While France is the land of foods so intricate and difficult to create that it seems only a master chef could succeed, England is the land of simple, hearty, stick-to-your-ribs meals. And sometimes that is just what you need.

We loved popping into the pub and ordering up a meat pie with mush and mash, that is mushed peas and mashed potatoes. How could you not love ordering something called mush and mash, especially when it is downright delicious?

As it turns out, what we didn’t love was ordering a pint. Every single beer we ordered in England was warm and flat. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need my beer to be ice cold. In fact, I probably could have handled the warm aspect of it if it hadn’t been for the flatness. By the end of our time there we had converted to cider.

A lovely cider went perfectly with the tasty and always classic fish ‘n chips. We had several meals of this classic dish and actually found most of them to be just ok but every now and then we got one that was amazing. Sadly, despite its reputation as a commoners’ meal, fish and chips hit our wallet with a bit of heft. We often paid more than 10Pounds for a single plate in a pub, which converted to around $14 at the time.

When we weren’t stuffing our faces with meat pies or fried anything we decided to class it up a little and indulge in some high tea. We were able to choose from a selections of teas to complement our fresh scones with clotted cream. If you don’t know about clotted cream I feel sad for you because it is possibly the greatest spread in history. Somewhere between butter and whipped cream, clotted cream became our constant craving. Another sad note here: clotted cream is basically unavailable in the US because it doesn’t survive shipping and practically no one makes it in the states.

There were a lot of foods in England that we will probably be bringing back to the States with us. Unfortunately, clotted cream is not one of them.