Pret chicken & avocado sandwich - quick and convenient, with seating

Pret at Euston station, London. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright

A useful stop. Two triangular thick half sandwiches. Brown bread with seeds. Moist avocado. Chicken for a protein boost.

-ends-
 

What do you love and hate about America, England, Scotland, Singapore? Any surprises?

ke ice cream, 

Bagel Varieties 

Everybody worldwide knows bagels. New York bagels. Firm outside and soft, chewy inside. No longer a surprise. We have them in London. We have them in Singapore. 

American? Actually from Poland. back in the 1880s. I know from researching Europe where my ancestors came from for a family history which turned into a novel to make it more exciting to read. 

I learned that bagels had a hole in the middle so that the seller could put them on a pole - raised visibly in the air.  As a buyer could hang one, or a second one, on a string around your neck for travelling. 

But like so many modern things, it is the Americans who have spread the good ideas worldwide. Bagels are no longer a novelty.  But very welcome.

Ice Cream Varieties

In the Sixties I travelled from London, England to the USA for the first time. I was impressed by 24 hour restaurants, 

Now we have 24 hour McDonalds all over Singapore, often with an advertisement in the nearest MRT station. Then you have somewhere to meet your friends. Of, if you miss your last train home, you know where to go to eat and drink and doze or sit and call a cab.

Singapore McDonalds 24 hours or open until late.

Ice Cream Flavours

Another thing which impressed me in the good old days in the USA was that the restaurants themselves offered huge choices. For example, the dozens of varieties of ice cream. Now we have ice cream parlours with numerous flavours worldwide. 

Bagels, too, come in many varieties. Poppy seed. Sesame seed. Those are the savoury ones, Sweet one, too. Cinnamon with sultanas.

After you have eaten you want the toilet. You may want to wash the crumbs and mayonnaise off your fingers. But what about washing your hands before eating!

Toilets
What surprises you about America? Yes, I agree with others who have commented on toilets. I visited the USA years ago and in Dallas with a group of international travel writers I was shown the schoolbook depository where the assailant shot Kennedy. I was interviewed by a reporter from Dallas Morning News about what a British visitor noticed about America. I mentioned the toilets, the low partitions with gaps underneath.

My punchline was, 'it's not something you'd want the Queen to have to cope with'. I still have that news cutting on the wall of my home in London England.

What has changed? Not much, regarding toilets, if visitors from overseas are still surprised by American toilets.


American flag

AMERICAN TOILETS
The toilet cubicles with flimsy board partitions with gaps under the walls are annoying. No privacy.
On London railway stations they say mind the gap. The same in Singapore. They should say mind the gap in toilets.

Gaps under partitions and doors have spread worldwide. A water leak in one cubicle flows over all the others. You can see the reflection in tr floor or the shadow of the person next door taken the toilet paper, entering and leaving. It's like being a character in a spy movie.

t

A refuge worldwide is old fashioned buildings and hotels which still have solid walls. Spread to London, England. Same in Singapore.

Now, let us look at bread.

Plain white bread, sliced, toasted, at many hotels.

AMERICAN BREAD
Doorstop white bread sandwiches.

Union Jack, flat of the United Kingdom, currently, in 2019, comprised of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I won't even mention that Scotland has salt in the breakfast porridge. You have to travel.  I was teaching English in Singapore. One of my Chinese pupils got the English words and grammar correct but the facts about Scotland wrong. Her sentence was: Scottish people in Scotland grow rice. No, they don't.

UK BREAD
The best bread/ Rye bread in B & K.


B & K salt beef sandwich from Hatch End or Edgware, in London, England.

Proper brown bread is available in supermarkets in London. Come to Tesco and look for seed breads, sliced seed breads. They make great sandwiches. You can buy made-up ready to go sandwiches with brown bread as well.

Tesco corners are in supermarkets in Singapore. I see Tesco wines but not Tesco seed bread sandwiches. Boo-hoo!

SINGAPORE BREAD
The local breakfast favourite is thin white bread with kaya jam, yellow coconut jam, toasted.

Toasted kaya sandwich and coffee for breakfast or elevenses, as we say in London, England. (Elevenses is a mid morning snack at around eleven o'clock).

I love it. But I know it is unhealty.

But too much thick white bread in Singapore, even in hotels, such as the Sheraton Towers.

At club events in Community Clubs, huge white bread sandwiches with peanut butter filling.

Peanut butter - that reminds me of the USA.

Let them eat cake. Green pandan cake.

Green buns.

AMERICAN FOOD TO GO
I love the way in American restaurants the food is always wrapped to go. You don't have to ask. They ask you., "Would you like it wrapped up to go?"

AMERICAN SIGNS
And I love the signs in the USA. Drive up the mountains, as we did along the empty east coast hilltop road which runs parallel to the busy coastal road below, nobody for miles, nothing but you and the birds and the clouds. But stop your car at what might be a viewpoint and you see signs to parking, toilets and - the best place to take a photo.


Flag of Singapore

SINGAPORE SIGNS
The same applies in Singapore at reservoir walks. Signs warn, do not feed the monkeys.

Back in the city centre, the trains run frequently, every three to five minutes. With free public toilets outside the entrance to every station.

See my previous post about toilets around the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Oh, the joys of travel. Even if you do nothing more exciting than going to the toilet in the city, or standing alone on a mountaintop, there's always something to marvel at.

Even if you never leave the airport.


Jewel Shopping mall with its giant central waterfall, opened 2019 at Changi airport, with shuttle train to other terminals.

Useful Websites
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-6856507/Tourists-reveal-things-surprised-visiting-US.html

USA
visittheusa.co.uk

UK
visitbritain.com

CHINA
http://www.travelchina.gov.cn/en/index/index.shtml

SINGAPORE
visitsingapore.com

Airline, often voted the world's best.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

English tea time: cucumber, white and brown bread, high tea

Sitting down to tea, after reading books about how people live in other times and other countries, you may feel that you are leading a relatively uneventful life. Yet the tea table before you has links to other eras and other countries, or contrasts with what you have experienced previously.

Outside the window of the room where I had tea recently, at a friens new home, I enjoyed seeing every room of the house, especially the kitchen. I looked out at the back garden with the lawn, contrasting with the front driveway of many houses in the street, covered in to allow car parking. I had previously taken a tour of the house, en route to the downstairs cloakroom. Now I looked out of the kitchen window, admiring the long lawn at the back of the house.

In Medieval times you had a meadow with grass and colourful perfumed flowers. Along came lawn tennis. Then lawn mowers. So in Victorian times, in a large house with a grassed lawn, you might watch croquet or clock golf or cricket played on the field or lawn.

Afterwards, in mid-afternoon, as either owner of the property, or a guest you ate cucumber sandwiches on white bread for tea. Tea was a meal between luncheon and dinner.

In the North of England in winter you came home when it got dark and cold. Electric lights in and around the house were installed in various years, as you can check, along with street lighting. Your local library will tell you about street lighting in your nearest city, town or village.

How can you find out? When writing about an ancestor of mine who lived in the East End of London in my novel I struggled to find out. The electric lights in the USA were better documented on the web than the lighting in London.

If you go to the North of England and Scotland you can still get High Tea. This is a half way meal combining tea and a snack supper. You start with savoury and end with sweet, maybe start with hot and end with cold, such as a grill or sandwiches or toast with something on top followed by cold cakes or if you prefer, hot pancakes.

Tea Time
Some schools and old people's homes would and still do serve a High Tea or early supper, at 5.30 or six o'clock. Meals get later as you go further south. In Europe, the latest would be the 9 pm or 10 pm meal in a restaurant in Spain.

It was easier to send the hero of my novel on a trip to another city, where his relatives were excited about the new lighting, than to leave him in London, where he might have been in the dark, at least the novel's author was in the dark.

Lights
Maybe the records of the electric light companies, the sales of light bulbs and records or household expenses will also give you a clue as to whether your ancestors or the people who used to live in your house had candles, gas light, or electric lights in the city or home.

Lighting up times, dawn and dusk, will affect the working day, the building of a house, school finishing time (allowing time for children to walk home, before the universal bus routes). You are cold and tired and hungry, or hot and tired and hungry, when you arrive home after a long walk (even costume drama ladies walking for a chat or riding a horse might be tired.

In Singapore at a Eurasian club we were served hot in both senses, curried food. In India it would be rice in the north. In China you would have rice in the north, noodles in the south. Back to Singapore, majority Chinese, but the Eurasian club was for Indians or rather mostly ex-past British or other white men with their exotically dressed Indian wives, who presumably liked curry (as did nay grandfather in London who died in 1950 - never went to India as far as I know and alas it's now too late to ask my late parents or y grandparents how he acquired this taste. Maybe Queen Victoria had made curry popular in his youth. Does anybody know?

The Eurasian club served me sandwiches using white bread. They serve whatever the organisers ask for, which might be savoury food followed by cold cake or biscuit or the modern substitutes, crisps and nuts and nibbles.

Back in London, I enjoy tea with my book group friends. They are mostly ladies (some of them belong to several book groups, at least two, sometimes three groups). Occasionally this group is joined by a husband, author, or retired gentleman has the time and inclination to read the latest price-winning book and offer a verdict. We have a mix of shop-bought and home catering.

My previous post describes the 'bridge rolls'. The afternoon's hostess told us they were not bridge rolls, but better than bridge rolls, less heavy, less bready, more light and more moist. I took a picture of the wrapper. I thought it was easier to give another family member the wrapper when they went shopping, and easier for them or me to show to a shop assistant. Weeks later the wrapper picture is still on my computer, whereas a name written on a scrap of paper would disappear.

The rolls are called Mini White Submarine Rolls. The white ones look more like the traditional bridge roll. They come in packs of eight which will make 16 half pieces, enough to fill one long oblong plate. We had a mixture of brown and white rolls, which adds visual appeal.

Angela Lansbury, author, researcher, speaker.

English afternoon tea for a book group: brown bridge rolls and lemon drizzle cake

If you are a reader - and you must be if you enjoy reading blogs, you can meet local people in other countries by going to a book group. In Singapore I went to book groups attached to the American club and a South African book group.

Some of the book groups met in a club house, such as the American Club in Singapore. You could join the American Woman's Association which cost less than the club membership and it was easier to join if you were not American.

Most of the meetings were in the club but some were in people's homes. In order to encourage people to volunteer houses, many meetings were either just coffee and biscuits, or end of year meetings were often pot luck, with many people bringing home make cakes. The British tended to make one big cake. The Americans were fond of making muffins. In England we used to make smaller fairy cakes for children's parties.

What can you serve? In England at a book group we like to serve bridge rolls. Toppings can be cream cheese, chopped egg, smoked salmon, tuna, tuna and sweetcorn, and other fish such as herring. For a special occasion such as a party you would slice something circular for a decoration in the middle, slices of tomato, olives, cucumber, a contrasting colour.

If you can't get bridge rolls, a very good substitute is marks and spencer rolls. They come in white or brown.

Favourite cakes are lemon drizzle cake, with or without icing, chocolate cake, cakes with nuts.

Of course, if you were reading Marcel Proust's A La Recherché Du Temps Perdu you would serve madeleines, oval shape cakes, which you can buy in large supermarkets in the UK.

Angela Lansbury, author.

Cellar Gascon Wine Bar and Restaurant

Cellar Gasgon is part of a group of three restaurants.

This one is corridor style with seating along the windows and a bar on the other long side. Toilets are downstairs.

I am not a fan of bar stools, but I preferred them to the window banquettes which sloped forward, were too short for my legs, and they looked shiny and I kept sliding off. Long legged male diners either perched on the edge or used their long legs to brace and anchor themselves. 

Tables were so close together I was in danger of sweeping the four to six glasses per setting onto the floor as I passed. It happened when I tried to go in, then when I tried to get out to the toilet. When I came back I did not want to stress myself and everybody else again.   I transferred to the bar stool type chair.

We parked our coats, bags and rucksacks on the narrow window ledge behind.  A few seats of the same design as the bar stools but low enough for you to put your feet on the ground are at the far end and by the entrance door. I must remember to request one of these tables, although I think these tables are for four.

The set menu was four courses and four glasses of wine for about £40 per person. Many central London restaurants offer set lunches of two or three courses with a glass of wine for about £20. But £40 for dinner, four courses, including wine, is good value. This is especially good value for a speciality gourmet restaurant in central London.

Small pieces of brown bread were elegantly served on small squares of slate. The butter was served in the centre of another straight sided piece of slate. A change from curves, though I prefer cured crockery, I suppose square and oblong is easier to stack on a straight sided shelf.

I've looked into buying slate for home. I've check in supermarkets such as Waitrose. It's not cheap. 

The slate pieces are dark, so you can't see if they are clean, but also rough if you want to run your fingers over to check. The small ones look mean, but the large ones are heavy to carry. Slate is fine, amusing as a change and a treat - in a restaurant.

The starter was squid. I'm allergic to shellfish. I am OK with eel. We debated whether squid was a risk. I decided against it. There was no alternative menu, no choice. I ate around the squid.

The second course was the high point of the four dishes. Foie gras. Like many people, I have been influenced by the campaign against it. I think I've had it before and not been impressed that it was worth either the extra expense or the possible suffering of the animal, or bird. However, I do like chicken liver and this was grilled on the outside, like a soft chicken liver, with the most delightful extra flavours in the sauce. 

The sauce was so nice that I broke off bits of brown bread to scrape the last tasty morsels off the plate. British diners don't wipe their plates with bread. But the French do. Gascon is an area of France. (The Gascons or Basques are also in Spain. Not in the capital city. More rural, practical.) I sneaked a peek. Nobody was watching me disapprovingly. In fact, everybody else was doing the same.

The main course was lamb casserole with beans and barley. Lamb a bit gristly and fatty, but all in all very good.

Here's dessert, pineapple with ice cream and a few specks of crumble. 

After four glasses of wine and delicious food I had forgotten my initial problems with the seats and seating close to others. Tables so near others enable you to chat more easily to couples either side. Would we go back? Definitely.

www.cellargascon.com

More pictures and story tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.