I like eating. A lot. Even if I’m really lazy and get up at lunchtime I always have 3 meals a day. More if it’s Friday, where I would traditionally have cake at around 4pm. I really miss the food in Britain. I love food everywhere, but I miss certain things that are just homey to me.

The main one that I’m missing currently is hotpot. It’s probably one of the most quintessentially British meals. And it is DELICIOUS! Basically, you get scrag end of lamb, boil the bejesus out of it, save the stock but skim the fat, pick the meat off the bones and layer the meat, thin slices of potato and onion in a dish, pour the stock over and bake in the oven for about 3 hours. It’s to die for! My Nana makes a particularly delicious example, but… she includes black pudding. For those questioning this, black pudding is made by putting fresh blood, lumps of fat and spices into a sausage skin and boiling it. My granddad used to make the black pudding in question himself. Imagine having the intricacies of this explained to you as an 8 year old girl, and you’ll see why that’s one food I don’t miss!

Anyway – back to the point. I want to make this homey mum-ish comfort food. But lamb is reeeeally expensive here. So I’ve decided to be a bit more creative. You can make things like hotpot with beef, but it’s just not the same. There’s a certain something missing. A certain je ne sais quoi… that I’m hoping to find in moose.

I like moose a lot. It’s super tasty and when roasted it goes really well with Yorkshire puddings. I also like that it’s lived its happy and fulfilling moose life in the wild and so isn’t full of hormones or other nasties that foodies tell me to worry about.

But initially the idea of moose meat completely eluded me. I had no idea what moose were really like. In my head they were roughly the size of a large sheep and scurried away at the first sign of people. I have no idea where I came up with these ideas, but they are, in hindsight, ridiculous. The first time I ate moose was actually my first day in Canada. And I was told that ‘this moose tastes like caribou!’ Bizarre.

But it’s looking like a good option for my comfort food needs. And it’d be quite a pleasing mix of the old and the new, home whilst away. I just need my friend to get his moose and I’ll be laughing all the way to the oven, ready to collect my traditional British moosepot.