Not much to do

There isn't really much to blog about these days. The UK implemented a second national lockdown, which isn't really a full lockdown but just a partial one. Unlike before, schools are still open, and people can still go to work if they feel that staying at home is affecting their mental health. For me, personally, my life hasn't been affected too much. Without working right now, I stay at home normally anyway, and I just go for walks in the morning and can still get my groceries. Parks are still open as well as several street markets, so it's not like there is nothing to do.

One thing that has made life here much more pleasant and manageable has been the delivery of our sea shipment from Canada. We had artwork for the bare and large walls, books to read as I had run out of stuff to read that I brought in my suitcase, and additional kitchen items from our pantry as well as all my baking equipment and spices. All those things have made a huge difference to being more comfortable at home and having many more cooking options. But what has made it more comfortable for going out was the bulk of our clothing! We had vacated our house at the end of June and did not imagine it would take us two months to get to England. We also didn't expect that our sea shipment would arrive two months after we did, so all I had brought were a couple of light summer cardigans along with a summer wardrobe and a couple of pairs of jeans. The fall weather here is crisp enough, and I didn't want to go out and buy a bunch of clothes when I know I have enough clothes coming! It was a long wait, but thankfully, we were able to get our stuff delivered the day before the lockdown began.

The delivery also included our bikes, so we've been on a couple of bike rides since getting them, and it has been really nice to cycle around central London. The city has set up what are called Cycle Superhighways, which are well-marked bike lanes. It makes cycling around safer and easier, especially as we are getting used to cycling on the other side of the road and learning the hand signalling system here, which is different from what's used at home. Anyway, I believe these cycle highways are at least 100km or 200km worth of cycling pathways, or at least the plan is to make then encompass that much. We're looking forward to cycling more to commute around town as well. It will save us money on public transportation and save us time instead of walking--and keep us healthier by lowering our exposure to the Covid, not just the gaining the health benefits of physical activity itself. 

I mentioned that street markets are still open, and as a result, we decided to check one a couple of them out today. We went to Brick Lane and Spitalfields, taking the bus so that we could sightsee in the city along the way--and also it's only one bus as opposed to two trains, again, limiting our exposure to germs and what not. We were mainly looking for street food for lunch, and we found a good selection of it around both markets. It's a really neat place for people-watching. There is pretty much any form of expression here so that you never have to feel like you stick out in terms of fashion, as I've learned. We saw a couple where the man had female gender expression and his partner was a woman with male gender expression, to an older man wearing a 70s vibe tracksuit and do-rag even though he's not black, to people with lots of interesting styles of apparel. The streets themselves are colourful with lots of graffiti but also some street art.

In addition, there are street signs in Bengali. I didn't get a sign of one of the older ones in metal, just one that is painted or printed. In any case, I was confused about why this is, and I came across this blog by a group of history students at the University of London who discuss the background. Apparently Bengalis have been migrating to London since the early 1600s, and while it's not mentioned as to why this is, we did notice that the area looks like it was historically designated as an area for textiles creation, and upon further research, it seems that Spitalfields was specifically known for its silk. I came across another blog that talks about the silk industry in Spitalfields, and according to it, one of of the photos I took of what I thought were just pretty apartments are actually the former houses of the master weavers that are now worth millions of pounds. Who knew! Well, what I wanted to say, before I went off on a seeming tangent about textiles, is that perhaps Bengalis migrated to work in the textiles industry. Today, they are more well known for their cottons, but maybe they have always been involved in textiles of every kind, and at the time, under the beginnings of British colonisation, they might have been provided easy passage to England as cheap labourers for the silk or general textiles industry. Now that I think about it, I suddenly recall learning about a huge population of people specifically from Sylhet, Bangladesh in the UK. In a previous post from my blog when I travelled to Bangladesh, I had noticed that there were tons of Bangla people on the flight with British accents and was wondering why they were travelling to Sylhet, not thinking at the time to just do a Google search for this info. People have been coming from Sylhet to the UK for a few hundred years, as it turns out, and the largest influx from that city was in the 1970s. 

As for food, there were many Asian options. Spitalfields had options for Indian food, but Brick Lane had more East Asian foods as well as Mexican options. In fact, the signs for leaving Brick Lane are in Italian and Spanish, in addition to English. I'm not sure how authentic the Mexican places are, but I plan to go back sometime to check them out. I had Tibetan food, which is also Nepali food, a type of dumpling called momos. I haven't met a dumpling yet I didn't like--except perhaps for the sweet bean steamed dumplings, mainly because I don't like the texture. Anyway, these momos were much better than the ones I tried back in Edmonton: these ones were topped with soya sauce, vinegar, fried onions, green onions, and momo sauce, which is some kind of chili sauce with rye seeds in them.

The flavours were delicious and so addicting. I want to eat those all the time now!

Well, for not being able to do much, this is a surprisingly long post, but it's fun to explore locally, and there is a lot of history here to learn about and share. 

On an unrelated note, I wanted to mention an additional, perhaps London culture, note about Christmas trees. I rarely seen conifers in England. I've only spotted one in Battersea Park, and I assume that because probably mostly contains trees that were deliberately planted, that one was not natural to the area. However, someone is growing pine trees or some type of evergreen to be used as Christmas trees. They were actually kind of cute, like Charlie Brown Christmas trees! They were selling them in the grocery store in the plant section--they're so small that there is space to sell them indoors like that. Given the space that most people would have in a small apartment or old-school small house that isn't open concept, you'd be hard pressed to find space to put up a large Christmas tree, so these ones just make sense. It just looks so odd when we're used to seeing much larger trees at home! We're thinking possibly getting one later in the year as we would have space for a small one. It would definitely make things look so festive around our place! 

East is east and west is west...

 I was reminded of this line today, and I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before, so I turned to good ol' Google to remind me. It's from the Kipling poem "The Ballad of the East and West." The first stanza is as follows:

0h, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

What does that have to do with today's post? Precious little, other than that I was at the centre of east and west today, and it so happens that Kipling is British, but that's a coincidence. Given that I'm in England, you might be able to guess where I went today if I'm talking about east and west: Greenwich.

Steak & truffle fries for lunch

Initially, I went to Greenwich Market. My sister-in-law's sister has a stall there, but I forgot that she wouldn't be there today, so I ended up not getting to see her stall, but I did at least get to see a few others stalls and some places around the market, try some yummy food from local street stalls at the market, buy some soap from the market like the kind of soap I was using at home and didn't know where I'd find similar soap here, and be able to go to the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which is the place you go to see the spot marked "where time begins," as I like to call it. 

Whenever you see time with GMT after it, that's Greenwich Mean Time, where the prime meridian runs through, meaning the longitude is 0º, and where, according to Wikipedia was for a long time used by over 2/3 of ships and tonnage as a reference point for their charts and maps. I mean, England was the centre of the universe for so long, right? Well, GMT was superseded by Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) in 1972, but I still see GMT quite commonly used. What's also noteworthy is that the prime meridian itself has also shifted slightly over time as the earth's crust moves, so the line that marks GMT may actually be off now.

The prime meridian through the gate

In any case, we didn't pay to go into the Observatory. There is actually lots to see around it, including the National Maritime Museum, which is free--though currently any museum that's open requires a booking, even if it's free, by way of controlling the number of people in it at any given time for the sake of physical distancing, and there is a beautiful park that surrounds the area. The only thing is that by not paying, you couldn't get in to see the meridian line, so I took a photo of it from through the fence. You can at least see it through a gate, just that you can't step over it and be on either side of it at the same time. 

You would think that it would be a little disappointing not to get to actually step over or straddle that line, but for the very few of you who have followed by blog for years, you might remember how much I enjoy looking behind me when there's some sort of attraction in front of me. At the very least, you get an interesting perspective of the crowd, but sometimes you notice something that others don't see that can be just as interesting if not more, and is sometimes overlooked because a well-known attraction is stealing the limelight. The prime meridian is one of those things. We noticed that a family was going through an open gate with a pathway leading to some unknown destination around the Observatory. I went over to investigate and noticed that the same type of line that is marked above as the prime meridian and that is within the Observatory part for which you have to pay, actually extends down vertically and again horizontally, crossing that pathway. We went through the gate, and sure enough, the prime meridian is marked there as well--and it's completely free. I'm sure the Observatory is worth a visit, but if you're only going for a photo with the prime meridian, why pay all that money when you can get it for free! So I happily got my photo because I took the time to investigate the road less travelled. I should mention that as you might be able to see in the photos (I think you have to click on them to enlarge them) that east and west are marked on either side of the line. I guess that means I was in two of the earth's hemispheres at once!

  

The pathway leads to a garden on one side of the Observatory. There isn't much to see there, but the walk was refreshing with the smells of old-growth greenery after the rain, and the scenery was beautiful as the sun came out and created spots of colourful sparkles, lighting up the trees in all their autumnal glory. The park itself also has some trees with very thick trunks. I can't even imagine how old those trees must be, but I had to get photos of them. There was also a statue there of General Wolfe, who defeated the Marquis de Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. If you don't remember your Canadian history (I forgot who these guys were, too), you can click this link to read more. What's interesting is that while the monument was gifted to the UK by Canada in 1930, it was the Marquis de Montcalm who unveiled it. It seems odd that a descendent of the defeated party would unveil a monument to the victor of that battle! We also walked down to Cutty Sark before we went home. I didn't actually know what that was, but it's some ship. I don't know the history of it to know why it's there or significant, but I honestly didn't have much interest in it. We were just curious what was over there. The boat looks really cool because my landlocked province at home would never house such a thing, so it's neat just to see such a massive boat and with a beautiful design.

I leave this post with photos of those scenes as well as that of the surrounding park--in the past I used to be able to create albums for these things on Blogger when it used Picasa, but unfortunately that is no longer possible now that Picasa is not supported, and Google failed to provide a good alternative to adding albums to one's blog. So I'll put them here in a way that will probably look somewhat messy due to the poor capabilities of this program.

The tree is so massive, it collects pools of water

There's always something new

I went out Sunday morning to pick up a few groceries, and if I've been out on a Sunday morning before, I certainly have never gone in the direction of the grocery store before. There were dozens of people going in my direction, most of them speaking what sounded like an Eastern European language. Shortly before I reached the store, they had all turn off in the same direction. I thought perhaps there was a place of worship where they were going. However, when I came out of the store to return home, I saw several people coming back from that direction, most with plastic bags in their hands, seemingly filled with groceries, and one person even had a full wheeled shopping bag, the kind I also use to carry home a lot of groceries on foot. I also started seeing people going in that direction with those same wheeled shopping bags, and I figured there must be a street market in that direction. As my bag was already full, I decided not to go check it out, but I will another day for sure. And the Eastern Europeans? I think they were actually Roma! I saw a couple of older ladies with fringed scarves around their necks and long velvet dresses with frilly hems, and I saw one guy hawking perfume out of a reusable shopping bag on the sidewalk. Another man had set up a table at a bus stop where he was doing the trick where you have to follow a small object underneath 3 tin bowls, and people seemed to be betting on the results. It was quite interesting!

St Pancras train station is pretty inside

The previous day, we went out to Luton. At home, we've enjoyed watching the show "24 Hours in Police Custody," which features the Luton Police. It's a lower income area and one that seems to attract a lot of immigrants, but what was interesting is that, when we were at the Luton Mall, the people there looked a lot like regular people at home. There are a lot more business people and office type workers where we live, so often times, people are a bit dressed up. But in Luton, it seemed a little bit like home. Anyway, we did see the outside of the police station, and the mall was pretty nice. One of the strangest sites, of all things, was seeing 2 flocks of Canada Geese flying overhead in their typical V formation. I know that there are Canada Geese in the UK, but I've never seen a large enough population of them anywhere to expect to see them flying in formation like that.

Canada Geese

The day before, I discovered Battersea Park. It's a really pretty park with a manmade pond stocked with fish, and as a result, there are many types of birds there that eat fish. People can fish there as well, but they have competition from the birds! I saw a grey heron fly overhead, and when I went there again with my husband on Sunday afternoon, there were Great Grebes, which are another type of bird that eats fish. There are also several other kinds of birds as well. The colours had attracted me to the place the most, as trees are starting to turn during the autumn here, and we were treated to a dazzling view of them on the Sunday afternoon when the sun popped out for few minutes to light up the golds and reds.

Panorama of the duck pond at Battersea Park

Foods & Fashion, London edition

Foods and Fashion is sometimes an option class that students can take back home at the secondary level--sometimes they're split up into two separate courses, but sometimes they are combined. So I thought I would title this post with this course name as I didn't know if I'd have enough for two separate posts. It's all about me learning about new foods I'm seeing and interesting fashion trends that I see at the moment.

Foods

Aside from the ubiquitous and very affordable prices on a variety of types of clotted cream, or the well-known Marmite, which I have no intention of trying as I'm not really a fan of eating yeast when it's not in a bread product, I have come across a number of other interesting items at the grocery store. One of them is goose fat. I've been too lazy to look it up, but I really have no idea what it would be used for. It looks like it's used as lard would be, lard being made from pork fat. Geese and ducks can have a lot of fat on them, so I guess if one is really interested, goose lard could be used. I'm not sure what the flavour difference is that makes it attractive, but it was interesting to see in the store. I mentioned in a previous post the different flavours you can see here of products, such as rhubarb and blackcurrant, that you just don't see ay home, but there are also some products that you would have to go to a specialty store for at home that you can find regularly here in any grocery store. Macarons and churros are some of them. 

I suppose you can sometimes find them in bakery sections--at least macarons--at home, but here, they're just in the dessert section next to where you usually get yogurts in the dairy aisle. There are many more puddings and flans and other types of desserts in general in the stores as well. Other types of foods that are more common in the grocery stores are water cress, venison steaks, and different fish like mackerel. Honey tends to be expensive, especially because I was buying acacia honey, which I read is really mild. At home, I always got creamed clover honey, which I like for its mildness because it doesn't compete with the flavour of a delicate Earl Grey, for example, but I ended up finding that I can get "set honey" here for pretty cheap. It has a mild flavour and is creamed, but I don't know where it comes from. Food labelling in the UK is quite different from home, and you can't always find out as much nutritional info as you'd like, and some products aren't good at labelling the weight or volume. We also have been trying new chip flavours like "chicken wing" and "piri piri," and I'd also like to try paprika flavoured chips when I get a chance.

Fashion

I think London is known more for its sophisticated and bold street fashion rather than haute couture, and I've definitely been a little self-conscious in terms of wanting to look like a local. I'm not, at least, someone who will be seen wearing my flannel pyjama bottoms in public as pants (no offense if you do this, but you have to admit that it's not a sophisticated look), but I want to try to develop a bit of local fashion sensibility. For my husband, it's easy, because corduroy trousers or khakis and a sweater over a button-up shirt are already his style, and that's pretty common here, but for me, it's a little harder, especially for plus-sized wear. I also don't want to go out and buy a bunch of new clothes either because with all the walking around, I will probably lose some weight, and I'd just have to turn around and buy a bunch of new clothes again.

Anyway, enough of tangential talk. What I wanted to mention was that one of the first things I noticed is that not only are many women wearing somewhat longer, flowy skirts and dresses, but many of them are actually somewhat similar to the Mennonite style of dresses that my grandmother always wore. In the photo of Mennonite teachers that I just hyperlinked, the sleeves are the main difference as my grandmother wasn't into puffy sleeves--they would be fitted--but the main thing is that they be modest and cover the knees. Sometimes she wore sleeves that went down to just above the elbow, but many dresses were full or three quarter-length sleeves. I'm sure she was frequently appalled by the attire of many people as the years went on, but I'm sure she would have been happy to hear about and see photos of the types of dresses I've seen on women and in the stores right now. Not only are they modest, but some of them even have the collars and sashes (what I would call a belt these days).  

She would have thought people had finally come to their senses. She passed away a few years ago, but I sure wish I could have shared this with her. This blue dress is one that she probably would have been happy to buy instead of have to make for herself. My grandfather loved blue, and she loved to wear blue dresses to please him. The styles pictured above are too bright and bold for her preference, but back home when I've seen Mennonites that live in the city, they tend to wear brighter colours, especially the younger generations. I'm sure many Londoners would find my comparison hilarious, but I say it as I see it! I guess you could argue that this dress style is actually similar to shirt dress styles that were worn in the 50s, but that's what my grandmother pretty much always wore, and when I see these types of dresses now, they remind me of her.

Life outside quarantine

Stepping out into the real world late Tuesday morning. It seemed weird that suddenly we were just free. Free to get the groceries we want when we want it. Free to sight-see. Free to go for a walk or run. We were able to go shopping and get some clothes for the fall weather here. I might have had enough, but the remainder of my wardrobe is coming in a sea shipment that so far hasn't even left Canada yet--and the company hasn't been able to tell us when it will be. With the pandemic, as well as a strike at the Montreal port, shipping processes have been backed up, so we now might not get our warm clothes in time for when the weather turns chillier. In any case, we can at least go out to get things that we need. 

Colourful flowers at St James's Park

We went out to Westminster area on the Tuesday, walking along the Thames with a couple of little detours. I wanted to check out a street market nearby. I remembered visiting some street markets when I spent a few weeks in London over a decade ago, and they were similar to farmers' markets back home. This one ended up being a little disappointing in terms of fresh produce--there was only one venue selling that, but it was a dreamy place for international street food. The options were: Jordanian, Turkish, Thai, Moroccan, and some other Middle Eastern ones I now can't remember. All of it looked yummy, and we were a bit early for lunch, but I can see us going there for food on another day. On the way back, we walked through the edge of St James's Park, which was just beautiful and still has bunches of flowers in bloom. There were a large number of bees, and as I kept walking, I saw a pond that had a wide variety of different waterfowl as well. I can't wait to go back and take my good camera to do some birding there! Here I was so afraid that this concrete jungle of a city wouldn't have much for birding opportunities, and this is one of those times where I'm not only happy, but even excited about being wrong! 

A very gnarly tree trunk

The next day, we went to Oxford Street to do some clothes shopping. I didn't have any type of warm-wish jacket that was stylish for the chillier weather. The best I could do to keep myself warm was either a thin merino cardigan or a very warm but very casual hoodie crested with the logo of one of the schools I worked at a couple of years ago. It's just not appropriate for if we go out to dinner or something like that. It's been a while since I've been to Oxford Street and hadn't remembered what a huge shopping area it is. So we enjoyed walking around, and I did find a decent jacket, thankfully!

On Thursday, we went out to an area called Ruislip to get our bank account set up. It was over an hour away by subway, but we went to a particular branch that has a good relationship with my husband's employer because it makes setting it up much easier. We were told that usually it can take at least an hour to set up an account and that it's rather difficult to do so here, but for us, it was quite quick and painless. We walked along the area's high street, on which there were many charity shops. At home, we have Salvation Army or Goodwill, for example, but here, there are multiple charities with their own shops. There are international organisations like Oxfam to national organisations like the RSPCA or Cancer organisations to local organisation that help provide food and supplies to schoolchildren. I think I saw at least 5 or 6 of these on the maybe 6-block stretch that we walked. 

Friday was my husband's first day of work, so while he was off, I kept the home fires burning. It'll be nice to get into some type of routine, but until then, we are enjoying our newfound freedom.

Meanwhile, as I was mentioning the surprise about birding in London, I had another huge surprise just sitting on a chair at our place. I saw a bird hovering, and it turned out to be a bird of prey. It seems it was hovering because there was prey below. It suddenly dove straight down and flew off. I thought it wasn't coming back, but it flew back to the balcony across from our place to stop and have its lunch on the balcony ledge. I was able to get really good photos of it and learned that it is a female Eurasian kestrel. I was pretty excited, almost jumping for joy. In the photo, you can see her lunch! I'll have more bird photos for my bird blog when I get that up and running. It's still under construction.

Last quarantine post

Unless I have to travel somewhere with quarantine requirements or go on vacation somewhere that the UK requires quarantine upon return, this should be my last quarantine post ever. Other than not being able to go for walks or exercise when it's nice out, the period hasn't been too much of a hardship. I think the toughest day was the one before we got our first grocery delivery that we ordered ourselves because I hadn't realised that delivery slots are not quick and that you usually have to book them at least 4-5 days in advance, which means planning for what you think you'll need even if you already have it in the house. So we didn't get groceries until a week after we arrived (a Canadian couple in our building did our first order for us so it would arrive when we got here), and I had started to ration milk and cream and a couple of other basics as a result. But outside of that, we have a really great place with balconies to at least get fresh air, and some of the other government people who have moved here don't have that, so their quarantines were perhaps more difficult than ours were. Having said that, we are also grateful that that period is almost over. As of Tuesday, we'll be able to go out and about--into a Covid-filled environment where numbers are skyrocketing again and where the country is rumoured to possibly have to have a second shutdown. My main concern is groceries because I read in the news that people are starting to panic-shop again, and we are still in the midst of building up our staples in the house again, so I'm hoping this is short-lived. I mean, didn't people learn last time that there was no need to hoard?

Meanwhile, a couple of interesting experiences since last writing. Today we saw what's called a "flypast," where some WWII era planes flew in formation over London. The RAF marks the anniversary of the Battle of Britain each year with this event, and we were able to watch WWII Spitfires fly overhead for a few minutes, monitored by the ever-present Met police helicopter (there is probably one in the sky every day or every other day on average). it was pretty neat to see those planes as they can still fly and still look quite impressive.

Imagine there being hundreds in the air to fight off the Germans. Right now, the 4 planes we saw were impressive, but if you had lived during that time, the hundreds of planes in the air probably would have been terrifying. Anyway, today was the 80th anniversary of that battle, and as they do this every year, I guess we will see this in the coming years that we are here as well. It's something to look forward to, especially so that I'm more camera ready than I was this time, although I still got some half-decent shots.

Later, my husband was watching a show on TV, and I couldn't understand why the background music sounded like stereotypical music that Hare Krishnas tend to make because it didn't really match with what the scene was in the show. I mentioned it to my husband, who decided to look outside for the source, and he said it was coming from a Viking boat! He called me over to look. When I saw who was on the boat, I discovered that it was indeed a group of Hare Krishnas boating down the river, playing music as they went along! I had to look this up, and sure enough, this is actually a thing. They're called Harinama boat trips, and they seem to do these all the time, playing kirtans (a type of musical storytelling) on these boats. I couldn't get a great photo with my phone, which was the handiest thing to use at the time, but it gives you an idea. There's no lack of interesting things in this city! 

New experiences

One of the things I enjoy most about travelling is having new experiences. Of course, I'm technically not travelling to the UK as I am living here for a few years, but whether travelling to or living in a new country, you can be guaranteed to have experiences you couldn't have at home. That includes exploring new flavours. Some flavours I'm not interested in exploring are blood sausages, nor cow tongue "luncheon" meat, which is what we call lunch or deli meat. But other flavours I'm game to try. Yogurt tends to be a product that has varied flavours in different countries. In Mexico, I really enjoyed coconut and pineapple coconut yogurts because the ingredients seemed to fresh, and you'd get satisfying shreds of coconut and chunks of pineapple in your mouth. In Indonesia, I tried aloe yogurt, which I found boring. You could barely taste the flavour at all, which made me wonder why it was even used. Perhaps because aloe has certain nutritional value, that was the main attraction. Here, it was rhubarb yogurt. I love rhubarb, and having moved in with my husband last year, I didn't have a garden to harvest rhubarb from. I really enjoyed the yogurt! It was not tart and actually very mildly sweet. It was quite enjoyable, and a flavour that I anticipate getting time and time again!

Another experience was discovering the tides of the Thames. It wasn't until I few days after we had been here that I realised that the little beaches on the side of the river were covered up with water. I searched Google to find out that the river has these tide tables. London is inland enough that I would never have expected it to have tides, but apparently it does. And my husband researched more on tides and found that pretty much all water has tides, but that depending on the type of body of water it is, the tide might be so slight as to be imperceptible. The tides don't really affect me that much, personally, but I realised that certain boats would need to know this information to know if they could clear their cargo under a bridge, as many bridges here aren't that high to begin with. In addition, it really affects how work is done around the river. As you might have seen in the photo from my last post, we do have some bridge construction happening outside our place right now. On Tuesday morning, I noticed that the tide was really low, and as a result, the construction crew were able to place digging machines on the ground (using cranes to lift them), and they could dig into the soil to lay down whatever it is they're laying down there. I can't see what they're doing with the rods and posts they're sending down from my window because there walls and platforms in the way, but evidently it's something they can only do for certain times of the day. It teaches me about how construction on the water can be done, and if you know me, I love learning new things!

What other new things have we discovered in the week we've been here? Bacon has to be bought with the label "streaked" to get any amount of fat on it. Ours stuck to a good quality non-stick pan because we assumed the bacon would cook in its own fat--and it was really thin as well, just slightly thicker than prosciutto. We had another grocery delivery yesterday, and 2/2 times, our cream has leaked. It comes in containers like we get individual yogurts at home, a plastic cup with a foil lid that you peel off. The cream containers are larger, but the tops work the same, and they easily get punctured and broken when bagged with other groceries. It's something we'll be careful of when we are finally able to go out and get our own groceries at the store.