On the road

Mrs Walles and I did go to Long Island last weekend but we never made into New York City because of the intense heat wave that was plaguing most of the country.  Long Island is the bit that sticks out to the right of Manhattan, which makes it a good base for visiting the city, but even though it was only a few minutes away, it didn't seem worth it just to melt in the city, when we could melt perfectly well where we were.  So we left the Big Baked Apple for later in the year.

On the trip I decided to start keeping note of which state number plates I'd seen.  I'm always on the lookout for unusual ones, but I was at the point where I'd see one and couldn't be sure if I'd seen it before.  It's a good travel game racking up the states and also seeing what each one looks like.  I'm particularly fond of the New Hampshire ones with the aggressive state motto "live free or die" (numbers blurred to protect the innocent).

It's an old revolutionary slogan, I believe, but it always makes me think of the citizens of New Hampshire as a testy bunch, always ready to open a can o' whip ass whenever things aren't going their way.

Anyway, just on the trip to New York and back I counted plates from Texas, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, North Carolina, Washington D.C., Tennessee, Maine, Quebec, Delaware, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, California, Wisconsin, Ontario, Illinois, Colorado and Indiana.  That's 26 states, just over half, plus Washington and two Canadian provinces.  If you needed proof of the centrality and importance of New York (not that you really did) there you have it.

More cake

I was just sitting down to write this entry when I spotted the groundhog out and ran off to snap some pictures.  He was much closer than usual and because it's the middle of the day there was more light, so I'm hopeful they'll be clearer than past shots.  Also, he's just gotten much bigger, so he's bound to be easier to see whatever the distance.

Anyway, since some interest has surrounded the baking of the German chocolate cake, I thought I would post this photo of the finished product, which has now been entirely consumed.

And the recipe, adapted from the inside of the Baker's German's Chocolate packet.

German Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
For cake:
4oz (120g) semi sweet chocolate
1/2 C water
2 C plain flour
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
2 sticks (8oz, 250g) butter, softened
2 C sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 t vanilla essence
1 C buttermilk

For frosting:
4 egg yolks
1 can (12oz, 355mL) evaporated milk
1 1/2 t vanilla essence
1 1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 sticks (6oz, 175g) butter
7oz (200g) sweetened flake coconut
1 1/2 C chopped pecans

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).  Line and grease three 9in (22cm) cake tins.

Melt chocolate and water together in microwave or double boiler.  Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add egg yolks one at a time and beat well.  Beat in melted chocolate and vanilla essence.  Sift flour, baking soda and salt and add alternately with buttermilk, beating well after each addition.  Beat egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into mixture.

Pour mixture evenly into pans and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.  Remove from oven and run a knife around the edge of each cake.  Rest for 15 minutes then turn on to a wire rack to cool.

Beat egg yolks, evaporated milk and vanilla essence in a large pan.  Add sugar and butter and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for about twelve minutes until the mixture thickens and turns golden.  Remove from heat and beat in coconut and pecans.  Cool.

Once cakes and frosting have cooled assemble the cake with frosting between the layers and on top.  Use more on top than between the layers.

Ein Cake

It's another busy week.  Mrs Walles has a birthday approaching and we're getting ready for a well-deserved (on her part, at least) break away to Long Island and New York City.  I've just spent the morning creating a birthday cake from a recipe on the inside of a chocolate bar wrapper.  I'm not usually one to make use of the recipes on the side of the box, but as you'll see this one is worth making an exception for. 

It's called a German chocolate cake.  I'd love to be able to make one of those witty remarks about it being neither German, nor chocolate, nor a cake, but I can't as it is undoubtedly chocolate and a cake, and indeed a chocolate cake.  But it isn't a German chocolate cake, as I (and I suspect many, even most Americans) assumed.  It's not a German chocolate cake either, if you see what I mean, inasmuch as it is not made from chocolate from Germany.  What it is made from is German's chocolate, German being the name of an American chocolate maker (and just to be clear, he made German's chocolate, not American chocolate - though it was undoubtedly chocolate from America). It originated in the nineteenth century with a company called Baker's (who confusingly make chocolate, not baked goods - although possibly they made the chocolate for bakers?).  It's not chocolate from Germany, is the point, it's chocolate from America, quite sweet but bitter too.

I've now written chocolate so many times that it's starting to do that thing repeated words do where they suddenly seem like they're spelled wrong.

I had downloaded a recipe for the cake from the web but once I got into the supermarket I found that the original German's chocolate is still for sale and it comes with the recipe (which was sent in by a Texas housewife in the fifties, according to Wikipedia) right in the packet, so I thought why not go straight to the horse's mouth and used that one instead.

The reason I'm going to all this trouble, and risking my ability to ever spell chocolate correctly again, is that Mrs Walles is very partial to the stuff.  Not so much to the cake, mind you (which is where all the chocolate is), but to the frosting, which I've just made.  It includes pecans, coconut, evaporated milk, eggs and lots and lots of butter and sugar and I can attest to its deliciousness.

It's a classic cake in America but I've never had any or even seen one in the flesh, so it was rather interesting to follow the recipe along and see what emerged.  I'm very happy with the result so far.  I just hope Mrs Walles is, too!

Cowboys and aliens

There are of course many words and expressions I use that are not used here - in most cases employing these results in a blank stare or a polite request that I speak English.  Occasionally, though, the lauguage I'm using has quite a different connotation from the one I intended and the results are more unpredictable.

There are a few words which have fairly innocent interpretations outside the US but which can be offensive inside.  For example the name of the British show I know as Spooks but which is called MI5 here, because "spook" is apparently a derogatory term for an African American.  Mind you, the sense of the word to mean a spy is also of American origin so I guess it snuck across the border and then got locked out.

Another good example is the word "cowboy".  Before I spent any time here, if I referred to someone as a cowboy that had, to me, negative connotations.  A builder who was a cowboy was a bad builder, and so on.  Thinking about it, I'm not entirely why this is so.  I suppose there is some idea that cowboys are here one day, gone the next, or perhaps it's an impression lifted from old westerns that cowboys aren't to be trusted.  Maybe it is just a pale kind of anti-Americanism.

It doesn't matter why the rest of the English speaking world uses "cowboy" in this way, what is interesting is that Americans don't.  To them cowboys are heroic frontier figures, independent, rugged, living their lives in the saddle with a quiet sense of pride and dignity.  They're almost modern knights, rounding up cattle instead of the bad guys (but if there are any bad guys about, you know that the cowboys will do the right thing).  I understand this, it's almost exactly the same as the legendary Southern Man which pervades New Zealand culture.

So you can see why an American would feel insulted to hear you using the word cowboy in a negative way.  Cowboys are the good guys, they get the job done, and done right.  I'm sure Mrs Walles feels this more acutely than most, since she has spent a lot of time in Montana, where cowboys still exist, and she's got the boots and hats to prove it.

Of course when we non-Americans employ the phrase we don't even think about such things.  But maybe we should.  I'll tell you one thing, once you've tasted the beef here you know for sure that the cowboys must do a good job.  The real cowboys are definitely not "a bunch of cowboys".

Squirrel news

Remember Myrtle?

She's the squirrel that knows how to ask and waits patiently for me to see her and put nuts outside.  I think that last time I mentioned her she was pregnant.  That was some time ago and she has since had her little family - three little squirrels we believe, which began coming down to the deck with her.  They aren't so little now and some at least seem to have moved on.  It's hard to tell because when the real heat of summer arrived all the squirrels molted and their markings suddenly changed.  The only way I could recognise Myrtle was by her behaviour.  Here she is, in classic asking pose, but wearing the new season fashions.

Much sleeker and more colourful, too.  In the winter the squirrels are almost all grey, and in the summer they really go to town with the brown.

Anyway, Myrtle isn't looking quite so sleek recently and we are fairly sure she's pregnant again, so in a little while we can expect more little squirrels visiting.  I can't resist Myrtle's charm so it's a good thing that the offspring don't seem to pick up all of her asking technique or we'd go bankrupt buying nuts for the growing clan!

The scales lifted

The other day I saw a snake in the wild for the first time.  Mrs Walles and I were heading down to the supermarket and we passed it on the road.  Two women had stopped and seemed to be trying to encourage it off the road into a small patch of woods nearby.  A couple of things disturbed me about this.

1. It was a big snake.  Okay, so it wasn't an anaconda, but it wasn't a teeny little grass snake either.  It was substantial, maybe a metre long or more, black and for all I knew venomous.  There is a way to tell the difference but I didn't get a good enough look at it anyway.  Anyway, even Mrs Walles thought it was a big snake, and she's lived in wilder woods than these ones.  More worrying, though, is...
2. ...the patch of woods they were encouraging it into happens to be one that I frequent when I walk into town (which admittedly I haven't been doing nearly enough recently, and this won't help me change my ways) and which I usually wander through in my sandals smiling genially at squirrels and what-not that cross my path.

So I'll be wearing shoes from now on on my excursions, not that that would save me if I scared a dangerous snake, it's more of a psychological thing.

I've just looked up snakes and find that the tell tale signs of a venomous snake are the size and shape of its head and the shape of its pupils.  Though if I come across anything slithering in my vicinity I won't be worrying about these finer points of herpetology, I'll be finding another vicinity to be in with all possible haste.  I also find that what we saw was very likely an eastern kingsnake, a non-venomous constrictor, and that there are only three venomous species in Pennsylvania, which is somewhat reassuring.


Mrs Walles made the excellent point that dealing with a snake is just like dealing with the other wildlife here, even the cute and cuddly-looking ones.  The squirrels may be cute and all but I wouldn't want to corner one, and most of my dealings with them occur with a pane of glass between us.

So if this Kiwi comes upon any slithering beasties he'll be backing off first and asking questions later.  I imagine I'll be too surprised to do anything else. Coming from a land famously devoid of serpents, the possibility of encountering a snake just doesn't enter my mind.  If I did come across one my surprise would scarcely be greater if it started talking and offering me apples.

Mourning dove

This week's bird is one of the more interesting around here but I've held back posting about it because I wanted to record and post its call - which I haven't managed to do.  So I'll post about it anyway, on the principle that as soon as I do a perfect opportunity to record it's mournful song will arise, and then I can post about it another time.

This is a mourning dove.  It's actually quite a sweet and happy bird, but the male's call is a series of slow notes that really does sound sad.  It's very distinctive, too, so you often hear it in the cooler parts of the day even if you don't see the bird responsible.

Occasionally one or two will visit the deck, close enough for a photo.  It's pretty clear that their courtship involves a lot of standing around together like a Victorian couple, but I don't have a good shot of two together.

As far as colour goes they are a very subtle golden colour with dark spots.  A lot like a pigeon, but a little smaller and a lot better behaved.

Right, now I just need to go and record that call - should be a piece of cake now...

Hanging out

Some time ago I posted a picture of a squirrel cooling by lying spreadeagled.   As the temperatures have been rising I've been seeing them doing it more and more.  They'll drop and cool wherever it seems convenient - on a branch, on a shady patch of grass - or quite commonly on our deck, like these two.

At least they have their summer coats on now.

Still, it's a hard life, eh?

Independence Day

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.  Mrs Walles and her family seem to prefer the first name, I think the second one might be perceived as a bit formal or stuffy.  Most people I've been interacting with haven't called it anything, but they have wished me a good weekend which they wouldn't normally do.

Last Fourth of July we did very holidayish things in Baltimore and went to see  fireworks in the evening, which were spectacular even though we were in a fairly  small town.  Watching the displays they have in big cities like New York must be like reliving the Revolution itself.

Mrs Walles and I had similar plans this year and we started well with a waffle breakfast, but we ended up spending all day painting things outside the house and gardening.  As we finished up it was already 7pm and all we really wanted was to sit still and have someone to bring us food, which the people at Domino's duly did for a small charge (which reminds me that I have to spill the beans on American pizza some day).  We did at least get apple pie for dessert.

So not a picture-postcard Fourth for us this year, but looking around at what our neighbours were doing I could tell it was a typical one.  Neighbours on both sides were taking advantage of the holiday and good weather to take care of things outside and I'm sure others were working on projects inside.  I suppose with all our DIY we were asserting our own independence...though my tired muscles have today been rebelling and asserting their own independence now and then.  I suppose at least they've got the right spirit.

Brown-headed cowbird

I'm quite excited about this week's bird, because I've been wanting to see one ever since I got my my field guide, and just the other day a brown-headed cowbird hove into view.

It's not particularly showy, but the picture in my field guide is of a big fluffy proud bird perched on a branch, giving the camera the eyeball, and there's something about it that I like very much.  I was surprised to find that it looks a lot like a grackle - same size, same black iridescent plumage except for the head which is a rusty beige colour.

 Despite looking I never saw one all last summer.  I had started to think that they were only to be found around livestock (they hang around cattle apparently to get at the insects and other delicacies that get raked up).  Here he was though, proving me wrong.  He was happily grazing with some grackles and I've seen them a couple of times since then.

I hope it isn't breeding, though, because it's a parasitic nester, laying its eggs for other birds to raise. I'm thinking of our nice little cardinal family, the flickers, grackles and catbirds.  It's hard enough for these birds raising their own chicks, without the added burden of a second, cowbird, family.  As long as they're just passing through and feeding they provide welcome variety, but really these cowbirds need to develop some social responsibility. 

Socket to me

It's always the mundane things that get you.  Or get me, anyway.  And it doesn't get any more mundane than electrical sockets, or plugs, or outlets, or whatever they like to call them in the US.  I think it's outlets, but it is one of those things I still get confused about, probably because it doesn't come up very often.  I know where they all are in my own house, but if I'm in a strange place and I ask, cell phone charger in hand, if there's a plug handy I get a the a dumb stare in reply, or occasionally that look that suggests they think I need to be sectioned.  As an added confusion I recently discovered that the electricity in the walls isn't called "the mains" here - and I imagine that if you go into a stranger's house and start babbling on about plugs and the mains they only let you use the plastic cutlery (which, incidentally, they don't call cutlery, either...sigh).

On top of the language confusion the sockets don't look the same.  In New Zealand the plug on the end of a cord has two rectangular slanted pins on top and optionally a third vertical one below.  In the US the top pins are vertical and the bottom pin is huge and rounded.  Like this..

This system does have the advantage of looking like a little surprised face.  If you look carefully at that picture you'll notice that the left hole is taller than the right one, this is because some (but not all) plugs come with one larger pin to make sure you plug it in the right way around.  I didn't immediately realise that this was the case and spent many puzzled seconds wondering why I couldn't plug in the coffee machine.  There's nothing like being stumped by something most American children have mastered.

You'll notice, too, that the sockets don't have switches attached (though sometimes they have switches some distance away, presumably to add an element of mystery to the thing).  The juice is flowing all the time, which seems a trifle dangerous to me, but probably Thomas Edison wanted to save money and so convinced everyone that switches would make your hair fall out or something.  Sounds like the kind of thing he'd do.

Light switches still give me trouble, though.  Movies were kind enough to show me that they are reversed here: up is on and down is off.  But to be forewarned is not always enough, because like all those other little reversals, like the way the date is written and the driving on the right, I just find myself horribly confused most of the time.  I still have to consciously think about it each time I flick a switch, and then I still get it wrong sometimes.  A lot of switches are helpfully labelled like this one, and still I muck it up.

Ah, well, it's early days yet.  Perhaps like with the dates, in time I will see the light.