python - Getting rid of unicode characters in a list -

i've tried str() , x.encode('utf8'). there quick , easy way remove unicode chars? list looks this:

mcd = [u'chicken saut\xc3\xa9ed potatoes',  'roasted lamb mash potatoes', 'rabbit casserole tarragon, mushrooms , dijon mustard sauce. served mash potatoes'] 

the reason trying rid of u's becasue i'd copy data onto csv file. gives me error 1 below when try so...

unicodeencodeerror: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 8-10: ordinal not in range(128)

i thought easier remove unicode altogether.

thanks in advance!

this works me:

mcd = [u'chicken saut\xc3\xa9ed potatoes',  'roasted lamb mash potatoes', 'rabbit casserole tarragon, mushrooms , dijon mustard sauce. served mash potatoes']  new = [str(m) m in mcd]  m,n in zip(mcd,new): # compare before , after     print type(m), type(n) 

out:

<type 'unicode'> <type 'str'> <type 'str'> <type 'str'> <type 'str'> <type 'str'> 

if above doesn't work (see convo in comments):

new = [m.encode('utf-8') m in mcd]