Holiday part 2

In part 2 of the holiday series, I'd like to take you to to a wonderful little tea room in Shipston-on-Stour. Well, actually, I can't take you there literally, but you catch my drift. N and I took S there to have some tea and lunch (quite hungry at 14:00).

S had a cheese-scone with avocado, brie or camembert and cress

N had toast with scrambled eggs and bacon

For myself, I ordered a classic scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream

Note about the clotted cream: I had always wondered what it would be like, since it can't be bought here in the Netherlands. It turned out to be closer to butter than to whipped cream, which may alternatively be served in the Netherlands when having tea (for example, at the Theefabriek). It was rich. It was delicious. It was artery-clogging, heart-stoppingly good. Yum!
Also, I think this was the first time I had an actual, full-sized scone. Not the mini-versions we always sample at the Theefabriek, nor the selfmade attempts at scones that wouldn't rise and stay compact little bricks. No, this was a piece of pastry, the size of a tennisball, very fluffy yet satisfying.

To me, it made for a very nice English tea-drinking event.

Holiday part 1

Instead of putting all pictures from this Summer holiday together in one long blog post, let's divide them into separate posts per events. That ought to save me some time and prevent me from postponing it until the next holiday.

We spent a few days in the nice rural counties in the South-East of England. While staying their, our friends S & O took us to one of their favourite Oxford restaurants: the Trout (map), situated in a lovely place near a water mill and a river. But of course we don't care about scenery at a food blog. We care about the food!

Let's state upfront that I didn't take any pictures of my own food. Why? Well, the food of the other three in our company was served first. So, while waiting for my course, I took pictures of the other three courses. When finally my food arrived, I was so hungry that I immediately dived in, without the slightest notion of taking a picture (the wait probably took only 1-2 minutes, but seeing the other food and having whetted our appetites with some bread and olives I guess I let myself go). For myself, I had ordered deepfried cod in Peroni beer batter with chips and pea puree and a tartare sauce, which in itself was good because it was prepared with fresh ingredients; the cod itself was a little tasteless unfortunately.

Now, for the pictures:

O had a burger with gherkin, mustard mayo, cheese, relish, extra bacon and chips.

S had a pasta dish, strozzapreti, with artichokes, olives, tomatoes, rocket and goats cheese

N had a ribeye steak, with balsamic roast onions, rocket, horseradish, parmesan and chips.

Sailing

At our annual sailing trip, this time also including Big-L, along with S, E and J, we usually don't care too much about dinner, since the outdoors will always make you hungry. We started the trip at friday evening and ended sunday in the afternoon. The weather was beautiful (even hot) and it was very nice and all, etc. -- but of course you're interested in the food we ate during that trip!

Well, that friday we had some fries with mayo and croquettes. Because there were Endless Amounts of Fries, we had plenty leftover. During that dinner and also afterwards, Big-L had a very influential role in halving the beer supply for the weekend. Later that evening, probably when the effects of that role had kicked in, he specifically requested for the cold fries leftovers to be served for breakfast the next morning, on a sandwich, with peanutbutter. The rest of us, not having had such an influential role, promised to remind him of that the next morning.

So, here it is, the proudly presented Cold Fries Sandwich with Peanutbutter:

Unfortunately, I cannot describe the gustatory experience this culinary curiosity has led to, but I'm sure Big-L himself will want to comment on that. We might, however, draw some conclusions from the fact that he withdrew after just a single bite and made us promise to stop him from expressing silly wishes after having had a few beers.

Ah, the joy of beer-influenced decisions.

The next day, we had macaroni and cheese, with some ketchup and diced ham.

After boiling some macaroni, we added two bags of grated cheese and a tin of diced ham, along with a tin of tomatoes. Unfortunately, the pan was too small to add another tin of diced ham (which while waiting for the macaroni to boil, started to decolor -- and the cooking only took 7 minutes). Luckily, the two bags of grated cheese did fit in. However, because of the heat of those days, the cheese had already started to melt beforehand and had formed a large lump. Because of that, it wasn't easy to make it melt and mix it evenly throughout the pasta. Big-L and S, being the hard-working sailors, were offered portions containing the most of that lump. Strangely, they didn't quite enjoy it, just chowing away on yellowy unshapely somewhat cheesy lumps which they felt was directly clogging their arteries and making their stomach ache. They made us promise to never do this again too. Well, E, J and I did enjoy our portions (which might have had something to do with us missing out on that cheesy experience). E and I promised to eachother that when we would be making a boating trip ourselves someday without people complaining about our cooking, we would gladly eat this every day!

All in all, this trip turned out to be great, however, for our next trip, we will probably have to provide for a lock on the beer supply, a cooling device and other dinner options.

I can't wait for Big-L's comments on his culinary experience!