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That's right, while Oz is coming into Spring, it's Autumn here. And Americans don't just have autumn the way we have seasons, they celebrate "the fall". For some reason they feel it's not enough to see the different-coloured leaves everywhere they go (even in a town like Bloomington, where there are deciduous trees everywhere) they have to decorate their stores and sell season-specific foods. For a few weeks already the supermarkets have been decorating with pumpkins, selling "pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies" (sic.) and more normal biscuits decorated with "fall colors" ie orange icing.
No, it's not just that Halloween happens to utilise pumpkins for Jack o' lanterns, during the fall they celebrate apples too, eg prominent displays of cider and apple cider doughnuts. Saturday there was a "Fall Festival" across the road from my apartment at a museum. There they were playing quoits over pumpkins and selling pumpkin cake, pumpkin muffins, the traditional American pumpkin pie as well as apple cider. It had been years since I'd had pumpkin pie, and given the setting I thought I should give it another try, but it was just as bad as I remembered.
Oh, and Friday evening I was at a BBQ where there were many of these fall foods as well as marshmallow Jack o' lanterns, so I realised that this was some sort of fall celebration. And then all the Americans started bobbing for apples. I didn't participate.
2 comments:
Does it get any easier to find cider at this time of year?
Yes and no. "Cider" does not entail "alcoholic" in American; here it can be any ruddy apple juice. What's the difference then between cider and juice? Glad you asked! "If it's clear and yella, you've got juice there, fella! If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town!" But the alcoholic cider that we're used to is called hard cider here. (I think cider drinkers here must have some sort of inferiority complex if they need to compensate in this way!)
All the supermarkets have gallon jugs of non-alcoholic cider available in the produce section now that apples are in season but availability of the alcoholic stuff is not affected. There may also be some orchards selling directly to the public; I haven't seen any this year but there was some at the Farmers' Market last autumn.
Also, I hear that a lot of Americans buy cider direct from the orchard because then it's unpasteurised and they can just leave it to ferment!
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