More new things I have eaten

Working in a food store has expanded the range of new foods I can try.

Fresh morels
Fiddlehead ferns
Goat stew
Onion strings (like onion rings but thinner and therefore a better batter to onion ratio)
Many varieties of kale
Almond water
Artisan marshmallows (these are a world away from Flumps and therefore merit inclusion)
Nut butter other than peanut

Now I am on the way back to the UK where I will eat all the unpasteurized cheese!

Easter

Americans have different Easter traditions. We had a quick look round the candy section of our local grocery store and found one proper Easter Egg (Twix), a few bags of small chocolate eggs, loads of plastic eggs to hide in the garden and Peeps. Peeps appear to be the contents of an alien's hanky - brightly coloured blobs of goo - and yet they are by far the most prolific Easter treat. I have yet to try one and I do not feel inclined to do so! Most importantly, Americans do not have hot cross buns and so I have got out my trusty Kitchen Aid and made a batch. In deference to our new home I have made them American sized.

In other news spring is well under way, lots of blossom on the trees and things growing in the garden. Most of our free weekends have been spent skiing (I can now cope with some blue runs) although last weekend was probably our last outing of the season. I have got a job here where I have been cashiering for the last three weeks and have just started training on the cheese counter. Pretty much my dream job :)

Why would you even THINK about making cinnamon-flavoured toothpaste?

Chocolate

Brought back from my trip to the UK. I do not believe the mini eggs manufactured by Hersheys will be up to standard. Now I have to not eat these until Easter.

Ice Castle

This is the ice castle in Midway. You take some icicles, stick them together, spray them with water and then marvel at the incredible forms that result. It was an excellent photography subject, I'm just putting a few of my favourite pictures up.

It's actually not that cold here.

Winter sports

You probably know already that we are getting quite keen on skiing. This is a photo at Alta, the resort where we've been learning.

However, for a change yesterday we went out to watch some other people ski. There were trials for the Winter Olympics taking place at the Olympic Park in Park City all weekend. We skipped the Nordic events, which just look like a hard slog, and went to watch the ski jumping. This will be the first time that women compete in the ski jumping, because OMG it is almost 2014 what bizarre sexism has been happening, so there was plenty to watch. This was a free event and was obviously very popular, cars were parked all along the road and there were shuttles taking people up to the park. Of course you could walk and a lot of people did (amazing, I thought Americans NEVER walked anywhere if they could  help it), but that did involve a lot more scrambling in the snow than we had bargained for. The last part of the walk involved clinging onto a rope and hauling yourself up the hill. 

The view from the top was pretty good though.

Here are the jumps, the one on the left is the one that was being used.

The only bad thing about being up in the mountains is as you drive back down and see the horrible cloud of smog which is the inversion sitting over the valley. This is what you breathe when you go outside. There are bans on various industrial furnaces and outdoor fires at the moment, and people who are vulnerable to respiratory illness are encouraged to stay indoors. Nice! Hopefully there will be a storm along soon to shift it.