Books

Mike Harling (an American in Britain, and author of Postcards From Across The Pond, which I happened to blurb) and Toni Hargis (a Briton in America, and author of Rules, Britannia: An Insider’s Guide to Life in the United Kingdom) squared off yesterday on which country is better — the US or the UK –  on BBC Radio Scotland. The interview starts about 1 hour and 12 minutes into the broadcast — you can move the pointer to that spot.

Toni wrote on her blog that she didn’t say Americans had zero sense of humor as the host claimed (Toni, I loved your Labrador puppy line!). And I think Mike is turning into a Brit because he never interrupted and he wasn’t all rah-rah-America, but calmly and humorously defended his homeland. Who won? Well, poor Mike was outnumbered and being an American myself … come on, of course America rules! Do we really have to debate this?

I liked the discussion about the difference between US and UK humor. Hargis said she dumped her sarcastic sense of humor years ago because Americans don’t get it — we take everything literally. Hmm. To some degree this is true, especially if you’re kidding around with a Midwesterner or Southerner. But in the Northeast — places like the outer boroughs of NYC, south Boston, or northern New England — sarcasm, irony, and black humor are the gold standards for humor. Indeed, Mike — from upstate New York — gave Britons a little taste of this with his comment about guns being the efficacious way to kill someone, versus stomping on them or lighting them afire as they typically do in the gun-wary UK. And I had to tone down my ironic commentary when I married my husband, an earnest corn-fed boy from Michigan who, along with his family, takes everything at face value.

Nevertheless, I give the British the edge on their collective sense of humor, as well as their conversational skills. And it’s not just because I love the way they sound, I swear.

Anyway, it’s a fun listen and both Toni and Mike spoke their sides very well.

First off, when I read Toby Young’s memoir about his stint at Vanity Fair, I think I laughed so hard a few times I knocked one of my cats off the bed. And I was thrilled to hear this British food critic was going to judge this season on one of my favorite shows, Top Chef. But I was severely disappointed with him last week — he just wasn’t that funny and his condemnations of the cheftestants’ dishes were too overwrought.

Luckily he redeemed himself this week. He still went for some truly awful similes but I loved it when he said when he gets served a pork product, he wants to make love to it. (Or something like that.) It was very funny.

Anyway, an interview with Mr. Toby Young on the LA Times‘ Show Tracker blog for your reading pleasure.

Vanity Fair has an excerpt of Anne de Courcy’s biography of Antony Armstrong-Jones, Snowdon, in its February 2009 issue:

Britain thrilled to the 1960 wedding of Queen Elizabeth’s glamorous younger sister, Princess Margaret, and debonair photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones (soon to become Earl of Snowdon), the first commoner in four centuries to marry a king’s daughter. But while it seemed the 29-year-old Margaret had finally recovered from her heartbreak over Captain Peter Townsend, many close to the newlyweds saw trouble ahead.”

Read more here.

Before Christmas I drove to my post office to pick up my business mail and as usual, there were a couple books waiting for me behind the counter. In my day job, I’m a freelance writer for magazines, so publishers send me tons of review copies. That sounds good, but for some reason I’m the writer who gets books about potty training, quitting smoking, and beating drug addiction. I’ve no idea why I get all the drug addiction books. I’ve never written about drugs in my life, never mind done them, unless cookbooks, chocolate and coffee count as illegal substances.

Anyway, later on I went through the packages, and one jumped out at me because it was sent to my Hail Britannia address. Cool! Something to feed my Anglophilia, I thought, tearing the envelope open. Inside I found a slim book with a nerdy looking bald guy on the cover.* The title proclaimed I Can Make You Thin.

Ooookay. The book’s publicist must have been reading my posts about my adventures in Fortnum & Mason, fondness for Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars, and how I rendered beef fat for my orange almond mincemeat, and she or he figured I could slim down after all this outrageous piggery and who knows? maybe I’d write about it.

What really got me curious, though, was that it was written by a British hypnotist-guru-type. It looked like this British version of Tony Robbins was planning a full-scale invasion of our American self-help book sections, and quite honestly, I didn’t know how I felt about a Brit elbowing in on a feel-good industry that belongs to America.

I did a little research on McKenna, figuring that British journalists would be ripping him a new bunghole in print. They do this kind of verbal surgery brilliantly … usually without Novocaine. The Daily Mail came down on him hardest, claiming he’s “flashy, ambitious and more than a little prone to psychobabble.” Catherine O’Brien at the Times of London went fairly easy on him, considering the session she had with him didn’t make her wealthy (which was the focus on his last book; he can also make you quit smoking). The other articles I read spoke of his new Beverly Hills home, his serial monogamy, and a penchant for designer suits with nary a hint of journalistic malice. And speaking of smoking, Ellen DeGeneres gives McKenna credit for helping her quit this nasy habit. Supposedly Stephen Fry likes him too. I adore Ellen and Stephen, so if they like Paul, he can’t be all bad?

What really grabbed my attention was the “Includes Guided Hypnosis CD” sticker on the book’s cover. Shortly after Christmas, I tore the CD out of the back cover envelope, uploaded the tracks to my iPod, and gave it a listen while stretched out on the sofa watching Gillian McKeith berate an 18-stone woman about the sorry contents of her fridge. (You want to see a British journo rip apart a self-help guru? Read this.)

Hmm, I thought, it’s quite nice to listen to a hypnotist with a British accent. His voice alone could convince me to do just about anything: toss junk food from my pantry, run five miles, or more to the point, strip off all my clothes while pleading, “Make love to me, Paul!” We silly American women will overlook almost anything anyone says if it’s cloaked in the Queen’s English, including, “Sod off, you cow.”

After a few minutes of listening to McKenna, though, his voice began to irritate me. I couldn’t tell if it was McKenna pushing his voice to be all low and hypnotic and mesmerizing, or a weird sound effect they did during recording – it sounded kind of electronic and jumpy. But I pressed on with my two-week trial. I skimmed the book to see if there was anything else I needed to know to help Paul’s melodic voice melt the lard off my ass. McKenna gives readers four rules:

1. Eat when you’re hungry.
2. Eat what you actually want.
3. Eat consciously and enjoy each mouthful.
4. Stop when you think you’re full.

Solid advice and pretty much how I eat anyway, except for #4. I really, really love food (I’m a food writer, for heaven’s sake!), and have been known to keep eating something because it tastes so good, even though I’m ready to pass out.

Every night for two weeks I went to bed listening to McKenna’s voice on my iPod. I didn’t clean out my pantry, or run out to the store for special diet foods. In fact, I made a few changes to my diet over the last month that might encourage weight gain:

First, I switched from skim milk to whole milk in our milk deliveries. I’ve been reading a lot about the health benefits of unprocessed foods, including milk, so I asked our local dairy to make the switch.

Second, I gave up my Splenda habit and have started using pure maple syrup to sweeten my coffee. Pure maple syrup, while intensely sweet, has a lot of calories per teaspoonful.

Last, while I don’t eat a lot of meat anyway, it has been harder for me to buy grass-fed beef, as well as locally raised chicken and pork, this winter. Instead, I’ve been eating foods like avocados, nut oils, nuts, seeds, and cheese, none of which can be considered low-fat.

This morning I stood on the scale and was surprised to see I’d lost four pounds in two weeks. I didn’t expect it because my clothes still fit the same and I’d had a bad moment the night before with some corn chips. On the other hand, it’s kind of weird because I’m not really overweight — okay, I could stand to lose ten pounds– so four pounds is pretty substantial weight loss here.

So could it be McKenna’s hypnotic suggestions before bed every night? Or those four tips, which, to be honest, I’ve really taken to heart these past couple weeks? Like a couple nights ago at a restaurant, where I ate about a third of my meal and decided I’d had enough instead of plowing through because it tasted good?

At any rate, I’ll be curious how McKenna does here in the U.S. I’ll keep you posted on any additional weight loss, although I think I’m going to lay off on McKenna before bed. He’s been robbing me of my dreams about Colin Firth and Ralph Fiennes.

*No diss on nerdy looking bald guys, by the way. I kind of like the look!

Nigella, Jamie, Gordon, and to some degree, Delia — these British celebrity chefs and cooks all have books that dominate shelf-space in American bookstores. Their recipes look no different from those you’d find in one of Ina’s or Martha’s cookbooks. You measure out ingredients in cups, add a tablespoon of this or that, and bake your creation at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and voila! A sticky toffee pudding fit for the Queen herself.

But say you can’t wait for Nigella’s new cookbook to show up in Des Moines, so you go order it from amazon.co.uk. You might be confused the first time you start cooking from it. There are lists of strange ingredients like aubergines, cornflour, courgettes, and what the heck is sheet gelatin? And nothing’s measured in cups! You’ll need to drag out your postal scale to measure out five ounces of “strong flour,” whatever that is. Why can’t they just tell you what it is in cups? Then it comes time to bake … if you’re lucky and were good in math in school, you can figure out what 200 degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit, but sometimes these cookbooks will tell you to bake a cake at Gas Mark 4. Or worse, in a “moderate oven.”

A British cookbook can be slightly puzzling to an American, so here’s a primer for you. I own about 50 cookbooks from the UK and Ireland alone, and I have to say, I prefer them to American cookbooks … and not because I’m an incorrigible Anglophile. I always try to buy the original printing of a British cookbook, not the version that’s been translated for American cooks. Here’s why.

British cooks (all Europeans as well) are not as dependent on measuring utensils as Americans are. Measuring dry ingredients like flour and sugar by volume can lead to disaster, especially when you’re baking, because volume measurements aren’t as accurate as weight. Instead, Brits weigh out most everything because everyone’s got a scale tucked away in the kitchen. Indeed, they’re confused when they pick up an American cookbook and see all this “half-cup” and “two cups” business. If you buy an inexpensive digital scale that gives you weights in grams as well as ounces (most Brit cookery books give weights in grams), you’ll be 75 percent of the way to cooking nirvana — and I suspect your recipe success rate will improve dramatically. You’ll actually save time cooking with a scale because you weigh one ingredient, tare the scale, weigh the next ingredient into the same bowl, and so on. Here’s the scale I reach for most often in my kitchen, a MyWeigh 3001P.

British teaspoons and tablespoons are also different from American ones and are slightly bigger. Here’s a chart to make the conversion:

1 Brit teaspoon = 1 American teaspoon (too close to matter)
1 Brit tablespoon = 1 American tablespoon (too close to matter)
2 Brit tablespoons = 3 American tablespoons
3.5 Brit tablespoons = 4 American tablespoons (or 1/4 cup volume measure)
4 Brit tablespoons = 5 American tablespoons

There’s also some difference between British and American liquid measures, especially within older British cookbooks like Jane Grigson’s or Elizabeth David’s. You might have a recipe that tells you to add a “pint of water” to a soup, but a British Imperial pint is 20 fl. ounces while an American pint is 16 fl. oz. so adjust accordingly.

Brit recipes will include ingredients like aubergines, courgettes, swedes, and marrow. Rather than provide a long list of translations (they’re eggplant, zucchini, turnip/rutabaga, and extra-large zucchini, by the way), here’s a link with some of the most common ingredients you’ll come across. Others you can figure out with a Google search. That “strong flour”? It means bread flour, which has a higher protein content than all purpose flour (called “plain flour” in the UK). Still others are easy enough to figure out by context. For example, bicarbonate of soda = baking soda, a “knob” of butter = a pat of butter, and gelatine = gelatin.

Now this gas mark business. Many European gas stoves have a knob with numbers instead of degree markings. You want to bake a cake? You turn the knob to gas mark 4, which is about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Older British cookbooks might not even give you a degree setting or a gas mark number, but simply tell you to bake the pudding in a “slow oven.”

Here’s a handy chart so you’ll never be puzzled about oven settings again:

225° F = 100° C or Gas Mark ¼ (Very cool)
250° F = 130° C or Gas Mark ½ (Very cool)
275° F = 140° C or Gas Mark 1 (Cool or slow)
300° F = 150° C or Gas Mark 2 (Cool or slow)
325° F = 170° C or Gas Mark 3 (Warm)
350° F = 180° C or Gas Mark 4 (Moderate)
375° F = 190° C or Gas Mark 5 (Medium hot)
400° F = 200° C or Gas Mark 6 (Fairly hot)
425° F = 220° C or Gas Mark 7 (Hot)
450° F = 230° C or Gas Mark 8 (Very hot)
475° F = 240° C or Gas Mark 9 (Very hot)

Thanks to a great exchange rate right now, you can get some awesome deals on British cookbooks you can’t buy stateside.* Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities, for example, won’t be available in Ameri-speak until November 2009, but you can have the British version for £12.50 ($18.92) from amazon.co.uk right now (plus shipping, which I find is quick and reasonably priced). Or Jamie’s Ministry of Food, which doesn’t seem to have an American publishing date, for a mere £9.75 ($14.75).

* A few dealers do import a selection of current British cookery books. Try Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City and Rabelais Books in Portland, Maine, both shops where I’ve personally purchased British imports — they ship, too. If you stop by Kitchen Arts & Letters, purchase a copy of All You Need to Know About the British Kitchen: Names, Terms, & Measures for the American Cook by Jane Garmey. They published this slim, helpful pamphlet; I keep my dogearred copy tucked next to my English cookery books.

Ok, so quickly, a recap of Thursday.

I started the morning by bolting upright in my Frette-sheeted bed and noticing daylight. Oh (as they say here) bollocks. It was 9:31 a.m. and I was supposed to meet our group in the lobby at 9:30 a.m. The alarm on my brand new Google phone didn’t sound at 7:00 — a much bitched-about Android flaw — and I’d been hit with a nasty case of insomnia between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m., so I flew about the room in a panic for a few minutes. The phone rang, and it was Alison. “The good news is, we’re not leaving till 10:30, so you’re safe.” Whew!

Fortified with coffee and strawberry yogurt, I headed with our group over to Lamb’s Conduit Street with the lovely Clare Dowdy, a journalist and shopping expert here in London. To be honest, I wasn’t excited about a personal shopping tour and fretted I wouldn’t come up with story ideas, but I knew after a couple minutes chatting with Dowdy that this would be fun. It was like shopping with a friend who really knows the area, and who’s eager to point out the places she knows you’ll enjoy. She pegged me for Persephone Books, which quickly earned itself £27 (3 books, all work-related), and the cafe next door that sold some interesting London-produced foods (and smelled heavenly). I was sad to see Clare go. And wonder of all wonders, I *did* get some very good story ideas.

Alison and I went our own way after this. We stopped by another bookshop, then famished, headed off to Notting Hill with my list of cookbooks and appetites. We ended up having fish and chips at the Duke of Wellington Pub, accompanied by pints of beer (Guinness for me, a lager for Alison) then made our way around the corner to Books for Cooks. I didn’t go too crazy, but I did squeal when I found The Avoca Cafe Cookbook #2, which is very hard to find in the U.S. I also purchased Pasties by Lindsey Bareham, who did the Roast Chicken books with Simon Hopkinson (books which I adore), along with the two latest Books for Cooks recipe compilations and some other book, which I’m too lazy to dig out of its sack.

Then it was off to The Travel Bookshop across the street, which I understand was the model for the shop Hugh Grant ran in Notting Hill. I am hoping the gentleman at the till was pleased we didn’t ask him any embarrassing questions about his resemblance to Hugh Grant or whether he has a girlfriend who looks like Julia Roberts. Instead, we were all about the books. Alison found me a delightful little book called Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain in 1942, a pamphlet from the U.S. government reprinted by the Bodleian Library at Oxford that dispensed little gems for our fighting men. My favorite: “The British don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. It’s an even swap.” (Times have changed, even from the early 2000s — I’ve found some excellent coffee around the city.)

Geez it gets dark early, and we knew we had to head back to our hotel, so we caught the tube at Notting Hill Gate, first stopping at a cozy place for tea, then settled in for some work in the hotel lounge since we weren’t hungry. Suddenly it was 10:00 p.m. and we needed a quick bite. Our concierge recommended Nobu. NOBU. Um, not quite what we had in mind, so we headed to a Turkish restaurant over in Mayfair, where we ended up getting more than a meal, but some eye-widening entertainment.  On one side we had a table with a gentleman and two young ladies, a blond and a brunette, who were all three sheets to the wind. On the other side of us were two women of a certain age who were clearly entertained by the shenannigans going on next to us, and who provided amusing commentary on their drunken antics. When the blond stood up to go the bathroom, she knocked our salt shaker over. She could barely stand, never mind walk, so the guy made out with her a few minutes and she was off for the loo. The minute she was around the corner, the guy started making out with the brunette! Shocking! Then when the blond returned he snogged her some more, and they were off, not before cheerfully saying goodnight to the two older ladies who obviously hadn’t seen entertainment like this in quite some time. (Nor had I, to be honest. I live a sheltered life.) Anyway, we talked to them for awhile about Gordon Brown, Obama, tourism, and red light districts, and then ate our meal. Then it was back to the hotel — we passed Whisky Mist, where Prince Henry and company are frequently photographed, stumbling drunk on their way out; no sightings — and I actually got a great night’s sleep, but woke up with the scratchy throat.

So that was Wednesday. Now off to detail today, Thursday.

A chronic battle with directional dyslexia has brought a ignominious end to freelance food writer Diana Burrell, who stepped out in front of one too many black cabs while eagerly bounding across Portobello Road in Notting Hill, shouting to her travel companion Alison Wellner, “Oh my God, it’s another bookstore!”

Says Wellner, “Diana passed on to a good place — where every meal begins and ends with pudding, where everyone’s ironic and understated, and shopkeepers mind their own business  — with a smile on her face. She clutched a sackful of cookbooks purchased at Books for Cooks to her chest and as she departed, she said, ‘Either that mall goes, or I go.‘ ” Wellner passed condolences, as well as charge card receipts, to Burrell’s family, who weren’t entirely surprised by her demise or the amount she spent on books. “She could never tell her right from her left, and she was always a bit profligate around a bookshop,” said a family member who wished to remain anonymous. “I mean, two copies of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management?” The family member snorts. “Like we’ll be fighting over them in the will.”

Rather than going through the expense of shipping her remains back home, her family decided to scatter her ashes in the River Thames, along with her books, jams, teas, and a Christmas plum pudding from Fortnum & Mason that no one stateside would claim. Shopkeepers and booksellers lined the streets as her funeral cortege passed by, and in a rare outburst of emotion, wiped away tears knowing that an era of economic prosperity had fluttered through their fair city all too briefly.

Today’s the day — later this afternoon, I’ll be heading to London via Newark with my good friend (and most excellent traveling companion) Alison. My bags are packed, the batteries are charged, the passport is tucked away in my purse along with a few stray tenners I found in my office.

I’ll be reporting for a couple of magazine assignments while there (Paris as well), but I’m planning to blog about the trip as much as I can. My planned adventures include stops at Books for Cooks and Stanfords’ Maps and Books — Alison and I are planning more adventures for next year — and of course, the requisite stops at every Boots I pass. I’m very curious to see if my love affair with Boots has truly waned since I can  buy Boots’ products in the U.S. The other thing I’m worried about is falling in love with Publicisdrugstore while in Paris: I hear this place est magnifique — not quite a chemist/pharmacy, but … uh-oh, did I just use very bad French? Shame on me. I will try my best to remain loyal to my Anglo Saxon roots.

p.s. Husband and I think it’s hilarious that of all the French retailers’ websites I’ve visited in the last week, only one had a page in English — and that page was under construction. Those French — so intransigent with us English-speaking folk.

I read about Sarah Lyall’s The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British on Bethanne Patrick’s Book Maven blog a few weeks ago, and immediately knew I had to read this book. The night I purchased it, I brought it to bed to read. Within a few minutes, I was laughing so hard my son begged to know what was so funny. I couldn’t explain it to him, as it involved a joke about hemorrhoids and the British penchant for euphemism.

Some background on Lyall: she’s a reporter for The New York Times who was sent to London in the 90s to report on the British. (Nice job, eh?) While there, she met then married an Englishman, so she has something of a unique perspective on British/American relations.

Lyall’s a fine writer with a good eye for detail; it’s clear she’s done her reporting for this book (hanging out at Parliament, running around London with a man who wears gold lamé underpants) and she does a terrific job weaving threads of history, literature, and politics into her stories. Another thing I liked about the Anglo Files is that Lyall doesn’t fall into that trap of disparaging her American roots or making fun of those quaint British folks in their queues — likewise, she doesn’t pit one culture against the other culture. This is much a book about the British view of the world as it is what it means to be an American standing in the midst of that world.

There were chapters in this book that made it worth the price of admission, such as one about Brits and their attitudes toward sex, and another at the end of the book, an analysis of the British stiff upper lip and if it’s going soft (to wit: the mass outpouring of emotion after Princess Diana’s death). I also loved the chapter about the reform of the House of Lords. If you’re fascinated with the British class system and how it works, then there’s a lot in this book that’ll scratch your itch. There’s even a discussion of why Brits love to use the C word.

Other chapters I skimmed or skipped altogether, such as the one about cricket. If cricket is boring to watch, which is Lyall’s initial claim, it’s even more boring to read about. The book is loaded with footnotes, too. I’ve noticed some reviewers complain they’re too distracting, but I thought they added a lighthearted touch.

The Anglo Files is a book I highly recommend to other Anglophiles.