English loot

[magid]

Yes, I'm going to write the wedding up, and all the other posts I should make, but somehow this one wants to come first. It's all listage, anyway.

What I got in England was
books (all from Foyle's, except the first)

• The Really Jewish Food Guide 2005/5765 (put out by the London Bet Din, it came out only a week or two before I arrived, and Theora got me a copy (thank you, thank you, thank you), which made all the difference in getting food, since most kosher food in the UK isn't marked on the package. Plus it lists (some) restaurants, bakeries, butchers, and sandwich outlets :-).
  It's surprising what's in and what's not. Pringles are all non-kosher, for instance, and all they say about bread and biscuits is that they should be kosher, without further listings. And there are few Sainsbury's or Tesco's house brand items, which you'd think they'd investigate, since they're everywhere. Plus, I wish they'd call it a kosher food guide, not a Jewish one; there are non-Jewish people who could have an interest in kosher food, if only to know that it's dairy free, for instance (I don't mention vegetarian, since the V marking, suitable for vegetarians, seems much more used there than here.).)
  
• The Witch of Clatteringshaws (Joan Aiken, her last novel, a Dido Twite one, with a really sad afterword at the end, knowing she didn't have time to finish a longer book than this. For other Joan Aiken appreciators, this is better than some of the other recent Dido books.)
  
• The Thief Lord (Cornelia Funke)
  
• Dance of the Assassins (Herve Jubert)
  
• Mortal Engines (Philip Reeve)
  
• Noughts & Crosses (Malorie Blackman)
  
• Do You Feel Lucky? (Kjartan Poskitt; about probability)
  
• Vicious Circles and Other Savage Shapes (Kjartan Poskitt; both of these last are in a series called "Murderous Maths")

food

• three packages of 9 orange Kit Kats (orange chocolate, yum, plus each has a different message imprinted in the chocolate)
  
• 8 bags of Skittles (EstherChaya and Ichur72, let me know your snail mail addresses if you want some; the LJ email should work.)
  
• some fruitcake (from Theora and Jaq's wedding. Yummy.)
  
• a Bendick's mint collection
  
• Green and Black's 70% dark chocolate
  
• Green and Black's Maya Gold (dark chocolate with orange and spices; some of this I ate in England)
  
• Branston original pickle
  
• Tiptree orange marmalade, medium cut (these last three courtesy of Theora, who was an incredibly thoughtful host)
  
• Nando's hot peri-peri sauce (a hot sauce with cayenne, lemon, and "African Birds Eye Chilli (Peri-Peri)" (It's all about the condiments; I wish I'd found a place that had the right brand of lime pickle, too.))
  
• two tins of Lyle's golden syrup (much cheaper there, and I've been wanting to try a gingerbread recipe that calls for it)

and
other paper things

• a couple of Tube maps (one without the trains, which is less useful. Why is it that so much of the south of the Thames area is covered by trains and light rail, not the Tube? Is it just timing for when things were built?)
  
• a schedule of Enfield Lock trains
  
• an order of ceremonies from the wedding
  
• a place card from the wedding (beautifully calligraphed in red (and correctly spelled :-))
  
• three used zone 6 tube passes (It still doesn't make sense to me that it was cheaper to get a zone 6 off-peak pass than it was to get a single to Heathrow.)
  
• bus maps for central London and north east London (not that I used them, really. But maps are good :-)
  
• four airmail postcard stamps (not that I managed to get postcards to send, so this ended up being rather moot. Still, it's nice to see pictures of Blenheim, and the Greater Blue Mountains Area in Australia (it's a World Heritage stamp series).)
  
• a guide to the attractions of east Anglia
  
• a map of how to get from the British Museum to the British Library
  
• a guide to what's going on at the British Library through June
  
• a listing of the biomedical image awards 2005 (having briefly stopped by the Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library; I hadn't know that such a thing existed)
  
• an old (copyright 1971) guide to British/American English (some of which is quite funny: I don't think I've ever said "hat check girl," for instance...)
  
• a program for The Home Place (Thanks to Queue, since I was too cheap to buy it; I'm more used to at least basic programs being included in the cost of admission...)

(maps and schedules and such).

Hm. Should that "was" be a "were," since I listed books before food? Hm.

Comments

[ckd]

I've seen the Green & Blacks at Whole Foods, if you want to get more without the cost of a plane ticket.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Good to know, thank you!
(though if I happen to be there, I suspect they're cheaper there)

(also, I didn't know before if they were certified, or friends just ate it based on ingredients. Nice to know it is certified :-)

[(Anonymous)]

At Star, too, Green & Black is sold.

I saw a coupon for G&B recently, too -- maybe in the Mambo Sprouts whole foods booklet?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oh, that would be cool.
And thanks for the info about Star (though I don't end up there much, currently).

[bitty.livejournal.com]

I have a stash of Green & Black's in the cupboard. BB's uncle always sens me some for my birthday, so I ration it out for special occasions.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Any way I can adopt BB's uncle?

[bitty.livejournal.com]

unlikely, but you can raid the cabinet supply since it'll probably melt before i'm allowed to eat any of it.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

Whoo hoo!! I'm sending you my address. Let me know what I owe you!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Address received (and forwarded to work, where I'm more likely to actually put something in an envelope :-).

Money, er, I dunno. Not much, since these are the small, individual bags (I never found a large one), so not really worth bothering.