I’ve been watching some trash TV recently. It’s quite funny watching because some of the situations are just so outrageous. I watched a Jerry Spring show, and a Jeremy Kyle show, a Judge Mathis show, and The People’s Court. All these programmes seem to be peppered with DNA tests, paternity tests, money matters, and other litigious situations, along with doses of high emotion, shouting, and fighting. It is entertaining to watch, but you wonder why people can’t use common sense. I mean, there was one situation where an elder brother had cared for his younger brother all his life as they had no parents, and that elder brother was due to be married to a woman in two weeks, but the younger brother then slept with his elder brother’s finance, and told his brother on a previous show what he had done. That younger brother was forgiven by his elder brother because they were blood, and that elder brother went on to marry his fiancé who cheated on him. However, the younger brother went back on the same show to say he had recently slept with his elder brother’s wife, but that he wanted to be forgiven for his mistake again because he now had his own fiancé who was pregnant with his child for three months. The younger brother’s girlfriend had met him just after the previous show occurred so knew what he had done, but didn’t think it relevant to their own relationship because that younger brother said he wouldn’t do anything like that again. Conclusion: The elder brother refused to forgive his younger brother the second time, and said if his younger brother and wife could do that to him, they were welcome to each other and that the duty of the younger brother who was his best man at his wedding was to stop his elder brother from marrying his fiancé if she was going to cheat on him like that; the wife of the elder brother said she didn’t love her husband, but then the younger brother said he didn’t want her either so she was left all alone; the younger brother’s fiancé was heartbroken. It was a sad situation to see.
One show that isn’t trashy that I think is actually interesting to watch is Doctor Oz! I learned how to make a healthy burger recipe, and how to make a clean and healthy produce spray which breaks down and removes the pesticides from vegetables and fruit. Here are the links to them, and a picture of the healthy burger, which I will make one day:
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/clean-and-healthy-produce-spray
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/bills-ozified-chia-burger
I found out recently that I could borrow any one of Winston's T-shirts, and they fit me quite well! This is a great discovery, along with sock borrowing, so when I work out or just want a casual T-shirt to go shopping or something, I can borrow from Winston's stock. His only condition regarding me using them is not to touch the V-neck T-Shirts. It must be a macho thing so he can ensure his medallion and chest hair show, lol! (Just kidding!)
Another thing I discovered is that some girls who are quite rotund over here don’t seem to have an idea that really tight clothes are not becoming on them. I saw one girl in the lift wearing a tight vest, and tight jeggings, and I could see her rolls of fat defined under the fabric. Plus she only went down one floor via the lift. I asked Nell (cousin Merton’s girlfriend) why that is, and she told me it might be because their perception of body image is different from my perception, and because there is a higher proportion of large people over here, it doesn’t seem unusual to see other large people walking around in little or tight clothing. Nell asked me if there are many obese people over here, and I said I’ve only seen such people rarely. I said it might be due to us being used to eating smaller food portions and therefore having smaller stomachs? Is this a correct presumption?
I saw cousin Merton and Nell at TGI Fridays the night before yesterday. Apart from the food and large people topic of conversation, we also caught up regarding work life, how long I was over here, and Halloween costumes and future events. I ate a few Jack Daniels fried chicken strips and drank a half pint of Guinness very slowly (took me about two hours). When it comes to crispy battered food, Americans do it very well! Then we all shared a peanut butter and chocolate ganache pie with Hershey’s chocolate sauce (It’s like cheesecake, but with a crushed graham cracker crust, a chocolate ganache layer, followed by a smooth and light peanut butter mousse, and topped with a thin layer of whipped cream). Quite rich so I’m glad we shared! It was nice to see both of them, but I’m sure I’ll see them again soon!
I made a tomato and egg omelette for brunch the other day and sprinkled some American smoked paprika and tumeric over it. I ate that with a little brown and white rice. Do not use too much American smoked paprika over food – it gives a very earthy taste which almost tastes a bit mouldy. British smoked paprika is a little sweeter. But is the American version supposed to be like that?
This sandwich was more appetizing. I had it at a local bar called Dirty Del’s the other evening. Winston only tried a bite of it because he wasn’t so hungry, but it was the first sandwich I’ve eaten over here, and it was well tasty! It’s called a Del Trio and is composed of two types of bologni, one type of salami, a slice of mozzarella, bean sprouts, watercress, lettuce, tomato, onions, jalapenos, and sliced gherkins sandwiched between two pieces of sourdough bread smeared with a very thin layer of mustard and mayonnaise (no butter). This was accompanied by a big pickled piece of cucumber.
I reckon most of my emails are going to contain quite detailed descriptions of food, so if it’s too much for you, sorry in advance! You know how much I like food, but at least this time around, I’m working out to compensate for all the calories I’m consuming now, and will be consuming in the future. I started working out on my first complete day here with Winston’s encouragement, and I found that I like working out half an hour on the elliptical machine every other day. However, I have also started following a 45 minute episode of Dance and Be Fit in between elliptical machine sessions. I’m not the best at following all the dance moves, but I follow each episode until the end and do my best to copy them! Yesterday I did a few tricep dips and bicep exercises using 10lb weights, and my arms are a bit sore today. Not too sore though, that I can’t lift food to my mouth!
Winston and I saw our friends Annie and Aid (the married couple), and Rodney (their lodger and friend, and an amazing caricature artist) last night. We went to a popular pizza and bar place called Urban where I had my first ever mashed potato pizza. On the menu, pizza refers to the ingredients you can pick to put on a pizza base, and craft pies refer to pizzas with pre-chosen toppings. I got a bit confused as I always thought pies meant a pie crust with a filling, but that’s British thinking for you!
The mashed potato pie came and it was HUGE! Have a look-see (Winston's hand is there for size reference purposes):
The pie is composed of a thin and crisp dough base topped with a garlic and anchovy base sauce (as opposed to the normal tomato sauce) followed by a layer of seasoned mashed potato with pancetta (which, to me, looked more like British bacon- in the USA, bacon refers to the crisp pieces of streaky bacon that Americans like eating with maple syrup. I always thought pancetta was more like thin slices of cured ham…). This led to a conversation about British bacon. Winston said British bacon was Canadian ham in another guise, and that we British are used to having a different cut which means there is only a thin bit of fat on one side of it. Apparently, that isn’t how proper bacon is supposed to be (as per Winston and Sid’s opinion), but, to me, at least British bacon is a tiny bit more HEALTHY!
I saw a classic car exhibit at a car dealership the other day! I liked this car. I’m not sure what it is, but it looked racy!
Unfortunately, I’m obscuring its full shiny beauty!
Here’s Winston in front of some other cars- he hid the one I liked- can you see it peeking out behind him?
The implicit rule here was: No touching of cars allowed.
Anyhow, I better stop writing now. This seems like a really long post, but I’ve only done that because it’s going to be quite busy tonight, which means they’ll be a lot more to update you on in the next one.
Winston and I have been invited to a fancy dress house party with Annie and Sid tonight, so I’m get to use my face paint! My costume will be a long and ruffled black shirt and shorts with opaque black tights and pixie boots because the focus of my fancy dress should be my face, not my clothes! I’ll try and take some pictures of other costumes so you can see the variety of costumes people like to wear here for Halloween!
Until then…
Au revoir!
Jen :)
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