France to go

Evan spied these candies at the Kew Gardens gift shop and ran over to us making a joke about dropping acid, of course. The Brits we were with started laughing and said, “Until right now, we’d never thought of it in that way”!

One of my favorite Britishisms is the term “gutted.” Basically, “I’m absolutely gutted” is just a really overdramatic way to say “I’m disappointed.” But it’s so much more graphic.

I always imagine entrails spilling out, or maybe an entire lack of a gut. And though the term seems quite dire, it’s usually used when a Brit is distraught that he won’t be able to make it to the pub that night or that he has to leave dinner a bit early. I haven’t yet heard it used for anything serious.

It also seems to be begging for a response like, “Don’t get your intestines in a bunch.”

Well, I didn’t know what a bap was when I first heard the word, though it really hearkened back to a very awesomely bad movie, B.A.P.S (p.s. my illustration is off — for some reason, I thought there were 3 main characters, not 2 — that’s what I get for drawing before IMDb-ing). Turns out that a bap is essentially a bun, and the term burger in a bap is quite common, as well as other baptastic foods, like sausage in a bap, which we saw at breakfast. But would “Think outside the bap” work as well for Taco Bell as “Think outside the bun”? It just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

I sort of forgot this one since I got used to everyone in Budapest calling arugula rocket. They didn’t understand what we didn’t get in the translation, of course. But I think rocket is a much more exciting and less pretentious name for the fancy lettuce.

Though this stems more from a misunderstanding, chocolate buttons still makes me smile. The first I heard of them, Evan and I were having crepes at Crepe Affaire with his coworkers, and they said something about chocolate buttons in their dessert crepes. I gave them a quizzical look and said, “You call chocolate chips chocolate buttons?” It just sounded so charming.

Turns out chocolate buttons are different from chocolate chips. They’re essentially what we’d call molding chocolate — those flat pieces you melt to make other chocolates — and Cadbury sells them as a snack.

Still, I had pictures of little buttons in my head instead of the more familiar little chips, and thought they’d be especially cute in a cookie.

At first glance, you think, well, pitta’s just pita with an extra T. The big difference, though, lies in how it’s pronounced.

Ask a Londoner if they use the word pita (pronounced peet-a), and they say, “Of course!” But then, when you say, “like for the bread,” they’ll look confused and say, “No, like the name.” They’re thinking of Peter.

They, they’ll say, “Oh, you mean pitta bread?” pronouncing it pit-a.

I think why I’m so amused by this is that I’ve asked quite a few Londoners and have gotten the exact same mix-ups and responses every time. It was completely unexpected the first time, and the second time it was just funny.

This was another new one for me. Apparently potholing means going exploring in caves. I had no idea. Good thing I asked, since that’s much more exciting than the image in my head.

Jacket potato = baked potato

I just said potato when I ordered one the other day since there was only one potato option on the menu.

I think the drawing says it all. Bits = Pulp.

Now the question is, which is the more appetizing word? Pulp, for me, at least, is more clear about what it entails and is a much more specific word than bits. I feel like bits can be sort of anything, though it is a cuter sounding word.

Your thoughts?

Now, it’s no surprise to me that the Brits say Zed. I mean, I was taught the alphabet X-Y-Zed growing up in Canada, but Americanized me had to get used to saying Zee, which was still acceptable in Canada. I remember them being interchangeable as a kid, really. So when giving my name here for the first time and having to spell it out, I was caught a little off guard when it was read back to me as K-I-Zed. I should have known. Or at least been prepared.