There, Thanksgiving and Back

A week ago we picked up our hire car and headed off eastward towards Bethlehem PA. The 400 mile drive was supposed to take 8 hours, but the rain didn't stop and it was dark, so we took closer to 9 hours. Part of the journey took us along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which after my visit to the museum of American History I knew to be the oldest in the US (I think). We paid our $12 or so and made use of one of the two rest-stops en route. You definitely have more choice when you leave the highway, but the Midway rest-stop was pretty ropey and the mushrooms on K's pizza looked grey in the wrong kind of way.

Before we got the Thanksgiving on the Thursday, we had the pleasure of seeing Rich and Vicki on the final leg of their round the world jaunt. K enjoyed her 10 year high school reunion and the three of us enjoyed a burrito (one each) at Tulum (K's favourite, much-talked-about burrito bar) and a slightly overpriced drink at The Bookstore, which was a pretty well done speakeasy cellar type place and certainly one of a kind in Bethlehem.

Thanksgiving day brought a bit of American Football before the feast, seeing Green Bay continue their unbeaten run at Detroit. For the first time the 26 pound turkey was cooked in a bag (in the oven). All went down well and K and her mom probably tied the battle of sweet potatoes.

Not content with the usual choice of three deserts, the anti had been upped to a choice of FIVE. I started out with the traditional slice of Apple and Pumpkin pies (above). We got to some Pumpkin Roll later on too, no complaints. After a bit more football on TV the English element got out for a walk. The sun was out and there was no real need for a jacket. Later in the evening we spent (maybe a bit too long) watching Pumpkin Chunkin on the Discovery channel. Essentially this is a competition to see who can fling a pumpkin the furthest. I think one or two may have gone beyond 4000 ft and they seemed to come from some sort of air rocket type set up.

After a spot of breakfast at Billy's Dinner on Friday morning, the Hembrows were off on the bus back to NYC. We decided to avoid any potential pepper spray or gun attacks and not take a Black Friday shopping excursion.

Saturday meant a drive to a fairly nearby IKEA to squeeze some flat pack furniture into our Nissan hire car. It was much the same as the one in Bristol, though maybe a little less busy for a Saturday. We also went to a Christmas Craft market thing down near the steel stacks in Bethlehem. They either made a poor choice on the artists (?) they selected or the painted eggshells at $60 weren't quite doing it for me.

The highlight was a large christmas tree adorned with thousands of "Peeps" (above). The Just Born candy company (from Bethlehem) makes all sorts of marshmallow shapes for all the holiday seasons. We made sure to pick up a few snowmen...

The drive home started in sunshine, but ended up in the same torrential rain we had left behind in Ohio a few days earlier. The highlight of the journey was using our Giant Eagle grocery rewards to pick up gas at $1.19 a gallon rather than $3.39. We felt smug.

Them Apples

A couple of weeks ago we went to our newly re-fitted local Kroger supermarket. They are usually pretty good with free samples, but when they have just re-opened a store it seems, even better still. I started with some sushi, followed by some cake and then two or three different varieties of cheese. I might have messed up the order with which I consumed the freebies but I was grateful for all that was on offer.

We needed apples, and I have to say that thus far here in Ohio I haven't really found any variety that I am particularly loyal to. We've mostly erred on the side of Gala's, not all that tasty or juicy or crunchy, but kind of cheap. So, in this newly refitted shop I was game for an apple change. It looked like Honeycrisp were on offer. They looked big and red and shiny and at under $2 a pound it seemed rude not to pick up four.

I can quite comfortably say they were the best apples I've had. I used to think Pink Ladies were as good as you could get (maybe a bit of competition from the Jazz), but no, Honeycrisps are where its at. As the name would suggest they're super crisp and crazily juicy. Somehow though, the juice seems to stay well within until you crunch into the flesh. A good quality.

What to think then when you're told that there is a better apple? Apparently this is the case. Bred from bits of Honeycrisp and Zestar apples, people that try the new SweeTango can't quite find the words to describe how good it is. This weeks New Yorker food issue features a story all about bringing new apple varieties into the world and how the whole process works out. Check out this video here.

I still haven't tried one, but am on the hunt for some and hoping it's not too late in the season to find them, which it may be. I May just have to wait until next year....

Washington DC in 3 1/2 Days

Here follows a run down of our recent trip to the capital. Should you find yourself there anytime soon it is presented in the helpful(?) form of a guidebook...

GETTING THERE:

We arrived at BWI airport, one of the three Washington area airports. This involved us changing flights at Cleveland on the way out and Newark on the way back.

ORIENTATION:

I, personally, found Washington DC pretty confusing to walk around. More than once we started out in one direction only to find the numbers were going up when they should have been going down. Also, the diagonal streets that cut across the regular grid system didn't help me out too much either.

GETTING AROUND:

We used the metro quite a bit. It was a pretty simple system and we got around easily. It is against the law to eat or drink anywhere on the system. We didn't see anyone doing so, and as a result it was very clean. You pay per journey and the cost varies as per distance and time of day.

SIGHTS:

Approaching the Lincoln Memorial from behind you get a pretty good sense of the immense size and scale of the monument. From here it's a pretty pleasant, flat walk down the Mall taking in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and any number of others as you make your way down to the rather phallic Washington Monument. If visiting in the next few months, though, you'll find the Reflecting pool empty. It was leaking pretty badly and costing the city a lot to keep it topped up.

Beyond the Washington Monument you start to hit the numerous and free Smithsonian museums. You'll find Kermit the Frog and Julia Child's kitchen in the Museum of American History as well as all manner of other things. Further down, and the National Gallery of Art is split between the east and west wings. Visiting the East (pictured above), we thought the building and installations potentially impressed more than the art on the walls.

After about a two mile walk, no problem in the November sunshine, we reached Capitol Hill. Exploring at the weekend means avoiding the wildly unpopular congressmen and women and it all looks quite serene and pretty against the blue sky.

You can of course stop at the White House and peak through the railings, too.

SLEEPING - Budget

Our friends Matt and Laurie's basement apartment floor very close to the Dupont Circle Metro Station. Our hosts were very happy with the Buckeye candies, Cloud Nothings CD and Ohio State tat they received as payment.

EATING

ShopHouse - Dupont Circle. This place is apparently a spin-off from Chipotle (a McDonalds does Mexican). It was cheap ($20) for two rice bowls and two drinks. Someone said Asian Fusion and that fits. I had grilled chicken on rice with eggplant and some spicy stuff. I was full.

Kramerbooks and Afterwards Cafe - Dupont Circle. The full menu looked pretty interesting, if not a bit pricey. We didn't have time for dinner so just stopped for some pie. The pie was very good, Boston Creme and Blueberry, but at $7.50 a slice, not quite worth it. The bookshop looked good though.

Tortilla Cafe - Capitol Hill. Offers Mexican and El Savardorian fare. It was $6.95 for a Pupusa platter. I went for the pork stuffed option and K the cheese. Really tasty, filling food.

Lauriol Plaza - 18th St NW. The biggest restaurant I have ever been in. Stacked up over three floors with numerous tables outside too. The five of us spent about $100 and that included margaritas, main courses and chips and salsa. You had to shout to be heard such was the atmosphere, my crab and shrimp enchiladas tasted fresh and I left nothing behind.

Pizzeria Paradiso - M Street, Georgetown. We had to wait a while to be seated, but the pizza was crusty and lovely. They also have a particularly extensive (for a pizza place) beer selection. The Ommegang Abbey Ale is a great Belgian style beer brewed in NY state; at 8.5% though maybe only one for lunch is necessary.

Baked and Wired- Thomas Jefferson Street, Georgetown. One of about 5 or 6 different places in Georgetown you can buy a cupcake. We went for the Banana cake with Peanut butter frosting (pictured) and the lemon cake with raspberry frosting. The sponge was light and the icing thick. They could maybe do with a few more seats though.

Bar Pilar - 14th Street NW. We were here for brunch and it was just OK really. The bacon bloody Mary was pretty unique, but meant that that the total bill was a little bit more than dinner the night previous.

Ben's Chilli Bowl - U Street NW. From what I had read, the place that everyone needs to go to when they visit DC. I got the most popular: Chili half smoke. This is basically a smoked hot dog, with beef chilli on top. I made sure to eat it quickly so as not to lose most of the chili down my shirt. Very satisfying. We paid for our food, unlike the Obamas and Bill Cosby who always eat free.

ENTERTAINMENT

Avalon Theater - Connecticut Ave NW. Built in 1923, this not-for-profit neighborhood cinema and cafe is full of character and charm. Our reason for visiting was hearing K's fave, Joan Didion, speak about her new book, Blue Nights. The event was put on by the Politics and Prose Bookshop, something they do every night (though rarely at this massive place).

Positive Force DC. Is an activist collective seeking radical social change, personal growth and youth empowerment. They organize benefit and free concerts among other things. While we were in town they put on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists in a huge church basement. You got $2 off admission if you brought a tin of food with you. A fun show and thousands of dollars raised for Positive Force.

SHOPPING

Red Onion Books and Records - 18th Street. Pretty small, easy to miss shop. Well stocked with mostly vinyl, a few books and not too many CD's. Was pretty happy to find the first Fresh and Onlys album.

Crooked Beat Records - 18th Street. A bigger store having recently made the choice to stop selling CD's. They seem to be doing fine and I could have bought a lot more than an old Kurt Vile that I was very happy to find.

There were other shops in the city, but these were really the only ones we visited....

Rafa Marquez and not giving Blood

Rafa complete with ponytail and chest hair

We're currently in the midst of the strange MLS play-off system at the moment. It certainly drags the season out a bit, giving those teams that finished about 20 points behind the team with the most points the chance to keep their season going a bit longer. Last night was the second leg of the New York v LA game. LA were a goal ahead from the first leg in New York a few days earlier. The headlines from that game were more centered on the antics after the final whistle, which can be seen here.

So to summarize, Marquez throws the ball at Landon Donovan and there is a melee resulting in him (Rafa) going to ground in a manner that would suggest he had just been hit by something or someone pretty hard. He wasn't. Unsurprisingly this didn't do his popularity here in the US much good. That he is the second highest paid (supposedly $4.5 million for the season) behind Beckham doesn't help. Then towards the end of September he said:

"I think this is a team game and unfortunately there isn't an equal level between my team mates and I."

Maybe you should have thought about that before you took the cash, eh mate? He could learn a lesson or two from his team mate Luke Rodgers, who, straight out of the third tier of English football, has partnered Thierry Henry to score 11 goals this season. He scored in the 4th minute last night, then nearly got sent off. LA won 3-1 on aggregate and Beckham was pretty good.

After my own soccer efforts this afternoon, one of the nurses that plays suggested that people give blood at the medical center. With nothing much else to do and the chance of a free t-shirt and voucher for the zoo, I went down. Turns out being British, there is a good chance you might have mad cow disease and so they don't really want your blood. I offered to give my gifts back in a kind of awkward way, but they said to keep them. I did, but am going to feel a bit of a fraud wearing my OSU v Michigan Blood Battle t-shirt...

Pumpkins and Parades

As I walked down the street today (Tuesday, the day after halloween) I saw a good few bit of smashed pumpkin and then a little closer to campus a false mustache abandoned on the pavement. Halloween was over for another year and I had survived the festivities pretty well OK.

Our halloween fun started on Saturday when we got the chance to help the kids downstairs and their mates with carving their pumpkins. We were a bit late and the real hard work (scraping out and emptying the pumpkins) had already been done. The kids weren't all that impressed that they weren't allowed to use the knifes, so they had to make do with instructing the adults on how they wanted them to look. My new mate Devon was keen that his looked like Ozzy Osborne. I did my best and gave him some round glasses and a grumpy face as instructed. He (Devon) seemed happy enough. Pumpkin carving was carried out with Guns and Roses and the Jackson 5 on the stereo at the 10 and 11 year olds' request.

Last night the kids, parents and a few more friends headed out for trick or treating. K and I stayed behind in order to hand out candy to the kids that stopped by. There was certainly a greater uptake than back in Bristol. The kids seemed to range anywhere from 1 to about 17. They were pretty pleasant and grateful and didn't take too many from the bowl.

Last Friday was the OSU homecoming parade. Apparently this is an opportunity for graduates to come back and go and watch the football team play and maybe do a load of other stuff that we didn't really find out about. The parade wasn't all that popular really. There were lots of people in cars waving. These people seemed to range from the mayor and head of the college down to the people that weren't quite good enough to be homecoming king and queen. When they had all gone by we got some people representing their fraternity and sorority groups and then finally when THEY had gone by we got THE BAND. It was very exciting and even though K was a little disappointed that they were just in their sweats, they gave it a good go, especially as it was getting colder and darker by the minute.

When they were done, we headed home and stopped to pick up some nice warming Stouts and Porters from the local bottle shop / drive-through beer distributor.