating". And she began to explain about the Queen and the Queen mum and I just stood here enthralled.

But the funniest thing was when she explained how she happened to learn about american vernacular. (how americans speak to each other in a common or so way).

She learned the hard way.

She had just come over from England and was staying for awhile in a hotel. She kept dialing up the guy at the front desk asking him to 'KNOCK ME UP TOMORROW MORNING".

He kept laughing and she had no idea why he was laughing. I burst out laughing. I said: "you have no idea what you asked him?" and she said "I asked him to knock me up each morning, I wanted to get up early and be on time for work".

I said "Mary, Knock me up...means Get me pregnant".

Well, the look on her face was priceless. She said "I asked this guy to get me pregnant?, Oh my god, I must have asked him this 30 times".

The whole office laughed our behinds off.