Several events last week highlighted the differences between the two cultures of Britain and America.
It all started when we received an Amish Friendship Bread “starter”, a sample of the said bread and some instructions.
Now just to clarify the Amish are those people with the funny beards who don’t like TV and other modern things. They originated in Switzerland in the 17th Century and moved to Pennsylvania because they were persecuted in their home land. There’s about a quarter of a million Amish today in various places (mainly Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana with a few in Ontario over the Canadian border).
Amish Friendship Bread is made from a starter (a yeast-based mix) and according to our instructions requires 10 days to prepare. During the 10 days you do various things, mostly “mushing the [starter] bag” but on some days you add some flour, sugar and milk and then, of course, “mush the bag”. On the 10th day you separate the resulting batter into four and using one of these you make the bread. Then you pass on a starter to each of your friends and so the process goes.
The end result is something like this:
(I forgot to photograph the actual result before we ate it so this one’s from Wikipedia).
Amish Friendship Bread may (or may not - as usual no-one one is entirely certain of this) be something that Amish people pass around between themselves but it seems that people here (in Houston at least) do it.
Now, British people don’t do that (well, none that I know of anyway). So what do British people do? Well the good folk from the North of England (the only place where the folk are really good) cook marvelous heart warming (and probably heart clogging) traditional food like we had before we went to see Coldplay at the Toyota Center.
The mince with onion (suet) pudding that Chef Boyle made brought back (wonderful) memories of Sunderland and unfortunately, like the Amish Friendship Bread, there is no photographic evidence because it was all eaten too quickly. Its no mean feat cooking something like this in the USA yet it ought to be right up the culinary street of the people who think nothing of deep frying their turkeys (more on this later I think) or having breaded steak, eggs, hash browns and a rich gravy for breakfast.
Anyway, as I mentioned, we then went off to see Coldplay at the Toyota Center, also known as the home venue for the Houston Rockets NBA team. So here we were with 19,298 others (mostly American I expect, based on statistics) watching one of Britain’s most successful musical exports.
Coldplay are somewhat different in musical style to Opeth (the last band I saw) but nonetheless they were an excellent live act. Based on the way he moved around the stage, Chris Martin’s trousers were obviously too tight but they did entertain us all, moving around quite a bit (including performing a couple of numbers up in the nosebleed seats).
Although Coldplay were well received, two members of the audience seemed to generate even more excitement. Tony Parker (of the San Antonio Hornets NBA team - and husband of Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives) and his teammate (who isn’t married to a famous actress otherwise I might have remembered his name) came in just before the start and caused much pleasure for many in the audience, yet they didn’t seem to enjoy the concert themselves. Anyway, we had better seats than them, so maybe that’s why they were grumpy. At least they missed the second support act, some top DJ from New York who mixed us some rad sounds to some amateur animation on a side screen for 30 minutes.
To cap off the week of cultural diversification studies, Ben came first in his class in a spelling contest and so was entered into the Strack Intermediate School Spelling Bee.
Now the only Bees we saw in Britain made honey and spelling was something limited to a few specific lessons and tests. I guess they have them elsewhere in the world nowadays but they definitely are a big thing here in America.
To highlight how serious it is taken here, ESPN (a sports channel) broadcasts the National Spelling Bee championships every year. Now if you thought watching snooker was dull imagine what a few hours of spelling would be like!
A Bee in this context is a get-together (possibly from the Old English word for prayer) and in a Spelling Bee the contestants take turns to spell words read by a judge until there are only three left and these fight it out for the top three spots.
The competitors are allowed to ask for some help in spelling the word. They can ask for the judge to repeat the word, to ask for the origin of the word or to hear a typical sentence that the word might be used in.
Spelling Bees are difficult enough but imagine if you aren’t born and raised in America (where “colour” is “color” and “centre” is “center”) and your judge comes from deepest Texas with an impressive drawl to match.
Ben spelled Samaritan incorrectly and so went out to leave the final three in the competition. He was lucky, he didn’t have to try and spell “Ottoman” (pronounced “aww-toe-may-en” by the judge).
As the multi-talented Brian Eno (who produced Coldplay’s latest album “Viva La Vida”) says “The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.”
[With special thanks to Chef Boyle for creative input and breaking the writer’s block...]