Be nice to America

I guess that's a threat, not a promise?

Earth Hour

Fry the Planet

Wordless Wednesday - daily meds

Beer and pubs

When my parents first came to visit me in the US back in the early 90s we did some travelling around the northeastern United States. Everywhere we went, my dad asked what the local beer was. He was often greeted with a blank look. The only beer anyone ever seemed to suggest was Sam Adams. He was rather disappointed.

Last summer when they came to visit he had much more choice. There are far more microbrews available now - we have not one but THREE brewpubs practically within spitting distance. (Well, within a reasonably short drive anyway.) The Beer Advocate says:

Brewery and brewpub-wise, rough numbers show that ...

- Connecticut has 5 breweries and 12 brewpubs
- Maine has 14 breweries and 16 brewpubs
- Massachusetts has 18 breweries and 18 brewpubs
- New Hampshire has 6 breweries and 9 brewpubs
- Rhode Island has 3 breweries and 4 brewpubs
- Vermont has 14 breweries and 11 brewpubs

What's really cool is that these 130 breweries and brewpubs (give or take) in New England are making upwards of 2,000 different beers, within roughly 90 different styles of beer!

DH loves the fact that I do all the driving when we go to the UK. Having one beer with lunch and driving is not usually a problem for him - but when driving on the 'wrong' side of the road it would not be a good idea. He buys the latest version of the Good Pub Guide and spends a lot of time planning our itinerary around where he would like to have lunch and dinner. There was a wonderful place we had lunch the very first time he came to the UK with me. I was the one who had researched it that time as back then he didn't even know that such a thing as the Good Pub Guide existed. Sadly, we will probably never manage to find it again. He was convinced I was nuts as we drove what appeared to be miles out of our way to a tiny village that didn't look as though it could possibly support a decent pub, only to have an extremely enjoyable lunch. (Come to think about it, it was one of those pubs where children are absolutely not welcome, so it'll be years before we could go there again anyway!)

On our last trip we had dinner at The Mole and Chicken in Buckinghamshire which was a lot easier to find, even in the dark. They had fairly recently won the Buckinghamshire Dining Pub of the Year award, and we were not disappointed. The menu was excellent, the beers good, the attention to detail outstanding, and they were definitely a child-friendly place early on a quiet Sunday evening. Although obviously the designation of "Dining Pub of the Year" is likely to ensure that a pub is very busy, it's one that we will look for on our next trip to the UK.

Sugar shack

This one is on my drive to and from work. A real sugar shack! The first picture doesn't show the classic sugar house roofline very well, though you can see the chimney. Even when there's no steam hiding it, the roof's not particularly obvious. It was only when they started boiling that I realized that it wasn't just another run-down farm building. It's clearer in the second, taken from the other side of the farm. I'd never actually noticed the wrecked vehicle until I stopped to take these pics.

Making maple syrup on YouTube

Not for those of you with slow internet connections I'm afraid as these are quite long videos . . . YouTube has more information than you ever needed or wanted to know about maple syrup.
This is from Wisconsin - some slight differences to the way I see farmers doing this in New England, (I've never seen plastic bags for collecting the syrup) but not that different overall. There are other videos at YouTube of more amateur setups. (Although I said don't do this in your kitchen at home, apparently some people do - though perhaps their kitchens were not that wonderful in the first place . . . ?)

Wordless Wednesday - trees on life support?

Maple syrup and sugar houses

I'd been living in the US for years before I went to a sugar house. I'd vaguely heard of them, but didn't really know what they were. Finally, I was visiting a friend in northern Vermont and she took me to a sugar house near her home. Some sugar houses are not open to visitors, but many encourage them, indeed depending on them for much of their business. The one I visited in Vermont had a store attached where you could buy all kinds of Vermont souvenirs, especially ones that were maple syrup related. Others have restaurants where you can buy pancakes or waffles served with, of course, real maple syrup. Some have both. The one we visited last week had a restaurant, and they sell jugs of syrup. The one we visited this week has a restaurant, and a store. They were offering (ok, charging extra for) rides on a horse-drawn wagon and they have a small petting zoo of farm animals. In the summer they sell homemade ice cream. I doubt if anyone makes a living producing maple syrup alone.

Basically, the sugar house is where they boil the sap they have tapped from maple trees, and boil it, and boil it (hence the steam) . . . until it turns into maple syrup. The evaporators are often (but not always) powered by a wood fire, so there is smoke coming out of the chimney as well as steam. I have now learned to tell if our local sugar houses are boiling or not by looking to see if there is smoke as well as steam. Most people just look for the steam, but sometimes the sugar house will run out of sap if the temperatures are not right for the sap to run well, and then the touristy places will just boil water so it looks as though they are boiling sap. Part of the pleasure for me is walking into the evaporator room and being able to smell the syrup in the air, so I am always disappointed if they are just boiling water!



On my first visit to a sugar house, I really didn't know what to expect and was really surprised to find that they were serving small cups of warm maple syrup right from the evaporator!



I had had syrup on pancakes before, and just didn't find the idea of drinking that sticky stuff terribly appealing. I failed to factor in a couple of things though:

• Firstly, I don't think I had ever actually had REAL maple syrup before. It is NOT the same as the maple syrup flavoured brown sticky stuff that many places serve with pancakes. Most brands of 'pancake syrup' contain precisely 0% maple syrup. Some might contain as much as 2%! You'll know if it's the real thing though - it will (of course) say so on the bottle, and the price will make you wonder whether it's worth it. If you're still wondering, don't. Just buy it! It is worth it!
  
• Secondly, the stuff they were serving was warm and runny, not thick and sticky as I had imagined it would be. Fortunately my friend persuaded me to try it - MMMM, was it good!!!!! Somehow, it was slightly buttery and definitely moreish. We circled the evaporator a couple of times and persuaded my friend's DH to take a couple of cups of syrup that he didn't really want so we could have more! This weekend I set a good example to the kids and we only had one sample each.
  

I have learned a lot about maple syrup since then. There are different grades of syrup. The so-called 'best' syrup is quite light in color and has the lightest flavor. Sometimes I prefer the darker, stronger flavored syrups. They happen to be slightly cheaper too. If you see 'cheap' maple syrup at a warehouse store like BJs or Costco, check the quality - it's probably a darker syrup than you would see at the supermarket. Well, either that, or it's not 100% maple syrup. (See above.)

The native Americans were tapping maple trees and making syrup before the Europeans got here. Their methods were much more intensive though. Rather than boiling the sap, the native Americans dropped hot rocks into the sap to get rid of some of the water! Given that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, I would guess it either took them a really long time, or what they ended up with was very different from today's maple syrup.



After the Europeans learned the technique from the native Americans, they switched to using wooden buckets.



Later they switched to metal buckets and taps as the wooden ones tended to leak. (The buckets usually have lids on them to keep debris out, but the lid had blown off the one in the photo below.)



The metal buckets are obviously very labor-intensive to empty, so there is now a more modern way of collecting sap from the trees. In an area where there are lots of trees, there are often trees that look as though they're hooked up to life-support with a series of tubes coming out of them. The tubing runs from one tree to the next, carrying the sap downhill to a collection tank, often situated next to the road.



The farmer then pumps the sap from the collection tanks into a larger container on the back of his truck to get it back to the sugar house. The buckets still feature prominently near many sugar houses though as a form of advertising, and on smaller properties where it's not worth running the tubing. Some people who have a bunch of maple trees on their property will have a farmer tap them, and in return they get a portion of the syrup that is generated from the sap from their trees. That would be cool - to have enough maple trees of our own that we could have someone make syrup for us!



Making maple syrup is not something you want to try at home. People I know who have tried it had to redecorate afterwards. By definition, it requires the production of large quantities of steam, and turning your house into a sauna when it was not designed to be one is really Not A Good Thing! (Note the large vents in the roofs of the sugar houses - they are there for a practical reason!)

The photos are all links to Flickr, where they are posted with more comments.

On the wrong continent again

Once again, a blogthings survey result says I'm living on the wrong continent.

You Belong in London

A little old fashioned, and a little modern. A little traditional, and a little bit punk rock. A unique soul like you needs a city that offers everything. No wonder you and London will get along so well.

What City Do You Belong In?

Coming soon

Well, next weekend sometime anyway: an explanation of what a sugar house is, and more about maple syrup than you probably ever wanted to know.

Spring - season of rising steam

The only flowers in bloom around here are the cut daffodils on my kitchen table that were imported from Ireland, but nonetheless it is feeling like spring at last. I see sap buckets on maple trees, and steam rising from sugar houses on my commute to work, and DS and I had breakfast at a sugar house this morning. I'm thinking we may do it again next weekend - hoping DD will have learned from her experience this morning and will get herself ready on time to come with us! (There's no point in turning up at a sugar house too late, as you just end up having to wait forever for a table.) DS requested a trip to a different sugar house as there is one that has a small collection of farm animals that the kids can visit. I think the pancakes at this morning's location were bigger though!





More signs of spring: The potholes are still getting bigger, and the DPW is finally getting started on roadwork projects that were abandoned for the winter (but not, of course, the potholes.) The kids played outside in glorious sunshine this afternoon, even riding their bikes for a while. Admittedly, after an hour they were ready to come in, but we got outside and away from the television! The clocks changed last night, and this afternoon I finally got all the paperwork ready for the accountant to do our taxes. Yay! Spring is truly almost here!

Caught short?

It's been a long time since I was a newcomer in the US, but I vaguely remember a time when I felt awkward going into an establishment where I had no intention of buying anything simply in search of the toilets. In the UK, the toilets are only for the use of the customers. With the demise of the public convenience, this is becoming a problem which some local authorities are well aware of as people (mostly men I am sure) choose to urinate in the street. Westminster City Council estimates that thousands of gallons of urine a year are peed onto its streets and alleyways! Apparently, in Twickenham places like KFC are being offered 600 quid a year to put a sign in their window announcing that their toilets are open to non-customers, and last November, Westminster City Council launched the "SatLav" mobile phone service which alerts people to the nearest public toilets. Texting the word "toilet" to the number 80097 prompts a quick-response text with details of the nearest facilities and their opening times. (This is telling of another cultural difference - cell phone users in the UK are far more likely to use their phones for texting than American cell phone users. )

So what kind of places would you go into to find the toilets, with no intention of buying anything? A fast-food restaurant? A pub? A restaurant? Would you go into a city building - city hall?

Pass at own risk!

Since the weekend, I've come to the conclusion it's not really the snow I dislike so much about winter. When it snows, I simply stay home until the storm is over and the roads have been ploughed. What I really don't like is the ice, and the HUGE potholes that form in the roads. We have signs on the main road that we have to drive along to get to our house that say "Potholes ahead. Proceed at own risk." These are not temporary signs. They have been there for, as far as I know, at least the last eleven years - since we bought a house in this town! You'd think that at some point in eleven years they could have fixed the potholes, but no! They do some temporary patching, but they know it's not going to last so they don't take the signs down.

Currently there are some sections of road where it is absolutely impossible to avoid the potholes because they spread across the entire width of the road. (Not one pothole that wide, but a series of them arranged in such a way that it is impossible to avoid them.) Some are very wide and only an inch or two deep at this point, but others are already ten or twelve inches deep! This despite the fact that they've already done one round of patching this winter. They haven't done anything recently though, as patching a twelve inch deep hole that's full of slush doesn't work. Because of the amount of water on the roads from the melting snow, it is difficult to tell how deep most of the potholes are, so you have to assume the worst as you're driving - that they will swallow your tires and cause serious damage to your vehicle. When the water freezes, it evens out the road a little - but, of course, it also makes the potholes bigger in the long run!

In the town's defense, they have plans to widen the road and that will of course involve resurfacing the whole thing, so it seems like a waste to repair the potholes too thoroughly. The only thing is, the plan to widen the road has been in place for over eleven years (i.e. since BEFORE we bought our house!) This week there have finally been surveyors out at this end of the road, close to the line with the next town, so it looks as though the work will actually begin this year. They've even put up signs on the side roads leading to the main road:

(Photo taken from a side road, looking towards the main road, which runs left-right across the photo.)
All the trees on the other side of the main road within 6 feet of the road have orange marks on them (not just the few you can see in the photo.) This is the first stage of the road widening - all those trees will be felled. With luck, this will bring more sunlight in to the end of our road. Currently there is a layer of ice across the end of the road - just visible in the photo, but not in all its glory. It is several inches thick, and there are ruts in in it several inches deep. Without anti-lock brakes, or driving EXTREMELY slowly (as in barely moving), stopping at the end of the road is next to impossible right now.

When the weather improves* and they do eventually get started, there is no way we will be able to get anywhere once the work starts without having to navigate the roadworks. Sadly, even the thaw I'm looking forward to will bring no relief in terms of driving around here!

*Apparently no time soon, as there's 4 to 8 inches of snow forecast for Friday night!

Will somebody please find . . .

the Snow Queen and get rid of her? It's looking much too much like Narnia before the thaw around here!

This photo was taken last Saturday. It didn't come out as well as I'd hoped - the yellow dot is a lamp post.



This one was taken at 3:30 this afternoon.


I stopped to buy milk on the way home this afternoon. (Not because it was snowing, but because we really needed some. Honest!) The clerk at the store's commentary on the weather was: "What happened to the rain we were supposed to get today? I've had enough of all this snow. I'm SO ready to mow the lawn!"

What to drink when you don't want a beer

I opened the fridge at my parents' house on my first day back there to discover there were several cans of Budweiser. (Don't try asking for a 6-pack of Bud in the UK by the way - beer's sold in fours over there.) I turned to my mum and said, "You didn't have to buy American beer for me - I'm quite happy to drink Heineken or Stella." "Oh we didn't buy it for you," was the response. "That's for your father when he doesn't want a beer."

There's a big conference of beer producers in the most beautiful town in the world: Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

At the end of the day, all of the presidents of all beer companies decide to have a drink in a bar. The president of 'Budweiser' orders a Bud, the president of 'Miller' orders a Miller Lite, Adolph Coors orders a Coors, and the list goes on.

Then the waitress asks Arthur Guinness what he wants to drink, and much to everybody's amazement, Mr. Guinness orders a Coke!

"Why don't you order a Guinness?" his colleagues ask.

"Naah. If you guys won't drink beer, then neither will I."

Driving from New York to London

Despite the directions on the site where I found this image, I can't get Google Maps to duplicate these instructions for me so I think this was probably Photoshopped.

The other side

Today's post is from a guest blogger (actually, I'm just posting an email she sent me) - my mum, who recently spent a couple of days in London to visit the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 Dome and the Terracotta Army exhibit at the British Museum.

London trip really well organized ... it was almost worth the money just to NOT drive in London. Some pathetic members of the group complained that they had expected a champagne reception ... peasants!

Train journey good, fast, clean and on time - probably a first for the company! Excellent dinner and adequate room, with a fine view of the staff garage ... but it was quiet. Really good breakfast then off by coach to the Dome/O2. A ghastly insult to architects the world over ... but it worked. The (included) lunch in Pharaohs Palace was excellent, the talk first-rate, concise and well delivered (by a lady who had worked in the Valley of the Kings) Then we by-passed all the queuing public and were ushered straight up to the exhibition ... I have never before been in a tent with an escalator and an upper floor paved with marble.

We had plenty of time to see everything, and the ecoute device was an extra help when one could not get really close to the printed details, as they were just the same, but with added bits of information in one's ears. There was a lot of gold; some very fine sculpture and art work ... almost everyone commented on the beautifully decorated little woven cane chair for a princess.

Returning to the hotel in Docklands, was an experience ... Saturday traffic in London ... all the lanes stationary, and just as we began to move, the sound of Police sirens and ambulance neenaws gave us to believe that Milwall had lost at home. We got back in time to sit in the bar and watch the second half of the rugby, then another fine dinner.

Next morning, off to the British Museum ... had I been driving, it would have been termed a scenic route, we drove past several landmarks twice ... including the side entrance to the museum ...and indeed the main one. (It turned out that the coach and driver had been imported from Sheffield.) Our timed tickets gave us plenty of time to admire the new main courtyard, have coffee and then go into the reorganized reading room ... again the layout was first class. There was a lot of film and video, but plenty of real stuff ... much of which we had seen in China, but one could get so close here ... even the marks on their feet and shoes and the brushmarks on their hair were clearly visible.

One particularly fine exhibit was a long model ... a bit like a 3d comic strip, showing the entire manufacturing process from digging the clay to positioning the finished warriors ... full of detail, and worth a lengthy scrutiny. There were seven actual warriors, a general and some foot soldiers, plus a chariot complete with horses and charioteer. Two of the horses were fake , and clearly marked as such. One other fine display was a group of musicians, playing to some dancing water birds ... and there were jugglers, strong men and dancers, plus display cases of armour, headdresses, and weapons, much of which we had only seen photos of in the auxiliary museum in Xian, so we felt it was well worth the journey.

One little add on ... as we drove through Greenwich, our driver commented that we had just crossed the meridian and "You are now on the other side." Your father said he had always wondered what it would be like, and there was a general consensus that it was exactly like the world we had left behind. It seemed a fitting comment following two days admiring the tombs and art work of the long ago.

The mysteries of friendship

For years I have been irritated by the fact that Americans assume that just because someone is from the UK we will automatically want to be friends. We may have lots in common simply because we come from the same country - and then again we may not. Even if we have much in common, that doesn't mean we will become friends.

When I had my first child, the local hospital arranged a post-partum doula for me. I was living in a town I'd only just moved to, but worked 60 miles away, so didn't have any friends in town other than DH's. The doula coordinator did a brilliant job. The doula she found for me lived right around the corner - I could see her house from mine, but we had never met before. She was the same age as me and also from England. However, she had moved here at the age of 18 with her parents, had married much earlier than me (who didn't?) and had three children, the youngest of whom was 4 at the time. I would not have made it through the first few weeks of motherhood without going insane or being incredibly depressed if it had not been for her help. She was wonderful. It seemed at the time that I had found a new friend.

Yet now, over 8 years later, I have to admit I don't even remember her name. Maybe it was the circumstances under which we met - although the hospital was paying, it was a little as though she was working for me. She came to the house when I needed her, and did things like the dishes, laundry and cleaning for me as well as helping me with the baby. Maybe it was because there wasn't enough of a connection. Yes, we were both from the UK, both the same age, and both parents, but what ELSE was there? Clearly something was missing. Both our lives were already busy - hers probably even more so than mine given that she had three children already. Given my lack of friends in town, I don't know why I didn't make more effort to stay in touch, but I didn't.

I've recently added a lot of expat or bicultural blogs to the list of blogs I read regularly. I'm really enjoying reading them, which is why I listed them here. Do I enjoy them more than someone who is not also an expat or who does not share the same culture? I suspect not - good writing is good writing - but clearly the shared experiences are a powerful connection. These are not friendships though, at least not yet, though I suppose there is that potential. No one will notice if I STOP reading a blog, just as (unless I comment) no one notices when I read it. Some of these bloggers could perhaps be good friends, while others because of differences in, say, age or family situation would not. Yet that's a silly comment because one of my most valued friends is also an English expat living in the US, married but childless, and old enough to be retired already. Shared geographical location is not a requirement for friendship either - I have at least one very good online friend (not just acquaintance) whom I have never met.

So, I don't roll my eyes anymore when someone says "Have you met so-and-so? (S)he's from England too. I'm sure you'd get along!" Maybe we would, maybe we wouldn't. I hope our mutual acquaintance is thinking of other reasons we might become friends too and not just about our shared nationality, but it certainly doesn't hurt to find out. We don't have to be best friends, or friends for life. Friends for now is enough. Sometimes even just broadening your circle of acquaintances is nice. My life has been just as enriched by the people who have just been passing through like my doula (without whom I would have gone insane) as by those who stay forever, like DH. Now there's a mystery friendship - different nationalities, different ages (did I mention I'm a cradle-snatcher?), different hobbies and on and on . . . and yet it works! :-)

Mad cows

I'm not allowed to give blood here in the United States because, despite being resident in the US for so long, I have spent long enough in the UK since 1980 that the health authorities worry that I may be carrying Mad Cow disease. A sensible precaution really, given that it is not something that they can test for.

I suppose I should be reassured by the fact that there is a far lower incidence of CJD in the USA than in the UK, but today's news of a beef recall makes me wonder. How can they be sure that the beef supply in the United States really is free of mad cow disease when quite clearly there are meatpackers who ignore potential symptoms of BSE in the animals they are slaughtering? I know there are supposedly 'other safeguards' in place - but who knows if those are being ignored too? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this will certainly strengthen the argument of those who think BSE is more prevalent in the US than the USDA would like us to think. I'm just glad that I only eat beef once or twice a year, when our friend Theo makes his wonderfully yummy teriyaki beef.