Hello from London,
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If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge foodie.

I love my food, particularly comfort food.

One of my favourite dishes is pie and mash with gravy.

A pie in the UK is usually a pastry case filled with something savoury — often steak, chicken, or vegetables.

We do have sweet pies, like apple pie, but normally we state the filling when it’s sweet. If a Brit simply says “pie”, we usually imagine the savoury kind.

And mash simply means mashed potatoes.

Pie and mash is a much-loved comfort food in the UK. Warm, filling, and very satisfying on a cold day.

In London (and in a few other places too), there are even traditional pie and mash shops.

This dish became popular among Cockneys in the 1800s. It was often served with liquor — not alcohol, but a parsley sauce originally made using the water from cooking eels. Jellied eels were also a very common food in 19th-century London!

And now there’s even a whole week dedicated to celebrating this simple British dish.

So… Happy Pie and Mash Week!

In honour of the humble pie and mash, let me teach you three fun English expressions with the word “pie”.

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🥧 1. Pie-hole (or cake-hole)​
This is a playful slang word for mouth.

Example:
“Stick that in your pie-hole!”

It’s not very polite — but you might hear it in films or jokes.

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🥧 2. Pie in the sky

This means something that sounds wonderful but is very unlikely to happen.

Example:
“He says we’ll all work only two days a week and earn double the salary. Sounds like pie in the sky to me!”

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🥧 3. Eat humble pie

This means to admit you were wrong and apologise, especially when you were very confident before.

Example:
“I said the team would definitely lose… but they won! I had to eat humble pie.”

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English is full of strange food expressions like this.

We talk about spilling the beans, bringing home the bacon, and crying over spilt milk.

Honestly, sometimes learning English must feel like studying a cookbook. 😄

Anyway, I’d love to hear from you.

Does your country have a celebrated dish?

Hit reply and tell me!

Speak soon,
Anna

P.S. Another tradition British that we enjoy in the UK is a Sunday roast. I made a roast in this lesson for you:

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P.P.S. ​
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If you’re not sure where to start, simply reply to this email and tell me your goals and what you struggle with most in English.
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