nw3 to nyc

Observations on moving my family across the Atlantic

Monthly Archives: November 2014


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Ah, always read the small print

My advice for the day: if you want to eat Thanksgiving lunch at 1pm make sure you read the instructions on your lazy lunch from Eli’s. When you read the instructions that say ‘heat for 20-25 minutes in a 350 F oven’ (not shown in the photo below) and you think ‘hmm, that doesn’t seem like very long’, then you are probably right. When you take it out after 25 minutes and probe it with a meat thermometer and it says ‘I am 10 C and you cannot eat me because you will contract food poisoning’, then it’s probably right too. Best re-read the smaller but crucial print at the top of the instructions that says ‘make sure you take everything out of the fridge in good time to get them to room temperature otherwise all the timings below will be wrong, you idiot’. Or something like that. Lunch at 230pm anyone?

I’m sure we did something similarly stupid last year.

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It may be Thanksgiving, but

Today seems to be mostly about Black Friday. Not a concept that exists in the UK, but in the US, Black Friday is huge. It’s a massive selling day where shops offer large discounts to entice shoppers in after a day of stuffing themselves with turkey. I suppose it’s a bit like Boxing Day, the day after Christmas Day, in the UK. Although I don’t think Boxing Day is quite the shopping mecca it once was.

In my New York Times this morning, there were 18 separate pieces of advertising making the newspaper bundle on my doorstep super thick. Here’s what it looked like: this is Black Friday on Thanksgiving.

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A 3 pack of dusters, how exciting

Oh dear, it comes to something when your husband returns from a business trip to London and the thing you are most excited about is the 3 pack of dusters he brought back from Sainsbury’s. And I’m not being in the least bit sarcastic. It really was a highlight as I just can’t find them here. I did ask in Basics Plus (the local homeware shop that sells lots of useful things but at eye watering prices) but they just looked at me quizzically and showed me to a bunch of feather things on sticks. R said they didn’t know that a duster is a soft yellow cloth mostly sewn around the edges in orange thread that you use with polish, something like Pledge, to keep the dust off the furniture. I used one today and it was lovely. I really must get out more.

 

 


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Now here’s something pretty special

Continuing with the cold theme from yesterday, E and I went ice skating in Central Park last night. There’s a permanent rink at the south end of Central Park which is re-used in the summer as a small fairground. We went to the fairground in August on a roasting hot day where I sought out shelter at every opportunity and guzzled bottles of water; this time round I’m freezing and gripping a cup of Early Grey tea to try and restore some feeling in my fingers.

The setting is spectacular: the buildings of 59th Street towering over us and the trees of Central Park nearly bare of leaves. It’s kind of spooky walking into Central Park at night; E wasn’t keen and I sort of knew where I was going after an abortive attempt to cut through the Zoo, which was unsurprisingly shut at 630pm. But we survived and it’s well worth it as a proper New York experience, something everyone should try during the winter.

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Blimey, it’s a bit cold

What on earth is the matter with the weather? It was minus 6 celsius this morning. It is clear and bitterly cold, it’s the first proper cold day of the winter. I am feeling rather smug because I bought a new coat at the weekend in anticipation of snow in maybe February and am very pleased to have it today.  I have written before about my dislike of padded coats and today they were out in force. My new coat has a secret padded lining so that it feels like a duvet, but looks like a stylish black coat on the outside. Genius.

Everyone was moaning about the cold, reminding me that it’s not just the British who like to constantly talk and complain about the weather. We are similar in some ways, I suppose. I saw a man wearing shorts and a woman in flip flops – her excuse being she’d just had a pedicure (but why? it is winter) but what possible reason could he have had for his lack of layers? Crazy.


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Mincemeat!

I could hardly contain myself in the queue at Fairway this morning. An entire section dedicated to Christmas and an English Christmas at that! There were Maltesers in the shape of Christmas crackers, boxes of jelly babies, selection boxes filled with McVities biscuits and even selection boxes of chocolates like I had when I was a kid.

But most exciting of all was the jars of mincemeat to make mince pies. Mince pies! I didn’t see one here last year and I certainly didn’t see any mincemeat. I was so excited I made some this afternoon.  Unfortunately I can’t find any icing sugar here, so they don’t have that lovely dusted with snow look. They were so nice, warm out of the oven with a cup of Darjeeling tea. E said the pastry was a bit bland picked out the mincemeat and left the pastry. Tut, tut, fussy so and so. Here’s the result.

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A new perspective on New York

Take a look at this picture. You see a 3D optical illusion on the right (it goes to a point in the middle when you walk down it, but impossible to represent here), a perspex anchor on the left (as you do) and the Manhattan skyline in the background. Where was I? Well, I was at the Socrates Sculpture Park, home of bonkers outside art in Queens. It was a gorgeous day yesterday and we were there to check out this year’s emerging artists installations. As well as these two, there was a wooden dragon thing that J loved walking along, must have been 30 feet long; a pile of wood painted white which was more obstacle course for small children and dogs than art; and a giant spider with an NYPD spy station on top of it – hard to imagine, I know.  All a bit crazy, but that just seems to be normal here.

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