AMERICANS! Please help...

Literature & Writing Writer's Block
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According to Foodland Ontario, the most popular varieties around here are:

McIntosh, a deep red color with a green background.
Red Delicious, deep red, elongated shaped and five bumps on bottom.
Empire, dark red, blush with a splash of yellow or green.
Idared, bright red with greenish-yellow patches.
Crispin (or Mutsu), greenish-yellow exterior with an orange blush.
Golden Delicious, yellow or greenish-yellow exterior, elongated shape, five bumps on bottom.
Spartan, dark red skin.
Cortland, bright red with yellow cheek.
Northern Spy, red-striped skin with green color. Northern Spy is the number 1 baking apple.

Here’s the list of the cultivars maintained in the Ontario Heritage Orchard mentioned at the above link: plant.uoguelph.ca/people-an … ge-orchard

Side note: Mind blown that there’s a Quinte apple. I lived briefly in that area and had no idea. Apparently I should have stopped at the Big Apple stand beside the highway to buy a pie or something.

And while I’m at it, here’s a resource from a heritage apple nursery in B.C.
denmanapple.ca/apples/apples.php

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Heh. From Washington state, and I think we grow everything here. Galas, Red Delicious, Jonathans, Granny smiths, Golden Delicious, Pippins, Honeycrisps (those are at the stores). There’s an antique apple orchard in one of our local parks with several dozen varieties from the late 1800’s, too. I wouldn’t say they’re common varieties, but Wealthy, King, Gravenstein, Dutch Mignone, Red Astrachan, Rhode Island Greening, Bietigheimer, and Esopus Spitzenburg are the most common in that orchard (Piper’s orchard, there’s a wikipedia entry for it).

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[size=150]Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders! I once again need your help!! [/size]
(Yes, I know this means I’m admitting to still working on the same book seven and a half years later)

So…

In the UK we had a public campaign to get an increasingly overweight and fast-food dependent nation eating a few more healthy things with vitamins in them. Essentially people were told that they should be eating at least five portions of fruit and veg each day. It was the ‘five-a-day’ campaign, and is a well enough known slogan over here that an individual could drink a bottle of Sol or Corona beer with a little wedge of lime stuck in the neck and claim to much merryment that this was ‘one of their five-a-day’. Everyone would smile and chuckle at such a tired and obvious joke, but they’d get it.

So, my question is… did / does your countries have similar campaigns? What were they called? Are they similar enough that a passing reference to someone getting one of their five a day – with no context, not even a vague mention of food or health let alone vegetable of fruit – would at least put your mind in the right ball park as to meaning?

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Behold! The Food Pyramid!

Humorous remakes: memebase.cheezburger.com/tag/food-pyramid

The original: safefood.net/healthy-eating/guidelines

Non-humorous critique: thewell.northwell.edu/well-info … d-politics

Katherine

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That is helpful for the task at hand, taught me something, and made me chuckle!

Thanks!! :smiley:

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Hello!

One more question… do people outside of the UK know what a “carrier bag” is?

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It is not a laxative.
Of that I’m pretty certain.

[EDIT] I do now, but up until this very moment I thought it to be something else than what Google says it is.
(As a French-Canadian I probably don’t count anyways…) :wink:

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Don’t be silly. Everybody knows that. Where else would the Navy put those carriers?

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But, but… If you put the carrier in the bag? who then carries the bag?

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Well… Career soldiers? :thinking:

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This is likely just another of @pigfender’s jokes.
There is no such thing as a “carrier bag”.
It’s just one of those “fold the reality onto itself” kind of questions.

One day this guy is gonna blow up the Universe…

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I figured if horse pockets are a thing, it’s basically the same concept. Just a little bigger.

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Right. I see. You may be right.
Like shopping bags, air bags and douche bags.

P.S. That is what I really like about this forum. Everyday there is something new to learn.
Everyday smarter than the next. :+1:

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image

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Excellent. That answers the question!
Quick follow up: Would the phrase “cheap plastic carrier bag” have been obvious enough to conjure up an image?

~~
Oh, and as an aside… due to the overwhelming success of “AMERICANS!”, I’ve launched an exciting spin off series, “PARENTS! Please help…”. Go check it out!

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Just had a thought, wondering about American readability of “cheap plastic carrier bag”: use Google Books to search Elizabeth George (mystery writer) for the phrase. In fact: she uses “shopping carrier bag” on page 26 in Something to Hide (Google Books)

So, yes. Since she writes with Britishisms for Americans, her books are probably a good resource for these kinds of questions.

I’ve learned British expressions through context, either through British writing or your many wonderful TV series. So, “carrier bag” isn’t a term I’d use naturally, but in the context I’ve understood it as what we call a grocery bag. Same with “car park,” “biscuit,” and other Britishisms. Oh, and “crisps”! I’m also a bit of an anglophile, so.

The nuance of your “quite,” though, is still a puzzle: apparently “quite nice” is more pejorative than we Americans understand it? More like, “it’s ok…”? (Though tone tends to signal whether “ok” means “it’s all good” or “mmm, could be better.”)

Especially at the drafting or early macro-scale revising, I wouldn’t fret too much about specifics like whether Yanks or others would grasp each expression quickly. For my part, I enjoy seeing expressions that are new to me. Probably like Americanisms y’all read: they add a bit of foreign mystique.

Note about not letting this stop your flow in writing (and note to self, since I face questions like yours myself): might be best to keep going and consider readability for non-British readers at the later draft stage? I’m highly practiced at stopping over questions like these, when continuing is really the most practical path. I’ll have to make a pass or two in the micro-edit stage about language (my case: does it mimic the century/place enough, or is it too modern?). (And, huguatrix, why don’t you listen to this wiser voice, hmm?)

Sad note: I started to scan this at the beginning and saw vic-k’s name. I’ll raise a glass to his joyous mischief-raising in the skies. :beers:

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I’ve never heard of the British brand, but Benjamin Moore, Glidden, and Behr are very well known here. The big box home improvement store Lowes here sells a brand named Valspar, which is also well-known, but it’s terrible paint, just in case that’s the kind of paint you’re looking for.

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Thanks @huguatrix!

Ah, yes. I think we’re a more sarcastic nation as a whole, which will may impact how some seemingly natural phrases have adopted idiomatic sarcasm here. I think sarcasm is more of a key element to our national humour, as excessively illustrated by these clips from the excellent Mary Whitehouse Experience (originally from the 1980s):

(If it helps explain the ending, Rob Newman — who plays “Ray” in the above sketches — also did “impressions” of Robert Smith regularly on the programme as very sarcastic parodies of The Cure).

Yeah, this has been levelled at me before. For better or worse, this tinkering is just a big part of both my style and workflow now!

All hail his late majesty, king @vic-k. :crown:
:tumbler_glass:

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Very helpful tutorials–thanks, @pigfender.

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I was very happy to be told by a young Lidl staffer that some piece of deliciousness was “part of our Dulux range”. Sadly, it turned out to be part of their Deluxe range.

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