More little quirks

I noticed a while ago that Americans eat a lot of apple sauce. For example, it's in those snack boxes that you can buy on domestic flights (which I never buy). I dunno what they do with it, eat it with a spoon like baby food, I guess. I do know that Jews put apple sauce on potato pancakes (which they call latkes) but when I asked someone why they couldn't tell me. But here's the strange thing: when I commented, 'The only thing I associate apple sauce with is pork chops.', they were shocked. None of the Americans in the room had heard of putting apple sauce on pork! One said, 'I've heard of mint sauce on lamb.' but they don't even eat lamb! How can they, with so much apple sauce around, not have discovered the combination of pork and apple sauce?

Oh, and I got a new number plate for my car in the mail today. Strange, they allow me to renew my rego online -- convenient -- but insist on giving me a new plate, even though the other is less than two years old. Sounds like a waste of aluminium, having just insisted on giving me a new plate when I bought the car. Whatever, I never learnt the old number anyway!
The old one looked like this:

A nice field of corn, with a barn in the background, which is what the state actually looks like. The new one is uglier:

But, better still, there's a new style coming out next year that you can request at no extra cost, which will last until 2013:

I'll probably get it if it's free. But I don't see how it's Lincoln's bicentenary, if he was born in 1816 but the plate can only be retained until 2013. The other question is, "Will the Illinoisans resent it?" because they claim Lincoln too. I think he's on all their plates.