For Thanksgiving this year, I decided that I was homesick and that in defense I was going to cook a turkey and some pumpkin pie. Upon discovering that I was cooking a dessert pie with a vegetable, most of my British friends looked at me skeptically. When they learned that this same pie was made using a sludge of the same veggie that came in a can . . . I wouldn't blame them if they backed away slowly. Undeterred, I found the desired sludge online, and made my pies (they were delicious by the way) and fed them to my friends. My Canadian husband thought they were lovely and we both ate quite a bit, but none of my British friends came back for seconds. . . While this meant there was enough for breakfast (don't judge), it also meant that they weren't won over by my veggie-pie-from-a-can. Oh well.
Now I am crossing another hurdle. I expressed a desire for butter tarts the other night, and was once again met with blank stares. I described that butter tarts are essentially tiny pies made with sugar, butter, and sometimes raisins and were often quite runny and almost unbearably sweet. Once again, my friends backed away slowly. My plans have been put somewhat on hold though when I discovered that corn syrup is awfully hard to come by over here. I've been told that golden syrup is quite similar, so I will be attempting the substitution tonight for my girly night.
This really brings home one of the reasons it is so hard to be an expat. Getting homesick in your own country is hard enough, but you can always run down to the local Loblaws, pick up some stuff and make it just like Mom does. When you live an ocean away, no matter how hard you try or how good a cook you are, it is never going to be "just like Mom does" because you are starting with different ingredients. My butter tarts will be yummy, but they won't be "the same", and I suspect that instead of making me less homesick, they will actually remind me even more how hard it is to be far from home.
