So, I volunteered to make dinner for a friend of mine tomorrow night. I decided early on that a Mexican theme would be the way to go. This meal will include many things, one of them being sangria (okay, so it's not strictly Mexican) and a dessert made out of jello . . . again, not quite Mexican, but I planned to make it a triple layer of jello in a tall clear glass, using jello that loosely represented colours from Mexico (i.e., red, green, and either orange or yellow). I freely admit that my jello dessert idea was borrowed from someone else (and also that it is really really good).
Off I went to the local supermarket to pick up all the ingredients I would need. Lesson 1 that I learned has to do with the dessert. They don't have anything called jello over here, so I was stuck in what I hoped was the right aisle looking for something similar. I found a box with the word "Jelly" on it, which looked similar to the Jello boxes from Canada. After reading the directions I was a little skeptical (it called for putting the jelly "cubes" in the microwave!) but I had no other option, so I placed three different flavours into my basket. The other problem with the dessert idea was that they didn't have that great of a selection for different flavours: I ended up having to get red (strawberry), orange (orange), and purple (black currant). Not very Mexican, but it'd have to do.
I came home and decided to make up my first layer of the dessert. I grabbed the strawberry package and opened it up. Inside was not powder (as would be expected from Jello) but a block of cubed gel. The only way I can try to explain it is that it kind of looked like a filled ice cube tray, but it was completely made of jello. What you do next is put the gel cubes in a container, add 100ml of water, and heat it in the microwave for 1min. Surprisingly, it seemed to do the trick and I now have two layers of jello-like material chilling in my fridge.
Lesson 2 had to do with getting the ingredients for the sangria. I needed club soda, but as far as I could see at Tesco there is no such thing as Club Soda. I think I was in the right section: I could see tonic water, soda water, flavoured water, etc, but nothing with the word "club" in it. In the end, I went for the water with the word "soda" in it and I hope that it will be the right thing. I will find out tomorrow night!
I find it both frustrating and amusing that even though we speak the same language, there are so many different words for the same thing!
e.g. Canadian pants = UK trousers, while UK pants = Canadian Underwear
Australian thong = Canadian flip flops
Canadian pavement = UK road, while UK pavement = Canadian sidewalk (this one was very tricky when I was working with kids and wanted to tell them to get on the pavement, i.e. off the road, but that would have meant the complete opposite to them! I had to be VERY VERY careful of what I was saying!)
1 comment:
I definitely experienced some similar moments of language-related confusion. For the life of me, I could never remember to say 'trousers' and it got me into a few awkward situations. Quite a few bemused stares when I would exclaim "I hate the rain, it makes my pants all wet and tight!"
And the baking thing - sheesh! Confectionary/powdered sugar is royal icing. Baking soda is Bicarbonate of Soda. And there's no such thing as brown sugar, just two oddly named sugars (demerara and muscavado) that I could never tell which one I was supposed to use.
Good luck with the "Mexican" meal, have fun!!
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