Ah, Dark Winter —
December 04, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: British food, humor, recipes, tuna and sweet corn, working at home|
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The days are short and dark. Knoxville is unusually cold and we’ve had days of drizzle, making everything even darker and colder than ever.
It’s like living in Seattle again. Or England. This time of year in Oxford, the sun was already low when the kids came home from school at 3:30, and no one turned the heat on, just huddled in wool sweaters looking at their brochures for a Winter Holiday in the Canary Islands.
Plus also drinking pot after pot of hot tea. Better than sticking your head in an oven, I guess.
I couldn’t stand to stay at home today, so went out to lunch with friends and then lingered over errands, including a trip to Kroger where, in honor of the day’s drear, I bought the ingredients for an easy British supper tonight: baked potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn.*
There are several ways to make this, but basically you simply mix a can or so of tuna with another can of corn, add a tiny bit of mayo to moisten plus lots of black pepper, and stuff in a baked potato. That’s it.
If you have to go all American or whatever you can add some dill weed, or even some cheese, but isn’t life hard enough?
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* ”Corn” is a generic word for grain in British English, so “sweetcorn” (or maize) is what they call the yellow stuff we sometimes eat off the cobb.
December 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Baked Potatoes with a filling is the last resort of a scoundrel! But probably better than Cheese on Toast. Come on woman, buck up. Once you start relying on British food you know the race is lost!
December 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am
This reminds me of my partner’s favourite example of her London-born mother’s cooking: curried Spam. Come to think of it, though, I have fond memories of pre-remote television viewing, when family members would leave the room as soon as a “great moments from Kraft” commercial came on, so I guess England isn’t the only guilty party.
December 5th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Curried SPAM? Wow, PASS!
We forget how an early generation of English were on WWII rations for much longer than our own folks (The Brits proudly continued until they’d paid off their war debt!) and clearly some of those “make do” habits have died hard there.
But, yes Dave: if I get to the point where I’m eating mushy peas, please just shoot me.
December 5th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
((However. We all happen to like baked potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn VERY MUCH.))
December 5th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
OMG, I’m hungry.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Yes, that’s exactly what it was, rations-style cooking. My partner’s mum’s sister was a war bride, and the whole family decided to move to New Brunswick along with her. You mention something I didn’t know, though, about the British keeping their post-war belts tight until the debt was paid off. Bully for them!