Monday, November 28, 2011
Thanksgiving fare
Thanksgiving was last Thursday, followed by a few days off for Mrs Walles and I. We needed it after preparing all the food. There was the turkey, of course...
...and bread stuffing with cranberries...
...fresh bread...
...along with yams (the American kind, like sweet potatoes), cornbread, more stuffing (cornbread this time, out of a packet), gravy, cranberry sauce and, as a token gesture towards nutritional balance, green beans.
Then there was dessert. I made two pumpkin pies - to test the difference between fresh and canned pumpkin - and an apple pie.
There were only the two of us, but that just meant that we had leftovers right through the weekend, plus a few things for the freezer. I wasn't going to let my first Thanksgiving pass without all the usual trimmings, just because there would be far too much food. That's seldom a good enough reason to stop me doing anything!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Turkey time
It's Thanksgiving next week, and Mrs Walles and I are well prepared. In past years one of the local supermarkets has given away free turkeys if you have enough loyalty points. This year turkey prices are unusually high so they aren't offering that, but by biding our time and keeping our eyes open (most of the credit here going to Mrs Walles) we found one for 45¢ per pound. We got an almost twenty pound bird for less than eight dollars plus extra money off next time we fill up the car, which just about makes it even in my mind.
The idea that an entire turkey can be bought for less than ten dollars - a real flesh and blood bird, not a photograph - seems remarkable to me. Apparently some of the locals have become conditioned by Thanksgiving deals into thinking a turkey at Thanksgiving is an inalienable right, like freedom of speech and guns. There was a man behind us at the checkout when we bought ours who was almost apoplectic with anxiety that he might miss out on his free poultry, and then even more so when the cashier told him, in effect, that if he was waiting for a free one he'd better go and catch it himself (which, as this demonstrates, is quite possible).
We also picked up ten cans of cranberry sauce on special, which should tide us over. It might not be so much a matter of having sauce with our turkey next week, as having turkey with our sauce.
Now we just have to decide how to cook it. I've cooked turkeys a few times here but I want to do something a bit special for the holiday meal, and my mind is turning to stuffing. That poses a problem, because I like the dense, moist kind of stuffing that goes inside the bird and is traditional where I come from. But I also like the comparatively dry herbed bread cubes that are traditional here and cook separately. I don't know if I'll be able to choose between them, so that turkey had better look out: it's going to be well and truly stuffed this Thanksgiving.
The idea that an entire turkey can be bought for less than ten dollars - a real flesh and blood bird, not a photograph - seems remarkable to me. Apparently some of the locals have become conditioned by Thanksgiving deals into thinking a turkey at Thanksgiving is an inalienable right, like freedom of speech and guns. There was a man behind us at the checkout when we bought ours who was almost apoplectic with anxiety that he might miss out on his free poultry, and then even more so when the cashier told him, in effect, that if he was waiting for a free one he'd better go and catch it himself (which, as this demonstrates, is quite possible).
We also picked up ten cans of cranberry sauce on special, which should tide us over. It might not be so much a matter of having sauce with our turkey next week, as having turkey with our sauce.
Now we just have to decide how to cook it. I've cooked turkeys a few times here but I want to do something a bit special for the holiday meal, and my mind is turning to stuffing. That poses a problem, because I like the dense, moist kind of stuffing that goes inside the bird and is traditional where I come from. But I also like the comparatively dry herbed bread cubes that are traditional here and cook separately. I don't know if I'll be able to choose between them, so that turkey had better look out: it's going to be well and truly stuffed this Thanksgiving.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Election Day
Last Tuesday was Election Day here in the US. They have it every year, on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It's a Tuesday because that used to be market day, or some such, which was a good day for people to vote on. Now it's Tuesday because it always has been and if it was good enough for grandpappy it's good enough for me.
That certainly seems to be the gist of it, and Mrs Walles was complaining how silly it is that Election Day is not a holiday so that people could get to the polls if they so wished.
The reason they need to have an Election Day each year is that they do like a vote here (whether they actually use the vote is a different matter, but they clearly like the option to be there). In Pennsylvania they vote judges in and out of office, and district attorneys and all manner of relatively minor public officials at the local and state level. Some states like to hold referenda on legislative issues, what they call voting on propositions. Mississippi had a contentious one on whether an embryo is a person (they decided that it isn't).
All this reminded me that there is an election back in New Zealand that I have a say in, so I got my papers filled in ready to send away. I suppose I could have posted my papers away on Tuesday, to get into the swing of things here, but in many matters I'm a traditionalist, so I sent them away on Saturday instead.
That certainly seems to be the gist of it, and Mrs Walles was complaining how silly it is that Election Day is not a holiday so that people could get to the polls if they so wished.
The reason they need to have an Election Day each year is that they do like a vote here (whether they actually use the vote is a different matter, but they clearly like the option to be there). In Pennsylvania they vote judges in and out of office, and district attorneys and all manner of relatively minor public officials at the local and state level. Some states like to hold referenda on legislative issues, what they call voting on propositions. Mississippi had a contentious one on whether an embryo is a person (they decided that it isn't).
All this reminded me that there is an election back in New Zealand that I have a say in, so I got my papers filled in ready to send away. I suppose I could have posted my papers away on Tuesday, to get into the swing of things here, but in many matters I'm a traditionalist, so I sent them away on Saturday instead.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
A matter of degree
The weather is cooling rapidly now. No more snow since the big storm last week, but the temperatures have been dipping down low overnight - we've had several good hard frosts. Even the squirrels are getting up later in the morning when it is warmer.
The other night it got down to twenty five degrees, which I'm used to thinking of as comfortable room temperature, but which here is a chilly frost. Though that's not as disconcerting as temperatures reaching one hundred degrees in the summer, which to me sounds like I should be actually on fire, rather than just feeling like I am.
Yes, this Fahrenheit business is all very confusing. Like all the other measures here it takes a bit of getting used to. I have to try to remember that sixty something is room temperature and a hundred or thereabouts is blood temperature and so on. But it's a little more complicated with temperature, too, because it is not just that a degree of Fahrenheit is smaller than a degree of Celsius, but the zeroes are in different places. That really throws me.
I'm very used to talking about temperatures below zero as being freezing, because that's where water freezes in Celsius. But water freezes at thirty two degrees Fahrenheit. If you say the temperature is below zero here you mean not just cold but bits-of-you-turn-blue-and-fall-off cold. I still catch myself in the winter about to say "below zero" and quickly substitute "below freezing". Except when I forget. Then I get the odd looks suggesting I have a poor grasp on reality. You know, as if I ordered mayonnaise on my salad, or something.
And here comes another winter. Another opportunity to hone my vocabulary into a more US-friendly form. At least in public. In private I'll think whatever I like because there's nobody around to give me a frosty look.
The other night it got down to twenty five degrees, which I'm used to thinking of as comfortable room temperature, but which here is a chilly frost. Though that's not as disconcerting as temperatures reaching one hundred degrees in the summer, which to me sounds like I should be actually on fire, rather than just feeling like I am.
Yes, this Fahrenheit business is all very confusing. Like all the other measures here it takes a bit of getting used to. I have to try to remember that sixty something is room temperature and a hundred or thereabouts is blood temperature and so on. But it's a little more complicated with temperature, too, because it is not just that a degree of Fahrenheit is smaller than a degree of Celsius, but the zeroes are in different places. That really throws me.
I'm very used to talking about temperatures below zero as being freezing, because that's where water freezes in Celsius. But water freezes at thirty two degrees Fahrenheit. If you say the temperature is below zero here you mean not just cold but bits-of-you-turn-blue-and-fall-off cold. I still catch myself in the winter about to say "below zero" and quickly substitute "below freezing". Except when I forget. Then I get the odd looks suggesting I have a poor grasp on reality. You know, as if I ordered mayonnaise on my salad, or something.
And here comes another winter. Another opportunity to hone my vocabulary into a more US-friendly form. At least in public. In private I'll think whatever I like because there's nobody around to give me a frosty look.
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