Last night it took 3 of us to determine that the new can opener I got for christmas was misaligned and was actually incapable of opening cans. Took us about 20 minutes. We were relieved that there was nothing wrong with us and we didn’t forget how can openers work, and embarrassed because it took us 20 minutes and 3…

Kids in the UK grow up on Heinz baked beans. On toast.

The most common way to use up leftover ham is eating it straight out of the fridge at any hour of the night and as a snack while deciding what non-ham thing to get out of the fridge.

So glad somebody brought this up (as it were...). Pea and ham soup, or almost any vegetable soup reinforced with some of the salty stuff, is divine.

The time frame was addressed in my introduction to the book. There are those, e.g. Encyclopædia Britannica, that extend the Victorian era through the Edwardian up to the British entry into WWI: “Victorian era, in British history, the period between approximately 1820 and 1914, corresponding roughly but not exactly to…

You mean Edwardian? Google tells me Georgian Era ended 1830.

There is a German digestif called Underberg, a herby brown liquid which comes in cute one-shot bottles.

I had really good mashed potatoes in a restaurant once and asked the server how they made them so good.  He just said “a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, and a whole lot of butter.”

‘But the dad-of-two hit back at his critics and said his wife Hannah Nguyen has always been supportive.’ When fully charged. 

Probably. I had to look up what it was because I had never heard of it, apparently because it’s banned from import to the US ever since the Mad Cow scare. Remember those days? Ah, simpler times...

I wonder what it tastes like....

There’s no reason to be afraid of blancmange. Modern antibiotics can clear that right up.

I have never shelled out for the obscenely expensive Japanese Kobe beef. I do, however, regularly purchase domestic Wagyu produced here in the US. The best purveyors of it (that I have tried) are Mishima Reserve, Double 8 Cattle Co. and Snake River Farms. I will say that at this price level, it is definitely worth it.…

We tried seaweed “chips”. It tasted like fish broccoli. 1/10 would not recommend to anyone who doesn’t like fish broccoli.

One thing I’d wish I was more available here in the U.S. is sea grapes: