A sliver of the food post that never was...

I never did get around to writing that food post that I was planning.  I think you can figure out why.  Because I still don't really have time, this is more like Food Post Lite.  A tasting menu of food posts.   A chocolate miniature of food posts. A goddamn tapa of food posts.  A sniff from the Cinnabon store when you're in the mall just to buy a pair of shoes for the Christmas party of food posts.   You get the picture.

Speaking of which, here are some pictures.  The first is from the fish & chip shop in Crosby (seriously, THAT'S how long I've been meaning to write a food post).  This particular fish & chip shop would be considered a Chinky, meaning they serve mostly Chinese food, and 'chinky' apparently isn't a horribly racist term like it would be in the US.  Or maybe it is a horribly racist term here as well and now I'm going to get hate mail due to my ignorance.  

I've been struggling with Chinese food since I've arrived here and it's due to the fact that none of the Chinese food dishes are termed the same as I'm used to.  In all fairness, 90% of the Chinese food in America is not really Chinese food at all but an American bastardization of it but I thought there might be some similarities here.  There isn't. The biggest difference I've seen is that in the US, you normally choose your meat and vegetable accompaniments.  For example, I normally get beef with broccoli or chicken with snow peas.   In the UK, the Chinese dishes are separated out by sauces.   Beef with OK sauce.  Chicken with Peking sauce.  I have no idea what these sauces are and I don't know what kind of vegetables will be coming with my meal.  As someone who doesn't eat mushrooms or onions (both very prevalent in Chinese food) it's a bit of a crap shoot when ordering Chinese food here.  The best that I've worked out is that I like the oyster sauce (that thankfully doesn't actually taste like oysters), the rest, as they say, is a mystery.

Board of Mystery Dishes #1

I don't even want to know what "special fried rice" is.

The 2nd thing I was itching to show you was the launch of Stella Artois's Cidre last week.  Yes, I did spell that correctly spell check.  Apparently it's not pronounced "cider" but "see-dray" or some equally lame ass pronunciation like that.  As someone who has a soft spot for Snakebites made with cider and Stella, this is an interesting development for me.  Not that I've had time to hang out in the pub getting smashed on Snakebites recently, but when that time does come again, I'm going to be as embarrassed to order a Stella\See-Dray snakebite as I am my decaf sugarfree vanilla lattes with a half pump of syrup.  But order it I will because dammit, it's got to be awesome.

 Wait for me my pretentious sounding future hangover!