UK and America are two countries separated by a common language, UK and US Q&A

[Pipbin]

Continuation of the previous thread where posters from the UK ask questions like 'what the hell is going on with the gaps in US toilet doors'; and posters fro the US ask things like 'what is with wearing stripes'

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a2149133-to-think-there-is-something-wrong-with-Americans?msgid=48969042#48969042

That sounds good Scone. Can I have the recipe? :)

Thanksgiving menus vary somewhat by region and ethnicity; this is ours:

Roast turkey (or sometimes deep fried)
Cornbread dressing (aka stuffing, a Southern speciality)
Sweet potato souffle (no marshmallows)
Green bean casserole (I think it's a law; you have to have it.)
Roasted Brussels sprouts
Summer squash with onions (a Southern thing, again)
Dirty rice (also Southern)
Cranberry sauce
Yeast rolls
Pumpkin pie
Kentucky Derby pie (like pecan pie but with the addition of chocolate and whiskey)
Apple pie (because it's DS's favorite)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

Green bean casserole?

And how do you deep fry a turkey? Can you get deep fat fryers that big?

Here it is, Cheerful. I use store bought lemon curd (imported from the UK, of course) and instead of the cream cheese frosting, I just use a basic vanilla butter cream.

www.myrecipes.com/recipe/lemon-coconut-cake-10000001563807/

Loving the sound of the Kentucky derby pie.

The rest of the menu sounds delicious, I spent a couple of months Amtraking around the states when I was younger and the southern food was my absolute favourite

Turkey fryer. Second pic shows perils of turkey frying.

Thanks Scone! I'll try it this Christmas. May use boxed cake mix though, so it can be gluten free :)

No way!!!!

Amazing and lethal all at the same time.

I bet the turkey fryer the "man's" domain a bit like the BBQ in the summer? I can imagine them all gathered round it with a beer and fire extinguisher watching the turkey deep fry talking about manly things

Christmas dinner at our house was always roast turkey with stuffing, green beans with mushroom sauce, scalloped corn with pumpkin pie and another fruit pie (generally apple) for dessert.

oh, and mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce...

so basically similar meals for christmas and thanksgiving. There's a month between so I'm not fussed. And generally there were loads of "spend $50 get a free turkey" or "spend $50 get a turkey for $5" deals leading up the both thanksgiving and christmas, so I usually bought a good half dozen turkeys, used one for thanksgiving, one for christmas, kept 2 for use later in winter or spring, and gave 2 to local turkey drives for charity.

green bean casserole gag ew ew ew. Anything that starts with a can of 'cream of..' tastes foul to me.

My friend always has lobster for Christmas. We don't celebrate Christmas now but when we did we usually had roast beef. A lot of people do prime rib (bone in beef roast). Last year we made tamales and had them Christmas day even though we don't celebrate it. It is easy to find the fixings because there is such a large Mexican population.

Turkey frying is indeed a man-thing. One guy in the neighborhood has a fancy turkey fryer, and in the late morning, all the men head over head there with the turkeys and, yes, beer. The nice thing is that it frees up the oven for all the side dishes.

The animal control officer here deals with raccoons and opossums and occasionally squirrels in people's crawl spaces and attics. You never see a dog out on its own. The animal control office (two municipal employees) also deal with any complaints abut rats and lately they have begun trying to formulate some sort of policy about chickens in backyard coops as lots of people have chickens. They also insist you buy a permit for your cats or dogs and regulate household dog and cat populations. You are allowed no more than two dogs and no more than six cats. To get a permit you have to show proof of rabies shots for your pet/s. You have to renew the permit/s every year and there is a fee.

Thanksgiving:
Breakfast:
cinnamon rolls
bacon
sausages
scrambled eggs
buttermilk biscuits (scones)
tea and coffee

Dinner
roast turkey
roast potatoes (never mashed)
roast parsnips
green beans but never green bean casserole
sweet potatoes mashed with butter, salt and pepper, with a crumble coating of finely chopped walnuts and butter and brown sugar on top
carrots
gravy
cranberry sauce
stuffing -- sage and onion, never cornbread

• pumpkin pie, whipped cream

Christmas Eve:
large meal of lasagne or similar
buche de noel

Christmas:
Same dinner except Brussels sprouts added
Dessert:
pumpkin pie
and tiramisu (they hate trifle but love tiramisu which is almost a trifle)
and mince pies
and Christmas pud
brandy butter, whipped cream

lots of Christmas cookies

Cheerful Do you know about this book?

Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten Free

I have a question!

In Pride and Prejudice when Mrs Bennet says Mr Darcy gets "10,000 pounds a year", what does that mean? Does he have to run Pemberley with that, or is it just money for him to do whatever with?

No Scone but it sounds amazing!

I don't have that particular book, but I have all the other Cake Mix Doctor cookbooks, and her recipes are great.

I love the Cake Mix Doctor, too. My sister and I worked our way though nearly all the recipes in the first book when it came out.

Mr. Darcy's income was 10,000 pounds a year, presumably from his assets such as rents from tenant farmers, etc. He would have used some of that to run his estate. Here's an interesting article about what that would mean in today's money.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11063670/Could-Mr-Darcy-afford-a-stately-home-today.html

I was the Cookie Mom for DD3's Girl Scout troop for seven years. We always sold the cookies right after Christmas when nobody wanted to look at another cookie ever again and ads for exercise equipment were all over TV. It was also during January that all the bills for Christmas would arrive, so people didn't really feel like buying. We would have sales outside shops and at the train station to try to unload extra cookies in March when the weather was really foul and unpredictable.

Occasionally a turf war would break out in the neighbourhood if more than one girl scout lived on any particular street. It was important to hit the neighbours as soon as you could to preempt poaching. This was especially necessary during the years when the suburb to the immediate south belonged to a Girl Scout council that offered cookies for just over half the price of ours. The cookies went up from $3.00 to $4.00 over the years and the troop got 85 cents from each box sold. Imo they're not great, and you got very few in a packet for your $4.00. Twas a cutthroat racket at every turn.

One year I had all the troop cookies sorted according to orders and put them all in the basement, and of course we had about a foot of rain in 24 hours and the basement flooded. My DDs usually managed to sell about ten boxes each. Some of the girls sent order forms to work with parents and ended up flogging hundreds of boxes. Girls who sold door to door when the really bad winter weather usually hit were always battling snow and ice, and front steps that people hadn't cleared of snow. One neighbour fell down an icy front stairs and broke her arm while selling.

Tbh, it always felt like an uphill struggle. I think we would have made more if we had just held an annual bake sale to raise funds for troop activities.

I've always wondered why they sell cookies in January! I've spent most of December baking, I'd rather not buy cookies in January. I'm not really a fan of GS cookies, anyway, they're a little icky. They're too sweet for my taste. If the cute little girls corner me in the lobby of Kroger I'll buy a couple of boxes, but otherwise I don't. Plus, lots of my friends' and coworkers' daughters sell them; if I bought one box from everyone I'd be up to my ears in cookies for months.

All the DCs' cousins far to the south sold their cookies in September. I still have no idea why we in the frozen north ended up selling at such a terrible time.

I've heard it said on other sites that in the US you actually own the road outside your house. The boundary of the property extends to the middle of the road. Is that true?

Pipbin no. Otherwise we'd have to pay for repair of that section of the roadway. Not sure what they're talking about, but that's the first I've EVER heard of that.

Oh, heavens, girl scout cookies. I was troop leader for dd's brownie troop. Cookie sales were a NIGHTMARE.