7 November, 2008 | Leave a Comment

As I mentioned before, my visa extension was renewed this week by the Home Office.  I didn’t know for how long it was renewed until today, when I went to school to pick up my passport.  My visa has been renewed until January 2011!  That’s longer than I requested.  I should have my PhD well before that time, but it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about visas and such for the rest of my studies.

I’m not on campus very often, so while at school today I met up with a friend and we had lunch in the cafeteria.  I had “toad in the hole,” a British specialty I’d never had before or even heard of.  Toad in the hole is sausages cooked in Yorkshire pudding batter, served with gravy.  Today I had a vegetarian version made with Quorn sausages.  Yum!!!

My friend had one of those British dishes that I could only eat if someone held a gun to my head.  She had tuna with sweetcorn (a common sandwich-filler here — tuna, mayonnaise and corn niblets all mixed together), served on a baked potato.  I adore tuna, but I could never eat it with corn, nor could I eat cold tuna served on a hot baked potato.  Who invented this dish?  And why on earth do people eat it?   She offered me a bite, but the mere sight of it activated my gag reflex.  This is one dish I don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough to try.

1. Comments RSS

1. Gregory Says:

   November 7th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

   I don’t like Tuna, I make up for that by kicking any stranded dolphins I come across.

   The potato, has an important part in European history, it was an Irish dish, and eshewed by the English for much the same reason they named apes after the Irish at London zoo.

   Toad in the Hole is so totally Anglo-Saxon, it is difficult not to like them, despite the Great Hunger in Ireland, Ross and Brand, packed trains, crap dentistry and freezing fog. The English are still cute.

   “The production of the fuel for one V-2 required 30 tons of potatoes.”

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket

   It once made sense to eat as many potatos as possible.

   The Brits are a proud people, to this day, they can’t quite admit, that their empire was threatened by a spud powered missile.

2. Daniela Says:

   November 10th, 2008 at 11:33 am

   I must admit I like everything with sausages But I could never see the point of tuna and sweet corn either. In my country we normally mix tuna – as a sandwich fill – with onions and a bit of lemon mayo. They have a similar one here, at Gregg’s (sic).
   All best,