Slices of country life

I want Lady P to get something a little hard to express out of this, and subsequent, trips to the UK - as well as quality time, of course. I want her to soak up a bit of Englishness. A sense of home. And that home (sometimes) is a place with wonky stiles over misty meadows, where eggs are kept out of the fridge, and postboxes are red. Where beaches are not packed with volleyball nets and fringed with palm trees. Where sheep and ducks exist in fields, not just in storybooks. Where marmalade and marmite, scones and 99s are eaten. I also wanted her to do lots of running around, raise her stair climbing skills (we have none at home), be windswept and to splash in puddles.

I am getting it.

Practising on the bandstand steps, like her cousins before her

Grazed knees

Gleefully shouting 'baa'

Damp, slightly cool sand

Literally licking the marmalade out of the little dish it came in

I reckon a few weeks of this every year will keep the little English girl inside her alive.

English Understatement

One of the many things I know I'll miss when we move to the US is English understatement. American enthusiasm is often welcome, and I do like that Californian sunny sensibility that leads people to be overwhelmingly positive about even fairly mediocre things.

But there are times when a spade needs to be called a spade. The people who write the labels at Sainsbury's Basics know it's true. I meant to write a blog post about this a couple of months ago, when I noticed that their cat litter packaging bore the legend 'Does the job'. Brilliant. No high faluting claims about odour control, clumping, environmental impact, and so on. It's just cat litter.

They've updated the cat litter bag now but here are some other prime examples.

'A little less tidy' is a genius way to make lettuce snobs question their prejudices.

'No lookers', so don't come complaining that they're all outlandishly big and have gnarly black eyes all over them

Someone had a bit of fun with this one, didn't they? It's a nice little pun which makes it okay that their 'peeled' tomatoes actually might not be peeled.

Just tuna, innit?

'Takes your breath away' - I'm guessing this won't be one of the more subtle garlic bread experiences

'Some broken'. Oh well. Tastes the same, eh?

'Not quite as soft' / scratchy as heck tissues. 'Still handles a sneeze', after all, you're only wiping snot, what do you need it to be soft for?

My favourite. 'For the table, not the cellar'. If you're buying wine to lay down, maybe steer clear of the £3.50 bottle.

I thumb my teeth at your fancy packaging! Piffle to it! My big bar of chocolate only cost 30p!

We only started shopping at Sainsbury's since we moved to Saltburn, so I read a sort of Yorkshire drollery into these labels. They're the exact opposite of all those overstatements, the pretensions, puffery and hype I used to post about under a Emperor's New Clothes tag in New York. And the chances of seeing anything as dour in the land of year-round sunshine and megawatt smiles are slim to none.

So I'm enjoying them while we're here, taking special misty-eyed detours round the aisles to soak up any labels I haven't seen yet. Yes, I know that's weird. I'm getting sentimental, indulge me.

Parmo night

California has its egg white omelette and, of course, the California roll. New York has the papaya/hot dog combo and the New York strip steak. London has… hmmm…. What does London have, as signature foods go? Well, perhaps the fact there’s no obvious answer to that says it all. Either about the wonderful diversity of London’s food, or the paucity thereof, depending on your point of view.

Anyway, enough about those other places, for now we are in Saltburn. You might think the signature dish around here is fish and chips. And it’s certainly unquestionably true that the North Yorkshire coastline is the source of the best fish and chips in the whole world. But there’s another dish which is the local speciality: the parmo. The parmo is more Teesside than Yorkshire, and Saltburn straddles both places: look right from the pier and you see the rolling cliff top fields and wooded hills of picture perfect North Yorkshire. Look left and the industrial glories of Teesside – the steel works at Redcar, big ships queuing up to go into Teesport– fill the horizon.

While tourists, seeking North Yorkshire’s old fashioned seaside delights, opt for fish and chips, the locals eat parmos.

‘What’s a parmo?’ I hear you ask. Well, clearly you’re not from round here. Neither is TLOML and he has asked the same question many times. Mainly because there’s so much talk of parmos. TLOML’s swim club buddies keep asking him when he’s going to try one. Every pub and most restaurants have a ‘parmo night’, when all the specials are parmos. Chicken parmos, pork parmos, mushroom parmos, and so on.

 

Thursday is parmo night at The Ship

Allow me to put you out of your misery. A parmo is a piece of meat (or mushroom mush), bashed about and flattened a bit, breaded and fried. Sounds a bit like those chicken escalopes you see in greasy spoons in London, doesn’t it? (Is that London’s signature dish? No, it can’t be. Teesside claims it). But what makes it more than just an escalope, what elevates it into a parmo, is that it is then topped with béchamel sauce and grated parmesan. And chips. Boom! Heart attack! They are served in Styrofoam boxes to drunks up and down Linthorpe Road every Saturday night. And to civilised people in Saltburn pubs on parmo nights.

TLOML tried his first parmo at the weekend – under the expert guidance of my brother-in-law, who knows a first rate pub chef who makes a good one (no reformed chicken, or cheddar instead of parmesan, for him). 

TLOML with his parmo

His verdict? He liked it. But he didn’t see it catching on outside Teesside. I'm not so sure. Despite its healthy image and all those fro-yo shops, LA is also home to Roscoes, which served quite possibly the least healthy meal I’ve ever eaten (half a fried chicken, waffles, and so much salt I was thirsty for  two days afterwards). I wonder if we might open up a parmo shop on our return, and show those Californians what they're missing.

I could see this having an exotic appeal on Santa Monica Boulevard

Rich pickings

Regular readers may remember last year's bumper harvest at Fox Corner. We, of course, couldn't hope for the same from our humble little yard this year.

Happily, my parents live five minutes away and have an abundance, nay, an excess of fruit.

This represents about 5% of the current apple crop

So many plums my dad has had to prop the tree up.

To think I always cite 'the wonderful stone fruit' as one of the many great things about California. And here I am with perfect plums literally dropping off the trees. I must add this too the list of great things about Yorksire, and Britain (not that that list needs any further lengthening. It will be hard enough to leave as it is).

What on earth are two people going to do with all this fruit? They're busy too - they barely have time to pick it, never mind eat it. Or so I suspect. So I'm helping them out.

'Only take as much as you'll eat in the next two days', my mum said. They don't keep well, these apples. Well, Lady P enjoys an apple as much as me. Which is a lot. Plus half the apple ends up on the floor. Hers, that is, not mine. So I took this many.

These should keep me going for a day or two.

Think I'll go back later this week and get enough for apple pie. Just to help my parents out, you understand.

A Tourist's Guide to Saltburn

Despite moving to the far Northern reaches of this land, we have had plenty of visitors this summer. Some people just won't take the hint, eh?

I actually think they couldn't quite believe we weren't having a miserable time all the way Up North so they came to see for themselves. One friend said, upon leaving, 'I feel I can go away satisfied that you're alright, after all.' I was glad we could set her mind at ease. We appreciate the concern - and have very much enjoyed showing off the delights of Saltburn to our guests.

Wherever we live, we've had a well-trodden path for guests. This is usually designed to take in places we think might not be completely obvious to visitors. Most people come to LA expecting to see Rodeo Drive, the Hollywood sign, and the Sunset Strip. We insisted that - as well as those sights - they also partook of a tuna burger at our favourite roadside seafood shack, and that they wandered around the Venice Canals. While visitors to New York had ideas about seeing Times Square, the Empire State Building and Central Park we used to nudge guests downtown for a burger at Smith and Mills, as well as taking them for a walk along the Hudson riverside.

Of course, no-one comes to Saltburn with any kind of sightseeing agenda. There is no guidebook to Saltburn - the 'tourists', such as they are, are day-trippers from Middlesbrough in the main. To the rest of the country I suppose it's just off the map. So our guests come here expecting to see nothing but us. And Londoners are usually just excited if they can pick up a 3G signal and order a proper cappuccino.

We get extra kicks from showing them the sights of our current home town. All guests are promenaded through the lovely Valley Gardens, where we can point out delights like the miniature railway, the Italian garden, and wholesome children fishing in the stream. We always walk along the seafront, and onto the pier to see the knitting and the excellent view back up to the town. A ride on the Victorian funicular Cliff Lift is a must.

A trip on the Cliff Lift is a must...

...as is a walk on the pier...

...and a look at the knitting

It is a hidden gem of a town, and I think we've done as much to boost tourism here as those knitters and the Cliff Lift put together.

Fine foods

Every now and again we get a little frustrated with the food shopping in Saltburn. We do have a brilliant butcher, a nice little grocer which sells the odd 'exotic' item, a great bakery, and a decent Sainsbury's.

But I've moaned before about the limited choice of fresh seafood. And, to give just one example, the only kind of hot peppers we can buy in Sainsbury's are these:

They make no distinction between, say, Scotch Bonnet, Habanero, Jalapeno, or any other kind of peppers. And TLOML, for what it's worth, is the kind of man who's fussy about his chillies. There's one kind for his homemade salsa, and another for the stir fry, and so on.

That kind of packaging is the sort of thing that makes TLOML shake his fist at the sky and cry 'this country!'.

So every now and again I like to remind him that we, too, have large supermarkets in this country. Even in North Yorkshire. We head to the big Morrisons a few miles away.

Check out their pepper section:

What's more, they have a fish counter three times the size of the little ice tray at Sainsbury's, with a good range of fish. All excited about the culinary opportunities opening up in front of us, we bought some oysters to have before dinner tonight. They also were unsatisfactorily labelled, being tagged as just 'oysters' - no variety or provenance. No matter, they'll be good. TLOML will shuck them and we'll eat them on the half shell.

We felt such a thrill going around the supermarket. TLOML said it was like being in America again - high praise indeed.

When we got home I noticed this advice on the oyster packaging:

'Do not eat raw'? Really? It reminded me that we are, actually, still in Yorkshire, in a town where eating raw shellfish is considered a form of madness, or the height of pretension. Or is this Americanisation creeping in? Health and safety gone mad, and so on?

Whatever the advice is informed by, we're going to ignore it I'm afraid. We're renegade grocery shoppers and fly-by-night eaters, TLOML and I. Which brings me to another question. When will Lady P be able to eat raw shellfish, sushi, carpaccio and steak tartare? She's on vegetables and rice cakes so far, but with TLOML as her father that kind of pedestrian diet surely won't satisfy her for long.

Country Life

Any summer spent in Yorkshire must surely involve at least one trip to a country show. So yesterday we went to Danby Show. Danby is a picturesque village on the Moors, and their show includes all that you would expect: livestock and produce being judged, little girls on ponies, horse feed for sale, and lots of farmers milling about.

There were competitions for the best jams, curds, cakes and floral arrangements. Naturally there were prizes for the best (biggest?) onions, marrows, tomatoes, and so on. Walking sticks, eggs, tea cosies were also pretty competitive categories by the looks of things. And of course there were all the animals - we watched a selection of sheep being judged by a couple of elderly gents who were very seriously and closely examining their feet. They looked identical to me, which I suppose is why I'm not a judge at such events. The same goes for the ferrets. There must have been two dozen ferrets in the ferret tent, with prizes for the best 'working ferret' and the best family pet. Which begs a couple of questions (if not more): what does a working ferret actually do? And how does one judge a ferret? Probably a field best left unexplored.

For an urbanite like TLOML, it was quite an eye opener. This is a man who has lived in big cities all his life. Our spell in Saltburn is his first time not living in a city (unless you count Malibu, which I don't).  So to be surrounded by prize sheep and cows, to see shetland ponies and cart horses, and the aforementioned ponies, was almost overwhelming. He had worn his flat cap in order to fit in (it's a Yorkshire thing) but I'm afraid his constant exclamations and snapping of photos on the big SLR camera gave him away rather as a tourist.

And Lady P? Well she loved it too, of course. She loves most things, to be honest. Just being toted about in the sling with a lot of things to look at made her day. I think she enjoyed seeing people on horses, and seeing sheep lined up for judging, and little prize calves being led round a show ring by their proud owners. But her favourite exhibit of all was TLOML's face.

We left with a bag full of country fare (well, focaccia and cheddar) and big plans to make Danby Show a part of our summer every year from now on. And when she's older we're hoping Lady P can enter something. Hopefully it will be in the 'children's table piece' or painting category, and not the 'Ferret - family pet' division.

Yorkshire Mix

Yorkshire folk have a reputation for being tight. I used to wonder why. Now I'm back in God's County, though, I'm starting to get some ideas.

This is a 'jar sweet' (as in, sweets you buy by weight, from a large jar), called Yorkshire Mixture.

I have never seen Yorkshire Mix for sale outside of Yorkshire. You can buy it in our local corner shop, the one where you have to order the fish two days in advance. It's an odd little shop - the shelves are half empty and it looks a bit rubbish and yet, despite having a limited selection it's actually good stuff. And they sell some locally baked cakes, plus locally grown veg. And of course a range of sweets in jars.

Anyway, back to the Yorkshire Mix. It's basically the odds and ends, misshapes and factory floor sweepings from all the other jar sweets. And this is our great county's official sweet. It says it all, doesn't it?

Outdoor Pursuits

TLOML, Lady P and I took a run out to the North Yorkshire Moors at the weekend. It is lambing season so the moor road is lined with cute signs like this one:

 And the fields are full of lambs baaing and shaking their little tails and generally making us both think of roast dinners.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we headed to a little village known for its long stretch of daffodil-lined river bank. You pay for your parking in an honesty box and follow the guidance given to take a very pretty walk along flagstone and wooded path.

NCP this aint

Lady P studies the route

Some daffodils

Hordes of people were doing the same thing, some just ambling like TLOML and I, with Lady P in her chariot - others looking a little more serious, with hiking boots on and walking sticks. On our drive we also saw tonnes of mountain bikers, plenty more hikers, and lots of campers too.

It struck me that in some ways this part of England is not so different to Norther California. Both are blessed with wonderful people and a beautiful coastline. You might think that's where the similarity ends. But they are also places where a large chunk of the population enjoy outdoor pursuits.

TLOML and I are the only ones within our little social circle here who don't like to spend our weekends mountain biking, rambling and camping. He does at least surf, I suppose, and I do enjoy a light jog along the seafront. But compared to most people we know here we are rather sedentary.

Just like their crunchy cousins across the pond, the good people of North Yorkshire like to get outdoors.

The North Yorkshire Moors. Mile upon mile of rugged beauty inspiring mountain bikers, hikers and pub lunchers.

I think the biggest difference is that while after a good hearty hike, the people of the Bay Area might enjoy a frozen yoghurt or a quinoa burger, over here they reward themselves with a bacon butty or a slice of cake. If anything could persuade me to cycle up Saltburn Bank, or hike around Blakey Ridge, it's that kind of reward. I'm afraid those healthy Californians are missing a trick.