Never mind an Englishman in New York, try an entire family for size. Having gathered our belongings together my wife and I, along with our motley collection of kids, all headed off to the US to create a new life. With new opportunities, new experiences and many expectations, we bid farewell to Old Blighty and departed for the New Land. Of course, the dream is one thing- reality is quite something else, and it has been a learning curve.
One of the things we most wanted to do was to try to fit in. Standing out as foreigners didn’t really appeal, and we all wanted to not only embrace the whole concept of the American life, but we wanted America to embrace us too. When in Rome.. and all that. So we all tried hard to understand the local customs, the traditional activities, and even the food. My wife and I both love cooking, and to us food is very important.
Back in the UK we would quite happily rustle up the traditional British recipes, but now we found ourselves in the US we both felt it only right to embrace our new life wholeheartedly, stomachs and all. Of course, we fell quite quickly for the usual stereotypes, but at the same time realised that our kids weren’t going to do too well living on hotdogs and burgers for their whole life.
One of our first projects, therefore, was to investigate what traditional cooking means in the US, and to try to track down wholesome, appetizing recipes we could try out for ourselves. In no small part we also wanted to try to adopt local custom and entertain our new friends with traditional US food, rather than always falling back on the common denominator.
Our search for traditional US recipes was predominantly carried out online, and we found a huge number of US recipes we had never heard of, and were very anxious to try. We came across a Navy Bean Soup recipe which sounded fantastic, as well as a Ham Navy Bean soup recipe. These sounded ideal, not just because they were delicious and healthy, but warming too. As the weather was chilly even by the standards of an Englishman used to the somewhat inclement climate of the UK, we felt that it would be ideal to find recipes that were warming.
After having a go with the Navy Bean Soup recipe, we all agreed, children included, that it was a resounding success. To have the children giving one of our recipes the thumbs up is always good, and we felt as though we’d accomplished an important step in becoming accepted as locals! We tried the Ham Navy Bean Soup recipe too with equal success. Both were heartily warming, although we did feel that it was important to expand our repertoire beyond merely two alternative dishes. I had a look online again, at the same place I got the Navy Bean Soup recipe from.
What I discovered when I went back to the website where I got the Ham Navy Bean Soup recipe from was a whole pack of recipes for sale. In total there were two hundred fantastic recipes, all of which sounded delicious, all healthy, nutritious meals, and all traditional US dishes. This sounded great, but what amazed me was that this pack of two hundred US recipes was for sale for just $10.
Being able to pick up two hundred traditional recipes for just $10 was too good to be true - and I immediately acquired the full pack. In all honesty I couldn’t even take my kids to the pizza parlour for $10 - so to have a whole heap of successful recipes was a bargain. I know my children are definitely impressed with the food, and my wife and I have discovered a great way to make a lot of new friends too!
