Autumn in England

I am feeling a bit under the weather today so this post might be a bit short. Its been a rough week, my computer randomly crashed this week and now I am using Jason's laptop. It is a good thing I have been keeping this blog because I have been posting my photos on the internet. Had they not been stored on internet sites I would have lost all of our honeymoon pictures so I am very grateful for internet file storage.

First I should report that I found apple "cider" at the supermarket this week. Sadly it was very disappointing. It was commercially bottled juice so I should have expected what I got but it just wasn't the same. It tasted like regular old apple juice but with appley pulp in it. It was too sweet and didn't have that tang that real fresh apple cider has. Its kind of like when you buy chunky applesauce in a jar. Despite their best efforts, putting chunks of apples in applesauce doesn't make it comparable to homemade. I was right about one thing, though. It is called cloudy apple juice here.

It is a good thing I bought some other fall staples while I was at the store like apples and pumpkins. For the first time in years I made Betty Crocker's apple crisp and it more than made up for the cider let-down. I also bought a baking pumpkin but haven't decided what to make with it yet. I think I might bake it now and then freeze it until I decide what pumpkin treat I want to make. Feel free to post your favorite pumpkin recipes in the comments section of this post if you have any suggestions.

One thing to note is that here in England they don't use the term fall. Most of them know what it is thanks to American TV shows and movies, but here it is strictly called autumn. Possibly because there is nothing significant about the falling of the leaves here. Living here by the sea the sights, smells and other sensations of autumn are sadly absent. The seaside always just smells like the sea. The only indication that the seasons have changed is that the parks service came through and tore all the flowers out of the beds lining the promenade.

I am interested to see what Halloween is like here because although children do go trick-or-treating, this is not a holiday that adults really get into. I suppose Americans have turned Halloween and pretty much every other obscure holiday into an excuse to drink. Here in England they don't really need excuses to drink so I suppose that is the reason they don't make a big deal out of Halloween. We don't have many children in our area here so I don't anticipate that we will get any trick-or-treaters.

Thank you for reading! Hopefully by next week I will be feeling much better and I will be able to write a bit more. Enjoy all of that real apple cider...