Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Britain is working!
This morning I was pleased to see that the road mending scene was alive and well. In the days before we were reformed by Mrs Thatcher, we used to make jokes about the number of council workmen needed to admire a hole in the road - while today I was amused to see a crowd of council contractors standing around their four vans and one dropside while one of their number did something to a traffic light up a ladder. One was, of course, entirely confident that the contractors were doing the job for a lot less than those dossers from the council used to cost.
And yesterday evening, the Café Rouge scene was also alive and well, fuelled according to the pleasant young staff there by overflow from today's Valentine celebrations. Very pleasant meal at a reasonable cost, made the more so by BH acquiring some voucher from Tesco which took 40% of the food part of the bill - which discount paid for a bottle of their reasonably priced and reasonable tasting wine. How was the 40% split between the two parties? We also found out that it was possible to turn off the rather hot radiator which we had been sat next to. An unexpected bonus, only flawed by our forgetting to turn it back on again when we left.
But it has to be said that the food fare was adequate rather than good. There was a basket of a variety of mostly inferior bread. The Ceasar Salad starter was fine but a little thin at the price. My Toulouse sausage was not as good as those knocked out under that name by the butcher in Manor Green Road. And the Tarte Tatin was much too brown and soggy for my taste, reinforcing my view that this particular outfit is not very good at puddings. But BH thought her mussels were good.
While this evening, the chicken soup was truly excellent. Boil up carcase of a large chicken with half a head of celery, three onions and three carrots for about six hours and strain to yield about 3 pints of stock. Add 2 ounces each of pearl barley and red lentils and simmer gently for about 50 minutes. Add some chopped chicken, chopped mushrooms and some cold sliced newish potatoes and away you go. Newish in the sense that they were the size and shape of new potatoes and even tasted vaguely like them - but no idea where they came from.
And yesterday evening, the Café Rouge scene was also alive and well, fuelled according to the pleasant young staff there by overflow from today's Valentine celebrations. Very pleasant meal at a reasonable cost, made the more so by BH acquiring some voucher from Tesco which took 40% of the food part of the bill - which discount paid for a bottle of their reasonably priced and reasonable tasting wine. How was the 40% split between the two parties? We also found out that it was possible to turn off the rather hot radiator which we had been sat next to. An unexpected bonus, only flawed by our forgetting to turn it back on again when we left.
But it has to be said that the food fare was adequate rather than good. There was a basket of a variety of mostly inferior bread. The Ceasar Salad starter was fine but a little thin at the price. My Toulouse sausage was not as good as those knocked out under that name by the butcher in Manor Green Road. And the Tarte Tatin was much too brown and soggy for my taste, reinforcing my view that this particular outfit is not very good at puddings. But BH thought her mussels were good.
While this evening, the chicken soup was truly excellent. Boil up carcase of a large chicken with half a head of celery, three onions and three carrots for about six hours and strain to yield about 3 pints of stock. Add 2 ounces each of pearl barley and red lentils and simmer gently for about 50 minutes. Add some chopped chicken, chopped mushrooms and some cold sliced newish potatoes and away you go. Newish in the sense that they were the size and shape of new potatoes and even tasted vaguely like them - but no idea where they came from.
# posted by Jim @ 11:02 AM 
