Heh. It took me a few seconds there..."come die with me"? What the hell kind of freaky British television is that? :p

Come DiNe with me is the one with the celebrities who cook for each other?

Nope, come dine with me is all about middle class british people, hosting dinner parties for each other, and they rate each other's efforts, and the winner gets £1000

Oh bugger, I just noticed it said "come die with me"!!!

I can just see that: Channel 4 pushing the envelope to the point where they have a reality TV show featuring people who have made suicide pacts, and want to reinforce them.

I think that show's recently been imported to N. America. There was a vegetarian (vegan?) on it who posted here telling us to watch. I normally like cooking shows, but they portrayed the people as being such asses that I didn't care for it.

Is it any better in the UK? I may watch when I get there. Only four more weeks!

Ah right.. that is a shame, Deal or no Deal was addictive! I only saw the first 10 mins of Come Dine With Me, but i'll try and catch them for the rest of the week. You're right, it did seem to be a positive portrayal from what i saw.

pfft, Deal or no Deal, with Noel Edmonds, pfft.... *hates quiz shows* I just have to be the one to trade off here, glad to see the back of it! :p :p :p

I watched Come Dine With Me today (while I was cooking no less), since it was featuring a vegan. I'd actually seen an episode before, but that one had featured these celebrity has beens (like old actors and beauty queens and stuff ), so I figured that was the normal routine. More interesting with the "average" folks.

I love the show that comes on before..Countdown, I think it's called (I've watched it like 6 times and I still can't remember the name, heh).

Countdown is a british institution!

I always seem to end up watching Countdown...it's strangely amusing :o

I'm terrible at it!

<<is mildly addicted. :shy:

Carol Vorderman is a babe (and really brainy as well. she has an IQ of 154) I love to watch but don't do well on puzzles like that especially in a time limit but my husband is brilliant at it.

I am Jen--look out for the show QI hosted by Stephen Fry. It is great for trivia (trivial?) minded people. Spiderman and I have to the tapings of it twice in London (they are free to go sit in the studio audience) and we love it. I want to take Alan Davies home with me.

Carol Vorderman is a babe (and really brainy as well. she has an IQ of 154) Can't stand her.

I can never get more than five letters when I watch countdown. But I am better at the number-based puzzles.

i lived in britain up until half a year ago and don't know any of those shows. i guess i was the only one in britain without tv :cool: so i watched the cute imported american squirrels eating trees in the garden instead :rolleyes:
private radio was hard to bear, too many commercials and modern british music is not my kind of thing, either. so i was stuck with bbc's word radio programs which at least i understood (while the local yorkshire dialect was hard to understand). mixed memories of britain :dizzy:

Ah..KDB. It's all still quite fascinating to me at this point (and will be for some time to come, I suspect). Television commercials that only last 5-10 seconds.. more swearing than on most cable in the US...and of course, Big Brother 25 hours a day. :)

And that's only television. Wait until we get to tales of the grocery stores (CrispS = potato chips, but CrisP = granola?) heh.

Ah..KDB. It's all still quite fascinating to me at this point (and will be for some time to come, I suspect). Television commercials that only last 5-10 seconds.. more swearing than on most cable in the US...and of course, Big Brother 25 hours a day. :)

And that's only television. Wait until we get to tales of the grocery stores (CrispS = potato chips, but CrisP = granola?) heh.

How long do ads last in the US? Do you like BB? I'm addicted :p

As for the crisp thing... i had never heard the word granola until i found this site, although we do have it here, the word is just not commonly used (i have seen it used now however). But we don't call it crisp either, that's just a random descriptive word used for the name of the cereal (which happens to be granola), just like the word 'crunch' is sometimes used (Hawaian crunch... which is also granola). They appear in a lot of cereal names from granola to puffed rice to bran flakes.

Ad in the US = usually 30 or 60 seconds. I think there are still some 15 second spots, but they're not very common. I didn't like the American version of Big Brother, and I'm not keen on this one either, but I'm learning to keep that to myself, chuckle.

The grocery store/market has probably been the biggest arena of culture clash so far. Trying to find black beans (aka Turtle beans) or red pepper flakes, both of which would be in any grocery store in any corner of the US. Or deciphering what (Americans call) oatmeal is here. And don't even get me started on cookies/biscuits/scones. Heh. I went to this little specialty shop here in town, looking for the red pepper flakes one day. The shopkeeper didn't have them, but joked that she should pick my brain to find out what "exotic" American foods to stock.

My most favorite experience of all though, is talking to a shopkeeper about electrical plug converters, etc. He thought I was completely out of my gourd that I would want to use my hair dryer and curling in the bathroom. I asked if women just didn't use those things in the bathroom in the UK. He says "of course not. We're a very safety concious country." I had to stifle a giggle.

yes, food was a shock to me too when i first got to britain. luckily, i found an isolated shelf in tesco's where there was -almost hidden away and beyond the sight and reach of anyone under 5 feet- imported german wholemeal bread :D i asked someone in tesco's where they had the tofu. he asked me what that was ... i found some in sainsbury's later, but that was quite disgusting stuff, tasted of nothing and it almost fell apart in the water :p

they do have good stuff, too, though, but it is prohibitively expensive. a little bottle of linseed oil (i like it because it is rich in omega-acids) is around 8 or 9 pounds. in germany i get the best organic linseed oil for 3 euros (2 pounds) a bottle.

I think oatmeal can still be found as oatmeal here, but mostly as porridge oats.

As for the hairdryer in the bathroom, when i went to Germany last year i was shocked to see sockets in the bathroom, and the hairdryer in there. I didn't realise it was the same in the US.

KDB, i presume you're from Germany? When i went to a supermarket there (it was in Wilhelmshaven) i was surprised to see a lot of tofu. My fave was tofu pate in the shape of a little sausage... it came in different meaty flavours. Here, you usually have to go to an HFS to get hold of those kinds of things (although we don't have those sausages :( ). Our supermarkets just have lots of Quorn, and other fake meats, and blocks of plain tofu if you're lucky.

I am Jen--I know what you mean. We went 2 years without black beans because stores didn't seem to carry them. By chance i found some Suma brand black beans in tins at our local HFS and I ordered a case. mmmm...black beans.

And in case you haven't discovered it yet: hydrogen peroxide costs about £1.50 and comes in a wee glass bottle and you have to ask for behind the counter at the chemist. It comes in 6% and 9% where I am. No gigantic brown plastic jugs of 3% HP for 50 cents here. And antihistamines are behind the counter at the chemist and have to be asked for but decongestants are on the shelf. Go figure.

quorn ain't vegan as well. Just vegetarian. I'm not its biggest fan, but I use it to make fajitas. However, for me, the taste of quorn has to be offset by west indian hot sauce, as well as some alcoholic substance, be it carling or pinot grigio.

As for TV, we have big brother all the time, which is rubbish, but one of the contestants has tourette's so you can expect some fun. And we also have these crap TV programmes called "The mint" and "quizmania" for insomniacs. Whoever devised them needs to be kicked. Hard. Very hard.

I feel old for saying this, but I remember the good old days when ITV1's night time schedules consisted of low-budget comedy. Most notably a programme called Dare To believe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/d/daretobelieve_66601060.shtml) which wasn't very funny at all. Unless you were absolutely smashed off your face from drink, drugs or a combination of the two. In which case, it was the best television ever made.

The funny thing is that i keep saying how sh*t british TV is, and I even boast that I don't have a TV at university, and keep saying how much i don't miss tv, but whenever i come home, i like to watch TV. Channel 5 has all the nazi documentaries, channel 4 has all the smut, ITV1 has no smut and is actually rather useless, BBC2 has top gear, and when it's that time of year, snooker, and BBC1 hasn't got very much.

yep, i am from germany originally.
wilhelmshaven and the north in general are very progressive, unlike the more traditional south, where people still eat lots of pork and all that crap (and look like it) :p
even walmart germany has a huge shelf in every market, offering health food including tofu, veg*n breadspreads, oils, organic nuts, seeds etc.

i guess i know the kind of tofu you mean, i guess it is by eden. but there are many brands now, they add all kinds of things like herbs, vegetable flavor etc. i never tried the meaty flavor because i never liked meat :cool: i think terms like tofu sausage, soy burgers are a bit unfortunate because what is the point in switching to tofu when one needs it to look and taste like meat :cool: even if one used to like meat, why not make the sacrifice and do without what one liked...




I think oatmeal can still be found as oatmeal here, but mostly as porridge oats.

As for the hairdryer in the bathroom, when i went to Germany last year i was shocked to see sockets in the bathroom, and the hairdryer in there. I didn't realise it was the same in the US.

KDB, i presume you're from Germany? When i went to a supermarket there (it was in Wilhelmshaven) i was surprised to see a lot of tofu. My fave was tofu pate in the shape of a little sausage... it came in different meaty flavours. Here, you usually have to go to an HFS to get hold of those kinds of things (although we don't have those sausages :( ). Our supermarkets just have lots of Quorn, and other fake meats, and blocks of plain tofu if you're lucky.

quorn ain't vegan as well. Just vegetarian. I'm not its biggest fan, but I use it to make fajitas. However, for me, the taste of quorn has to be offset by west indian hot sauce, as well as some alcoholic substance, be it carling or pinot grigio.

As for TV, we have big brother all the time, which is rubbish, but one of the contestants has tourette's so you can expect some fun. And we also have these crap TV programmes called "The mint" and "quizmania" for insomniacs. Whoever devised them needs to be kicked. Hard. Very hard.

I feel old for saying this, but I remember the good old days when ITV1's night time schedules consisted of low-budget comedy. Most notably a programme called Dare To believe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/d/daretobelieve_66601060.shtml) which wasn't very funny at all. Unless you were absolutely smashed off your face from drink, drugs or a combination of the two. In which case, it was the best television ever made.

I wasn't too impressed by the Quorn fajita strips... they were ok, but nothing special.

I'm not really an insomniac, more a nightowl, and used to watch Quizmania when it started. It does my head in now! But once i start watching it i need to know the answers :-/

Dare To Believe.... i wonder if that's the show i can never remember the name of.... was it really weird and hypnotic?.. just showing random moving objects on the screen with no meaning whatsoever? Maybe that was the point, to help insomniacs fall asleep!

i think terms like tofu sausage, soy burgers are a bit unfortunate because what is the point in switching to tofu when one needs it to look and taste like meat :cool: even if one used to like meat, why not make the sacrifice and do without what one liked...

Don't sausage and burger refer to the shape? I hear what you're saying but it's probably helped a lot of people switch from eating meat to eating fake meat/tofu replacements. So i don't really care what they're called.. burgers, sausages, chicken, pork, lamb, fish etc.