Manic Monday

Mood: Freezing! (Ok, that's not a mood but I didn't wear any socks today and my feet are ice cold)
Theme Song: "Party All the Time" - Eddie Murphy

So I must first apologize for any typos that may happen today. Blogger does not have a spell check function that I've been able to find, and my keyboard is now set to be a UK keyboard. Which means that the @ sign is where the " normally are, and the £ is where the # normally is and so on and so forth. In Britain's defense, its not as jacked up as French keyboards (to which I say WTF, France!)

The UK keyboard looks like this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_United_Kingdom.svg
And the French keyboard looks like this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_France.svg.

So the big news for the day is that there was a dusting of snow this morning. Having driven on British roads, I have to say that some of the spazzing out is justified since the roads over here are nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Anyway, there were all kinds of accidents and back-ups this morning on the motorways. I was lucky as my way into work was incident free - AND I got here without the use of my GPS system, so progress is being made!!!

I did find the Waitrose on Friday afternoon - turns out I was one exit off in my original calculations. The Waitrose is awesome! They have this system where you swipe your credit card and then you get a hand-held scanner and you can scan your groceries yourself and put them into bags as you go through the store. Then you take that handheld scanner to the cashier and just pay. It was so easy! They do spot checks to make sure you're not stealing stuff, so it looks like a good system overall. I found some good stuff  - Newman's Own Balsamic Vinaigrette (not the Low-Fat kind, but it will do), black beans (in salted water, though, but you can't have everything) and Amy's Organic Soups - though no Black Bean soup. I also found Charmin toilet paper, which I haven't seen anywhere else. For some reason the Cottonelle brand is called Andrex over here. And Bounty is called Plenty. Same logos and packaging and everything, just different names!

Food I really like from over here:
- Babybel cheese
- British baked goods - scones, muffins, bread. Mmmmm. I love buying fresh bread
- Tea. And yes, it is better over here
- Marks & Spencer cola. It reminds me of Jones Soda because there is no high fructose nonsense or chemicals in it. And I think because of that, I'll half a small glass of soda instead of a whole can of Diet Coke.
- Morrison's (store brand) Greek Yoghurt with Honey. I'm too much of a wimp to roll with regular greek yoghurt (too sour even if I add my own honey and blueberries), but I love the ready made kind
- Blueberries! I know they're not native to UK but for some reason I'm loving them. I buy them and snack on them constantly

I'm also more and more aware of how the cuisine reflects the environment. There's lots of lamb because sheep are everywhere! (I bet in the next census it would be like #1 - UK citizens, #2 - illegal immigrants, #3 - sheep) There are things called pasties - and no, they haven't anything to do with strippers - and they are ideal for carrying around and munching on to keep your hands warm. They are pronounced "pahh-stees". The same goes for all the variations of stew over here and the like. (For those of you who are really curious, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_cuisine or http://european-culinary-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/a-guide-to-british-cuisine).