about time another blog entry went up

This blog has taken a while to post. We have a slow connection that seems to dislike blogs so if you are reading this, we were successful. If you are reading this with pictures, a miracle occurred.

Yesterday (that's Dec 30) we went to see a movie at a cute little theatre in the woods in a wealthy town called Woodhall Spa. It is one of the oldest theatres in the UK and films here were attended by royalty so we were in good company. It was opened in 1922 and the screen is still the original one. This did not affect the quality of the film. We watched "Gulliver's Travels" which greatly departed from the novel but was entertaining none the less. The whole family went and then we went out to dinner in Horncastle together.

There are several interesting things about this. One, Horncastle is a VERY small town and it has two Indian restaurants; two. Indian restaurants here are like Chinese restaurants back home. They are everywhere. The second interesting thing is that I can’t eat spicy food so on principal I have stayed away from Indian food my whole life. I have now eaten at BOTH Indian restaurants in Horncastle…and LOVED it! Both restaurants were excellent and I managed to get through both meals without choking and coughing until tears ran down my face. Another interesting thing is that my whole family (and that includes my children) enjoyed Indian food. We have discovered a new favourite food. While traveling through England, we have discovered we love Indian food.

The whole family went out for dinner together: my mother and Ian, the four of us, Ian’s sister, Alison, his brother, Neil and Neil’s wife, Shelagh, their son, Richard and his girlfriend, Louise. We all managed to order different meals and spent some time sharing food. I’m not sure my English relatives normally spend time sharing their meals as they didn’t look as enthusiastic about the experience. In fact, Shelagh eventually asked if she could just put a bit more of her dinner on her plate before it was passed again. Her meal was particularly tasty, I might add.

Today, we went with my parents to the nearby town of Boston. As most of you probably know, New York is not far off but I have to say it was a bit of a shocker to be driving down the narrow country lane to see the cute little directional sign saying, “New York 4 ½ “. Boston was very nice; smaller than one might expect but charming. The huge church rivals the one in Lincoln, though it is not a cathedral. The town was settled in the 7th century by Saint Botolph who was also responsible for the church. It is a beautiful church but I thought it was more interesting that the name Boston comes from Botolph’s town.

Another fact I found fun is that the settlers in Boston, Massachusetts came from Boston, England in the early 1600’s. They sat together here and planned out the community there. Then they got financing, transportation and a few hardy families and away they went. I’d say they were fairly successful. I wonder why it was called, Boston and not New Boston. I also wonder if New York began the same way.

We ended our day buying the ingredients for apple pie. We will be attempting to make that for New Year’s Eve dinner tomorrow night. I figured our contribution to the progressive dinner should be something fairly North American and you don’t get much more American than apple pie. However, baking apple pie with ingredients in England may be tricky. Did you know they don’t sell pie plates here? There were flan dishes, cake pans, and casserole dishes but not one dish that resembled a pie plate. I know they have pie here because I have seen pie on the menu at restaurants and I found it in the grocery store freezers. Odd. We’ll let you know how it turned out.