“This country is obsessed with bread, I swear to God”, said my new colleague, a stylish, 20 something, petite Indian man, as we perused the lunch buffet of sandwiches, “and I don’t do carbs.”
He’s right. The country is obsessed with bread, the gluten frees would shrivel up and die over here. But more specifically, they are obsessed with the sandwich. The sandwich – bread, meat, sauce, bread. Humble in origin, or so I thought. “Sandwich” originated from a story about John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who ordered some meat between two slices of bread for convenience during a long gambling game in 1762. Google it, you’ll see all good things come from Britain.
The peanut butter and jam sandwich has saved many a mother’s ass from actually cooking, but it doesn’t exist here. Sandwiches are at a whole different level here. To start, they are everywhere. Beautifully packaged in every off-license, grocery shop, and made to order in every café, lunch counter and pub. They are not the triangular sandwich boxes of stale white bread, processed cheese and meat you have had the (displeasure) of picking up at the 7/11 in North America. They are not just quick lunches long for haul truck drivers and summer road crews; sandwiches are universal language here in the UK.
And well, carbs are my friends and I love these sandwiches. They are (usually) deliciously fresh, cheap, with modern flavourings and foodie pairings – egg, mayonnaise and watercress, cheese and pickle, tuna salad and sweetcorn, prawn and cucumber, bacon, egg and avocado. Marks and Spencer’s makes a Hoisin Duck Wrap with julienned carrots, cucumber and fresh cilantro. Christmas themed sammies are popping up now too, e.g. turkey, cranberry and shredded brussel sprouts.
There is warm sandwich called the “cheese toastie” (pictured below) which is sort of like a grilled cheese but somehow, they have managed to get the cheese on the inside and outside of the bread and in posher places they are stuffed with caramelized onions, fancy mushrooms and gruyere. Yum.
The bacon bap or bacon roll (English bacon on a roll) and the Chip Butty (chips on a bun!) are other cultural favourites so strange they deserve a blog post of their own blog post. A great article here about the latter: http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/article/11-reasons-why-chip-butty-deserves-your-love-and-respect.html
So we have been stuffing ourselves with these gems whilst here. Emotional eating has been a theme since we moved. It has been very hard to get our healthy eating regimes on solid ground – the stress of moving, want to try to the local foods, new treats at the grocery store.
Our emotional eating went to a whole new level a few weeks ago as I started my job, orientating the nanny and children, starting a new routine and we got the worst call you can get when you are far away from home – “Mom’s in the hospital”. My mother in law had a heart attack and had bypass surgery within six days of that first call.
My mother in law, god love her, does have a general sense of urgency to her. She operates at a ten out of ten in terms of stress sometimes. I now remember speaking to her and knowing she did not feel well and I never said, “You better get to the doctor”. I feel bad about that. I never thought she would get really sick is the thing. Her own doctor brushed off some classic heart attack symptoms and begrudgingly ordered an EKG. Thankfully she is fine now and on the road to recovery. She is a trooper and taking much of this ordeal in her stride.
(Note to my American friends – two-week hospital stay, transfer to a tertiary centre, by-pass surgery within a week and the only out of pocket fee paid was for private hospital room fees).
Husband made the trip across the pond and stayed for nine days. He was torn between wanting to stay longer, wanting to back to us, thinking about his work. Even though Halifax is only a six hour flight form London, his travel karma dealt a few cards and made it a 24 hour journey door to door, both ways. He spent less than 12 hours in Cape Breton and even managed an Acadian lines bus trip to Halifax (which is longer than going by dogsled by the way). I felt terrible for him, I felt worse for his mom. So I ate some more sandwiches. And wine. And Hob Nobs.
Shortly after we arrived here I got a text from my Aunt Peg a few days after some Emergency Department visits. A serious enough issue to make my heart sink and think what if. Aunt Peg reassured me, “If I die while you’re over there, you don’t have to come home, you know I don’t want to add more stress to you both.” I told her she would not be much of an inconvenience if she were dead and that I might want to attend her funeral and get some of her antiques. She called me a smart ass, and she is thankfully back to normal.
So, overnight shit got real over here. We are now officially part of the “sandwich generation” – young kids, old parents. It makes us think more about living so far away from home, the pros and cons of ex-pat life, selling it all and buying a cottage on the beach. There are no easy answers. For now, we try to live in the moment, count our blessings and call our recovering loved ones a bit more often.
Next we try to survive Christmas, which is throwing up all over the place here. I’ve three weeks to fit into a cocktail dress that fit two sandwiches ago.