Tourists in London

Every weekend we are tourists in London. I'm sure you can live your entire life in this city and never see it all. Today we visited Primrose Hill with the most amazing views of London and then continued on to Abbey Road.

Here's Stephen with the beautiful views of the city. Next the famous Abbey Road crosswalk used by the Beatles in their album of the same name. These are just a few miles from our flat.

Explaining Matzoh Meal

My mom recently compiled a family cookbook on the internet that she then printed to order. It took her about two years and the final product is pretty amazing. The book is probably 200+ pages and each recipe was submitted by a family member. Alongside recipes are family photos and my mother's personal notes about who people are in the historic images and how the recipe relates. The project turned into an interesting family tree of sorts.

Last weekend my mother-in-law, who lives in Scotland, was showing me which recipes she wanted to try. Her challenge was understanding some of the ingredients. Some were easy to translate, for instance Crisco would be vegetable lard in the UK. But the harder ones were explaining Jewish ingredients such as Matzoh Meal.

Amy: It's Matzoh made into a meal.

Mum: Oh, yes, aye.

Amy: You know, crumbled up or actually made back into dust.

Mum: Oh, yes, and Matzoh is...?

Amy: Well, it's that bread that the Jews took out of Egypt, the one that didn't rise and they baked it in the sun, that flat bread.

Mum: Oh, yes, aye.

Amy: Breadcrumbs will work.

Mum: We have those.

Then I tried to explain gefilte fish and how it was like the haggis of Jewish food but not nearly as good. Poor Mum, she was going to try and make it but I think she's now deterred. I didn't have the heart to explain that the carp has to swim in your bathtub before you kill it. Of course now she knows from reading this post.

Naturist vs. Nudist

Now that I have your attention here's a funny story. My work associate was having a phone chat with one of our vendors who mentioned that she is about to go on holiday. Being polite he asked if she was going anywhere interesting. Her response, "In fact, I'm a Naturist and will be at a festival."

OK. What the heck is a Naturist? According to The Naturist Society website Naturists believe, "Everyone's first moments are without clothes, and The Naturist Society believes nudity is still the natural and best way to be."

Well, how does that differ from a Nudist? Ah, the joy of Google, simply type in Naturist versus Nudist and you land on Nudist/Naturist Terminology.

"Essentially synonymous, the terms Naturist/Naturism were originally created as an alternative to Nudist/Nudism in the attempt to dispel negative connotations associated with Nudism. Naturism tends to imply more environmental awareness, free beach values, and recreational nudity, while Nudism tends to be focused more around resorts and living nude full time."

Oh yes, very subtle differences here. Seems to be commerce and recreation that separate the nude from the naked.

As you can imagine this discussion brought much debate to our office and chuckles as well as we imagined her working on our project, at her home office, in the nude.