The Great British Heat Wave

Snow in April

A British stereotype that has been steadfast throughout my time here has been the constant discussion of the weather. And I’m not referring to the basic small talk we all engage in to avoid awkward conversations at work or with acquaintances. The Brit’s actually talk about it like it isn’t something that occurs and changes as a natural requirement every day. They consider a few inches of rain a flood. A sprinkling of snow is worth a headline in the paper, and anything over 25 degrees Celsius (between the 80’s-90’s Fahrenheit) is going to melt their British flesh off.  

The British react this powerfully to weather in an average climate year, so 2016 has taken it to a whole new level. It snowed (briefly) in April which is stunning and caused great excitement. Furthermore, this summer has been the hottest in Britain in decades. With temperatures in the 30’s Celsius! Something unheard of, people actually got tan without going to Spain or a beauty shop. British beaches were enjoyable and the ocean was swimmable. The “British heat wave” has been all folks could talk about, you hear it on the TV, radio, in your Twitter feed, and every time you greet a friend.

Oh My God, it is weathering outside!

“Hi, how are you?”

“Great! Can you believe this weather! It’s so hot!”

The excitement got extended into this week when we experienced an Indian summer. An Indian summer is a British term for when the hot weather of summer gets pushed into traditional autumn times, like September. It makes them Brits go wild. In America, this only happens with the temperatures are in the 100’s degree Fahrenheit and we happen to have a drought going on at the same time. Or if a city has been snowed in, without electricity for multiple days. Otherwise the weather is like taxes, something we deal with but don’t discuss unless something is going seriously wrong. 

The American Food Series: Top 5 Weird Pizza's

One of the great American marvels in the eyes of the Brit’s is our food. Not only the portion sizes, but our never ceasing inventiveness. We have our range of deep fried foods; cheese, Twinkies, Snickers, pickles, pie, to be honest we will deep fry anything at least once. As well as our varied traditional holiday cuisine; sweet potato casserole, party corn, green bean casserole, corn bread and honey baked ham. And let us not forget our experiments with the weird such as colored ketchup (it was a big thing in the early 2000’s, I personally had a bottle of the Heinz Green), pumpkin flavored donuts, and barbeque flavored candy. America is always willing to try new things when it comes to edibles.

This is the start of a new series for the blog. I realize that a majority of my writing caters to explaining and demonstrating British culture to others, so I will now include explanations of American culture for the Brits. As America has a huge range of odd food, I decided to start the series off with something easy, our creative pizza toppings and pizza mix-ups.

In England, there is Pappa Johns, Pizza Hut and Domino’s. So the British already have some familiarity with unique pizza toppings such as the; Barbeque Pizza and Peri Peri Pizza (it is a type of seasoning and chicken) as well as putting sweet corn (regular corn kernels) in with vegetarian options or Ham and Pineapple Pizza (now that is weird to me). So the odd American flavors might not come as such a shock.

 1. Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza: It’s exactly as odd as it sounds. It has bacon, ground beef and cheese, all the makings of a burger, but on a pizza crust.

2. Taco Pizza: This was common a few years back. It had shredded beef, cheese, crunched up tortilla chips, shredded lettuce and cubed tomato, while sticking to the traditional pizza base.

3.Chicken Alfredo Pizza: Alfredo pizza is personally my absolute favorite! In replacement of the tomato sauce base, there is a white cheese sauce. Then on goes more cheese and chicken or various other toppings. It can be made perfect by having cheese stuffed crust!

4. Bacon Spinach Alfredo: Yummy Alfredo sauce with bacon and spinach. The real surprise however is that it is all on top of pretzel crust!! (American’s do like to add pretzel bread to everything, burgers, pizza, whatever you can dream of!!)

5. Philly Cheesesteak Pizza: It is a sandwich in pizza form. Shredded steak, onions and green peppers on top of a typical pizza base.

Now I know people build their own pizza’s that are a lot more unique then my list above, but these are just a sample of the different, odd, American toppings we put on our pizzas in the USA. A lot of these are only around for a few months before they disappear for something else equally odd.