A tale of many cakes

I have recently had the pleasure of celebrating my birthday, achieving the milestone age of 32. Excitingly, this is the only time in my life that my age is exactly half that of my Dads. I’m not sure if there is a word for that phenomenon, but there should be. A demi-père perhaps.

This birthday, which I celebrated in France with my folks (the first time in 17 years that I’ve spent my birthday with them) was particularly notable for being a white birthday. Europe being somewhat coated in the snowy stuff at the moment.

This meant that all kinds of exciting snow related shenanigans could take place, including the obligatory attempt to slide down a hill on a piece of plastic, and the creation of snow angels. Just because I’m 32 doesn’t mean I have to be a grown up too.

It also nearly put a spanner in the works of our lunch plans, as both us and our local restaurant were entirely snowed in – this part of France not being used to dealing with snow of this magnitude, and things like grit and snow ploughs not featuring heavily in the local mairie’s arsenal. As the photo below of our road demonstrates.

What actually happened, however, was far nicer than a lunch time cancellation. After ringing the restaurant, to find that they had been forced to close as no-one could make it, they invited us over for lunch anyway, as we are in easy walking distance. The food had, after all, already been prepared. In fact, they said, we could come over whenever we wanted, as alcohol was in plentiful supply.

So it was that we found ourselves walking through the heavy snow to the mill down by the river, and had lunch sitting next to an enormous log fire for warmth. The food was, as always, excellent, a warm goats cheese salad, followed by rabbit main and then, excitingly, a birthday cake which seemed to be some magical tiramisu layered concoction.

This was the first of three amazing cakes of the day – having both a mother and girlfriend in attendance for my birthday meant I was getting two cakes already. The third cake being the icing on the cake. As it were. I can report that all three were splendid.

Lunch was pretty damn splendid, as you can imagine, and being a French affair, lasted for over three hours. Lunch is a very serious thing round here. They also refused to let us pay for it, which was rather too incredible for words.

Post lunch, as I’m sure you can imagine, largely involved some lying around and feeling overly stuffed, followed by further cake eating, after which I did my best to wear myself out fully by rediscovering my inner child in the snow. All in all, a damn fine birthday!

Three stupendously awesome burgers

I would make a terrible food blogger. Here’s a post about three phenomenal burgers, and I have no pictures of any of them to share with you.

This was probably a testament to the incredible nature of these beasts – there was simply no time for pause and reflection. It was just eat or.. well. Actually, that was just it. Eat. Instead of photos I’ve used my best Paint skills in order to recreate these burgers for you.

You’ll probably notice I’m not very good at Paint.

Without further ado let me introduce my three favourite burgers from my time in Australia and New Zealand. Other countries will probably follow, once they’ve caught up to the burger making technology that our antipodean cousins have already mastered. In ascending order of greatness, I’ll start with number three… the

Vegetarian burger of Tasmania

Sweet mother of god you are probably thinking, (or sweet mother of Dawkins, if you’re of the atheist bent) the man is a fool. He’s starting off a post about burgers with a vegetarian option. Is there nothing sacred left in the world? Apparently not.

Way down in the town of Launceston on the island of Tasmania, there is a cafe. Which only serves vegetarian food. A meat based option was never going to be on the cards here. So I ordered the lentil burger, which came with a satay sauce, and was served on a bed of something leafy.

This, when it arrived, was a testament to what great vegetarian food is supposed to be. Incredible flavours, unexpectedly blended together to form a taste sensation like no other. A must. If every cow died tomorrow, I’d be safe knowing that this burger is out there as a standby until science figures out how to grow cow meat in vats. Enough now of the non meat options. Let’s move on to:

The burger with the lot

Australia was the first place in the world where I learnt that beetroot is a viable burger topping. Previous to my adventures down under, I had had no idea that such a thing was feasible, let alone edible.

In Australia, when you order a burger with “the lot”, you quite literally get a burger with pretty much everything you can imagine stuffed on top of it. Including a slice of beetroot.

My first memorable experience of such a feast was in the Western Australian town of Kununurra, (try spelling that after a couple of whiskies).

In Kununurra, having just come from a few weeks living off tinned food in the bush, it seemed only fair to try out the local delicacy. Which in this case was a burger served with the aforementioned lot.

It would be unfair to describe this burger as the largest I’ve ever had, as that honour goes to the next burger in my list. But certainly up to that point in my life, this was up there with the greats.

A mound of burger sat atop a mighty bun, sagging with the weight of accompaniments which included pickle, beetroot, fried egg, shaved carrot (they really are a bit odd in the outback), artery clogging amounts of cheese, pineapple, onion, bacon… yes. This was the sort of food that probably killed Elvis.

So how do I go about beating that? Well, only with the most amazing burger I’ve ever eaten. I introduce the, spoken of only in hushed whispers…

Fergburger

If you’ve had the pleasure of visiting Queenstown on the southern island of New Zealand, you will probably be aware of the local legend that is Fergburger.

Word of this establishment reached me during my time on the North island, some 1000km away, when I was manning a hostel reception. Travellers would ask me to recommend a local burger establishment. Usually, I’d recommend a venue, which in my mind served admirable meaty feasts, only to be asked, in soft tones, if I’d ever had a Fergburger. I would reply no. They would peer at me mournfully.

Because it turns out, no burger joint in the world, or at least, Rotorua, that I could recommend, would be able to serve up anything comparable to the Fergburger, A fact I learnt for myself when I eventually made it to the establishment in question.

There was no doubt in my mind, upon arriving at this burger joint, that I was about to experience a once in a lifetime burger. And since this was likely to be a once in a lifetime experience, I immediately ordered the largest burger available on the menu – the “Big Al”.

This thing, when it arrived, put previous burgers in my life to shame. It was home, for example, to two fried eggs. Somewhere. Competing for space in the bun with two massive slabs of burger. And bacon. And of course cheese. And onion. And Aioli. And, because New Zealand is practically Australia, beetroot. And more things. The whole thing was at least the size of my head, and jaw dislocation was looking to be a serious problem.

I did order fries to go with it. These weren’t really necessary, and I had them cold for dinner instead.

The experience was incredible. Even if I then did need a little lie down.

Those were three of my most favourite burgers from two years of careful burger sampling around NZ and Australia. Do you have a burger that you think could top these? Share away in the comments below!

Muffins and redoubts

We have discovered that the holiday park we are living in has a vast and largely unused commercial sized kitchen, usually only opened when large groups pass through. As well as rows of shiny steel cookware, it has a store cupboard filled with all manner of things. Those huge tins of baked beans, for example, for the time when you just feel the urge to splurge out on a 2.7kg epic beans on toast marathon.

It also has a huge quantity of flour and butter, and as we are currently in competition with the chickens regarding the egg production to egg consumption ratio (they are winning thus far), it was decided that we may as well bake muffins, ostensibly to sell in the cafe which we open in the morning to cater to the caffeine wants of Tongariro hikers.

Armed, therefore, with all the ingredients required to bake, and having discovered the key difference between baking powder and baking soda, an initial batch of 12 was created featuring banana and walnut. These were mostly eaten within about an hour of them coming out of the oven, to ensure quality, and we deemed the muffin creation a success. More muffins were created, and we figured these would probably be saleable. Only, we hadn’t quite had enough actual muffin ingredients to make them taste of much other than muffin dough, so we decided that sadly this tray would have to be given away free to guests checking in. Next time, we will fully prepare ourselves with all sorts of muffin ingredient goodness, and hope that the standard will be sufficient such that we won’t have to eat them all again. Which would be a tragedy.

Of course, it hasn’t all been muffin related. The fun of working in a small holiday park is the variety of experience. It reminds me somewhat of growing up on a small desert island – there is always something different happening to engage the interest, plus it is almost as isolated. From lying under someone's hire car trying to figure out the value of the large piece of metal that is dangling off, to poking at the hot water system with a screw driver, to simply explaining the walk (that I still haven’t done yet, although it is pencilled in for next week), there is always something to keep us interested.

As well as that, it’s not all work. The busy summer season hasn’t really appeared yet, so the park is fairly quiet. This means that most afternoons are entirely ours, and the area is ripe for exploration. Recently we took a little wander from the park to a nearby redoubt. This, from what I can tell, is some sort of earthen fort, and in this case it was the site of a battle between colonial forces and a group of Maoris, including the, at the time, infamous Te Kooti, who had been on the run from the Crown for over a year.The battle took place on the 4th of October 1869, and comprised over 500 government soldiers and their Maori allies. Despite what was presumably fierce fighting and the crown force being equipped with both rifles and heavy artillery, at the end of the battle – in which 41 people lost their lives - Te Kooti managed to slip away.

Nowadays the site, known as Te Porere, is regarded as sacred by the local people, both as a place where many lives were lost, and as one the last major engagements between the Maori people and government forces.

The site is set across two redoubts, a lower and an upper, both of which feature small earthenware forts where the Maori fighters made their stands. These are set against the absolutely staggering backdrop of Mt’s Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, which are  still snow covered. Steam is visible coming from the hot pools on the side of Mt Tongariro. All in all, it’s a pretty spectacular place to be and to wander around, with a palpable sense of history, with the story being told via some informative signs. And all only a few hundred metres walk from where we live. Where soon, there may be more muffins. If you’re in the area, do drop by, we may even have some recently baked to try ;)

Of mussels and op shops

There is a phenomenon in New Zealand (and also Australia), known as op shopping. This is not dissimilar to going to charity shops in the UK and buying your clothing, but where in the UK this is usually a past time reserved for students out looking for that seventies party outfit, down under it appears to be a more acceptable way of finding your look.

Of course, I am slightly biased. When I lived in the UK, I wasn’t a destitute traveller searching for the cheapest way to outfit my vehicle for a year on the road. For whilst Bernie (which appears to be the name we have settled on, for complicated reasons I shall not go into) is a wonderful beast in many ways (she is, for example, the only van of her style with a glorious cream shag pile carpet that I have seen), she was not bought from a traveller, and is therefore missing various items, such as a cooking area, cooking equipment, bedding and so on.

And it was for this reason, therefore, that we headed off into the Auckland suburban landscape, in Bernie, to find her all the things that she would need. It being a weekend, this was not necessarily the easiest task. Whilst the idea of Sunday trading laws are firmly ignored in New Zealand culture, with every major shop open 8am – 9pm regardless of day, it seems that the staff at the op shops like to take a break. So we did spend some time peering in hopefully through dusty windows and marking spots on the map to return to. Still, we were successful in a number of ventures. We managed to acquire, for example, a whole bedding set. And various cooking bits and pieces. And finally, a dual gas hob and bottle – the last two of which we bought from an actual shop on the basis that new stuff was less likely to gas us in our sleep. All in all a fairly successful weekend.

We also bought ourselves a basic DIY kit, largely consisting of a saw and a hammer. Bernie is, after all, equipped with a bed frame, constructed, from what we can tell, by someone who was incredibly keen on the idea of nails and less keen on the idea of headspace. A fruitful afternoon therefore was spent re-constructing the bed frame so that it was about 15cm lower, meaning that we can actually sit upright on the bed without killing ourselves. Anyone who is aware of my DIY skills will realise that this is a major achievement. Clearly, Vera was responsible for most of it. I just did the sawing. Now all we need is to install some form of storage furniture and set up a kitchen type thing, and we are ready to go. Hurrah.

And this is not all. (Who said travelling wasn’t hard work). We have purchased a map, which not only lists a gigantic range of campsites, from free to not so free, it also wonderfully marks every key Lord of the Rings filming location. A real life atlas, with Mt. Doom marked on it. I know, exciting stuff.

Finally, for now, I am delighted to report that I have discovered two culinary wonderments. The first being peanut butter, of the crunchy variety, available in kilogram jars. This is probably not that exciting to anyone else, but it’s the little things.

The second thing, which is possible more exciting to you, is that I have discovered I can buy fresh, live New Zealand green lipped mussels for $1.99 a kilo, which at today's laughably bad exchange rate, is about £1. I know what I’ll be living off for the next year at least. Until the next time…

Birthdays, Sauerbraten and Knödel

Here’s another update on my rapidly dwindling days in Germany. The last of these will be spent in Berlin, because, well, I figured I’d go visit it since I’m here. However, for now that is in the future. Instead, this is what I’m up to at the moment.

I have been to not one, but two, birthday parties in the last three days. The world is aging, it would appear to be an unstoppable process. The ages being celebrated were 45 and 91. I recall a time in my life when I was partaking in 18 and 21 celebrations. I wonder if those halcyon days are forever behind me.

The first birthday party was held in a pottery shop. I expressed my doubts as to the wisdom of this, as a birthday from my understanding involves drinking, and drinking and pottery shops are not something I believe go well together. I was, however, assured that it was not that sort of party. I obviously panicked somewhat at this point. What do we mean by not that sort of party? Would there be no drink? No riotousness? No crazy falling over into pottery? It turned out that it was largely the last part of these that was the case. There was certainly plenty of drink, and delightful food, and lots of pottery to avoid falling into. I succeeded in this task, imbibed plenty of drink, and weaved onto the last train home.

The second birthday party was a more serious affair. My girlfriends grandmother had turned 91, the sort of age which everyone in the family turns up to celebrate, as there is always the worry that the next year may not be being celebrated. So multiple family members were there. Photos were taken, in which I featured. All tremendously exciting.

Of course, the highlight of the evening was the trip out to dinner, where I had my first try of a classic German dish known as Sauerbraten. This literally translates as sour meat, which isn’t the most appetising sounding of dishes.

Luckily, translation isn’t always the best way to judge a meal. The meat (which can be from a variety of animals, including horse, but more commonly cow), is marinated for a few days in a sort of pickle type juice, including wine, vinegar and a variety of spices. It is then dried and cooked with the strained marinade in a pot roast, for a prolonged period of time.

The end result had a very similar texture to salt beef (a favourite of mine), with a slight tang of vinegar, and a rich gravy. It was melt in your mouth stuff, and really excellent. It was served, as is traditional, with Knödel, another German favourite. These are basically potato based dumplings made without yeast, which look innocuous enough on your plate, and but mysteriously act as weighty balls of lead in your stomach. Multiple Knödel cannot be eaten without much practice.

The whole thing was washed down with beer, and then finished off with a giant pancake thing. Healthy eating this was not. Still, grandma seemed happy, and that is presumably the idea with any birthday event.

Kids, cars and chores

Yesterday was a day of new experiences. The first of these was doing housework. Ok, so I’ve done housework before. But a year living out of a tent really reduces the amount of housework you get used to doing, as all you need to do is turn the thing upside down from time to time and you are pretty much done. This approach is less applicable to a brick and mortar based dwelling.

The house I am currently living in (more on that here) has a rota based cleaning system, whereby every week one of the seven housemates cleans all the publicly used areas. Yesterday was my turn, as my better half had decided I could fill in for her while she was out earning some money.

There are a variety of options to take when housecleaning. The “surface tidy”, where you clean everything visible and hope no-one moves anything for a while. The “shuffle”, where you move everything around so it looks like a lot of effort has gone into it. As it was I went, rather surprisingly to me most of all, for the “nuke the site from orbit” approach, and spent six hours cleaning the place. I think the housemates now believe I have serious OCD about cleanliness, and I admit, perhaps cleaning and then lining up every single spice bottle on the spice shelf with the label front and centre may have been a step too far. Still the house, which wasn’t really dirty to being with, is certainly clean now. Even if the party planned for tonight will probably ruin all that.

Another new experience I had yesterday was driving a manual car on the wrong side of the  road. I have previously driven on the wrong side of the road whilst travelling in America, in one of those hilariously large tank like creations they call SUV’s, but that was an automatic, so was a little less scary. Admittedly, that was my first time driving an automatic, and I’m pretty sure that I terrified the hire car man by demanding of him how it worked, before pulling out into the San Francisco rush hour traffic, but at least I didn’t waste too much time trying to change gear by opening the door.

Instead of a hire car man, Vera was my victim, sitting patiently in the passenger seat as I attempted to convey us from point A to point B safely. It was weirdly like learning to drive all over again, the amount of concentration required to keep the car on the right bit of road, and changing gear with the wrong hand, not to mention all these cars coming at me on the wrong side of the road, was fairly taxing. Still, we got to our destination fairly safely. The whole purpose of the driving mission was to prepare me for a solo mission, as I was supposed to be picking up another car, but as the current tenant of said car had recently filled it’s usually petrol based tank with diesel, it wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere, so the practice was in vain.

The final part of yesterdays new experiences involved Sri Lankan food and eating etiquette. But wait, you cry out. I promised kids in the title. I did. They were there too, although I can hardly claim kids to be a new experience for me. The culmination of the driving was the cottage owned by Vera’s grandparents, lovingly stuck in a sixties time warp. Staying here for a couple of weeks had been Vera’s godmother, and by some complex familial relationship, a Sri Lankan lady and her three children, ages 3, 7 and 9.

Regular followers will know that I am not generally brilliant with kids. I am not against the whole idea, but we usually don’t get on so well. There are exceptions to this rule. When travelling in Oz for example, I met some kids of a friend who were actually a joy to be around. One of them spent some time explaining his toy tank to me. He pointed out that it was the only tank in the world that could go underwater. I was hugely impressed by this youngsters knowledge of tanks, and asked him how it achieved this feat. He looked at me rather seriously, and explained that it was because it was a toy.

This is usually how it goes, and yesterday was no exception. My problems of not being able to speak German, (nor Tamil) meant that the girls clearly assumed I was fairly simple. I was carefully fed tic tacs. A three year old spent some time trying to learn my name, repeatedly asking in German what my name was. After a while of me sitting and staring in wild incomprehension, she said very slowly and clearly in German, that her name was Judy, and then pointed at me. Comprehension dawned. I managed to say my own name. Melon was presented to me as a reward for overcoming this clearly  challenging task.

Luckily, not being able to converse in German was not a huge barrier to acceptance. I was solemnly told to be quiet when a butterfly landed nearby, not, I hasten to add, so that we could revere it’s beauty, but rather so that a fly swat could be retrieved in order to squish it. I can report that a gentle cough prompted the butterfly on it’s way before death could be rained down. I was presented with a book of fairy tales to read aloud, which clearly caused issues, what with it being all in German. Pity was once again taken on me, the book was taken from my hands, and the story explained to me using the pictures. What I did learn from this experience is that if you want to rapidly progress in German, pitying seven year olds and a fairy tale book are a pretty good way to go about it. Assuming your future linguistic requirements involve ginger bread houses and witches.

Finally, after all this excitement, it was time for dinner, which was a traditional Sri Lankan affair. As well as the food being excellent, it turned out that eating with your hands was the way to go. As a result, Sri Lanka has now been firmly propelled into my list of places I must visit. Because making decisions about future trips based on a lack of eating utensils is how i like to roll. Yes. That is all for today. Tonight the annual house party is being held, which will no doubt involve beer, frolics and fun, of a Germanic nature. I expect I will report on that soon…

Essential English food

Experiencing a nations food is a key part of any travelling experience. Here, therefore, is my guide to some things you will want to try out if you are wandering around England. This isn’t going to be a list of gastronomic delights, rather it’s an overview of your more classic (read: unhealthy) English dishes.

English food had a bit of a reputation, once upon a time, for being a bit, well, shit. Meat and two veg, generally seriously overcooked, with no real flavours or zest. This, I am pleased to report, is largely no longer the case, and usually wherever you go you can find decent food at reasonable prices.  What, therefore, are my top five foods to try out when in England?

#1. Fish and Chips.

This has to be one of my favourite English classics. A battered piece of white fish, usually cod, with accompanying pile of chips, smothered in salt and vinegar. Health food, this is not. Tasty, it is. Yoda, I have become.

Even Yoda would probably agree that the setting is absolutely key. For the full experience, you really need to be sitting somewhere near the sea, ideally with the sound of an amusement park nearby. Donkeys may parade in front of you. Seagulls will battle with you for errant chips. If you’re after the full experience, take the portion from the new fangled polystyrene container and let it stew in some old newspaper for a while, absorbing the inky goodness. A tough one to beat.

#2. Pie and Mash.

Well, I never claimed this was going to be a gourmet experience. I like a simple steak and ale pie, with creamy mashed potatoes, although the myriad flavours of pie on offer are quite endless. For an authentic English pie experience, I’d recommend finding a decent local pub in the countryside, and accompanying your pie with a tasty real ale, served in one of those pint glasses with a handle. A handlebar moustache is entirely optional.

#3. Roast Dinner.

Where would a list of English meals be without the classic roast dinner? There is a reason that the French nickname for the English is rosbif, a title dating back to the 18th century, and generally descriptive of the sort of food the English were known for even back then.

So, with over two hundred years of food roasting tradition behind them, you’d think that the English on the whole would be pretty good at roast meals.

And indeed, for the most part, they are. Head to most any pub or restaurant on a Sunday lunchtime, and you’ll be almost guaranteed to have your pick of a variety of roasted meats, ranging from chicken to beef to pork to my personal favourite, lamb. Nuts can also be roasted, if meat is not your particular cup of tea.

And of course, it’s not just about the meat. The trimmings are a necessity, and usually include a good portion of roast potatoes, some roast parsnips (honey drizzle optional), possibly some sausages wrapped in a blanket of bacon, a hint of stuffing and maybe some Yorkshire pudding (roasted batter from what I can tell).

All of this should be happily drowned in gravy, a brown sauce made from the meat juices and thickened with flour. Some people may attempt to foist sprouts upon you, an invention from Brussels that resembles a tiny cabbage. Vigorously resist.

#4. BBQ.

This isn’t a specific dish, as you can put pretty much whatever you want to on a grill over a smouldering pile of coals, but the BBQ is certainly an English summertime tradition. As unpredictable weather is also an English summertime tradition, one never quite knows how damp ones BBQ is going to be. Which adds to the fun.

There’s nothing quite like watching someone standing in the rain, furiously charcoaling some bits of chicken drumstick, whilst everyone else hides inside, bemoaning the lack of English summer, and wondering what this climate change thing is all about.

#5. Bread and butter pudding.

Ah, pudding. That sweet tasty thing you wait throughout the rest of the meal to eat, and then wonder if you are too full to get it down. Also known as dessert.

Bread and butter pudding is an absolute classic English dessert. I had a theory that it came about after the war as a means of using up left over and possibly slightly stale bits of bread, but a hint of research has brought to my attention the fact that is in fact over three hundred years old.

Not bad for what is essentially old bread baked with eggs, milk and cream. Oh and sugar. And raisins. To be served with either custard, cream, or if you are feeling particularly decadent, a heart attack inducing dollop of clotted cream. Lovely.

Those were my top five English dishes. Some dishes did not make the top five list. One that is worth mentioning is the English tradition of afternoon tea, scones and jam, served with Cornish clotted cream. Or, the same, minus the tea and served with Pimms. There’s nothing quite like sitting on a lovely bit of lawn, smothering a hapless bit of scone with a goopy blob of clotted cream and a dollop of strawberry jam.

I know I have missed out on a number of other classic dishes, (giant fried breakfast anyone?). I focused on English, rather than Irish, Scottish or Welsh cuisine. Haggis jumps straight to mind as something you really need to think about having a go at if you are up in Scotland, assuming the thought of sheep offal simmered in its own stomach is something you think you may like. It is, I assure you, far nicer than it sounds. Let me know if I’ve missed your favourite English food off the list!

German weddings

Well, it seems only natural, after two posts on German love, that I run the full gamut of the experience and attend what some would believe is the natural outcome of the silver birch and padlock shenanigans, that being marriage.

The wedding we attended this weekend was held in Dusseldorf, just under an hour away on the still scarily fast autobahn. We were driving in Vera’s brothers Audi, which is more than capable of hitting speeds in excess of that which would normally catapult you through time itself, but in this case merely transported us in comfort and speed to the wedding venue. This took place in a Church near the centre of the city, and there was, before the service even began, oodles of champagne to be had. A great start.

The wedding service was overseen by two (two!) priests, one from the Catholic side, one from the Protestant side of the Christian faith. I’m not entirely au fait with the differences in these particular sects, but I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t battle it out on the altar to see who would get to do the actual wedding. As it was they rather politely took it in turns to read bits from their books. Most congenial.

After the actual service, and my rather poor attempts to sing along to the German hymns, we all stood outside the church and drank some more champagne. At this point the main difference between English and German weddings became apparent. It seems that the bride and groom are set a number of tasks throughout the course of the day. Some of these are common to most German weddings, like cutting out a heart shape from a giant piece of cloth, and then the groom carrying the bride through it. Others are specific to the couple, like throwing darts at heart shaped balloons. It certainly gave us all something to laugh at anyway. These tasks and games went on throughout the entire wedding, and included a full on pantomime performance. Impressive stuff.

After the church the whole wedding party assembled into their cars and formed a rather raucous convoy through Dusseldorf to the actual hotel where the evening party was being held, which was a bit like a cross between a farmhouse and a castle. Here serving people wandered around with giant platters of beer, balloons were released, and then we were let into the dining room where food was almost upon us. Some speeches in German later, and we were unleashed upon the buffet.

I am aware that there are various schools of thought as to wedding dining, such as whether or not a full on table service system is preferable to the buffet system. Personally I prefer a decent buffet as trying to serve 100 people with hot food all at the same time can be a bit of a challenge, whereas a buffet is self heating. Plus you can eat as much as you want. The food was entirely excellent. Of course, the downside to eating my own body weight in duck breast and crayfish was that I wasn’t really capable of moving in any great manner on the dance floor, but given that wedding dance music seems to be even worse in Germany than the fare you get in the UK, (and my inability to dance with any form of co-ordination) this wasn’t a bad thing. I quietly slumped in the corner and drank more beer. Waiters wandered around with trays of Grappe. After a few refreshing shots, I finally made it to the dance floor to er, bust out some moves, before we called it a night and headed back to our hotel. A wonderful wedding experience. The following day I restored myself to my natural health with a giant pile of fried food. Bliss.

So that was weddings in Germany. Tremendous fun all around, with the added bonus that I may never need to eat again.

In other, completed unrelated news, in a bid to reduce his worldly possessions before his move to tropical destinations, my brother currently has a number of items of his life for sale on ebay. If you are interested in snapping up some relative technological bargains (there’s a PSP for a mind boggling £20 at the moment), head on over to his page on ebay to check them out. Enjoy your day folks!

Veterinary experience

Well, the parental meeting thing came and went. I’m not necessarily a tremendous judge of these things, but by the end of the meal I had been informed as to the most effective way of killing myself, which is surely a good sign against some measure.

We went out for dinner in a former train station, which may not seem entirely glamorous, but it was a former train station of the Kaiser, so was somewhat more palatial than your usual train station. You can’t expect these folks to hang around on platforms and the like with the common folk after all. A large outdoor courtyard, which had presumably once been part of the platform area, was the seating venue, and the fare was largely traditionally German. I was advised against the currywurst (curried sausage, no less), despite it looking to be the largest sausage I had ever seen, and so went with the breaded fried pork and chips. Which was served, oddly, with jam. Still, it worked, so who am I to complain.

As Vera’s father is a vet, we were invited along to watch a procedure he was performing on a dog, which we did today. I guess this is another sign of acceptance. I rollerbladed along (managing to fall over quite spectacularly en route, no major damage done though) and we got to the practice in time to watch a wonderfully sedated dog get shaven and implanted with bits of gold, which help out with arthritis. There is something awfully comic about partially sedated animals, with their tongues lolling out and a general look of sad acceptance about the whole thing. Horses, I learnt, stay standing up when sedated. I am delighted to be able to share this knowledge with you.

Tomorrow we are off to a wedding, which will naturally all be in German. It’s all about the new experiences. I got a quick overview of the German wedding process, which sounded somewhat similar to the English wedding process. There will be a church, some food, speeches, and a party. I’ll let you know how it all goes. If you’re lucky, there will be reports of dancing.

Today, incidentally, is my brothers birthday - many happy returns to him. No doubt some beers will be quenched. I would advise staying away from any large platters of food if possible. He celebrates being nearly thirty in fine style from what I can tell, by retiring and moving to a tropical paradise. Not bad going. My parents, I am sure, are delighted to have two sons who now have a primary goal in life of doing as little as possible. Pity it took all that education to get us to this point really…

On an entirely separate note, I have uploaded a few more photos from my Australia trip to my Photobox gallery, which can be found at the link below, should that sort of thing interest you. They look particularly nice on canvas I believe.

http://www.photoboxgallery.com/Laurence

Finally, I feel it is my duty to rectify a common misunderstanding with regards to dreadlocks, as I’ve now been asked the question multiple times. Yes folks, I do wash my hair. More information on the whole dreadlock thing can be found in previous posts, here and here, but in summary, dreadlocks do need to be washed. There is a common belief that dreads are formed by just abandoning your hair, and this can work, depending on your hair type of course, but the risk is that you just end up with one gigantic matted pile of fairly grubby hair.

Decent looking well maintained dreads, which are basically just better managed tangles of hair, no more no less, should be washed every couple of weeks (and at least once a month), with a residue free shampoo (something organic is probably best). Avoid conditioner, as it tends to work to detangle the hair, which would go against the whole principle. Dreads need to be washed because the oil that the scalp naturally secretes works to detangle them, and you don’t want that to happen. So that’s a dreadlocking myth hopefully, ahem, unravelled. Keep smiling.

Fine afternoons and discoveries

There is perhaps a view, if you have read the last couple of entries of my blog, that I have largely spent my time on my trip to the UK imbibing alcohol and propping up bars. I can report that this is not entirely the case. My brother, for example, has learnt two new things about the flat he has lived in for over two years. Firstly, that it has a roof terrace, and secondly, there is a garden outside that you can sit in. So, some knowledge has been gained at the expense of my liver. Sadly he is only in the flat for another month.

The knowledge involving the garden area was taken advantage of to fine effect yesterday, as the sun continued it’s blistering attack on London. A good friend of mine popped around to visit and ever so kindly brought with him a couple of rather fine bottles of wine. Well, the Rioja ‘99 was certainly delightful. We will perhaps extend the benefit of the doubt to the slightly sparkling rose. So we spent the afternoon, yes, drinking in the sun. But it was a high quality of wine, sitting under the former Hartley's jam factory chimney, so the experience was a little different at least.

Following the wine we moved upstairs and watched a game of football, largely from my point of view because I wanted to ensure Paul’s winning streak continued. He had predicted a Spanish win, which was delivered in extra time, following a decidedly less interesting game than the third place play off, the outcome of which Paul had also correctly predicted. For those of you interested in the odds, the odds of Paul being correct this many times in a row were 128-1, with a couple of assumptions. Not bad going for an eight legged tank dweller. I am still intrigued as to what he is going to be up to following the world cup, and if a betting investment strategy is something to consider pursuing.

Finally Phil cooked us all a tasty dinner, green curry with prawns, and then we went and wilted quietly in the ongoing oppressive heat, which, I am told, is going to go away shortly, so we can all get back to complaining about where summer is and how you just don’t get the heat you used to. I’ll drink to that.

The realities of life

There are some things that are pretty much guaranteed, no matter where you are in the world, certain truths that are inescapable. Well, ok, this particular truth only usually applies to the UK, but I can now confirm that if one plans a BBQ in Germany, whatever the weather forecast may be divining, rain is going to appear sooner or later.

Today is Germany’s worldcup battle against Argentina in the world cup quarter final. I know, I said I wasn’t going to talk about football following the England departure, but it’s all around me here still, so it is almost impossible not to mention. The game is at four, on a Saturday, which means we planned to have a BBQ, enjoy the heat and watch the game over a few beers. A fine plan.

The day dawned rather beautifully at around 5.24am. I know this because it was far too hot too actually sleep, so instead I watched the sky turn to crimson out of the skylight. Yes, it is hot. Over thirty six degrees now, with some intense humidity to boot. People are wandering around perspiring gently. Unfortunately, it seems, the intense heat in leading towards some kind of huge thunderstorm. The humidity is oppressive, add a few crocodiles and we could be in the deep South of America, swatting mosquitoes and chewing on dead squirrels. Or whatever it is they do down there. My experiences are largely drawn from watching The Waterboy, and that episode of top gear.

So, intense heat, building thunderstorm, planned BBQ. A perfect combination. Luckily there is a large covered area so the BBQ can still go ahead, even if the rain comes (it has come, with accompanying giant rips of thunder, as I type). We popped to the shops to get supplies for the BBQ. I rather foolishly thought that doing this on blades would be a good idea. I can now reveal that exercise in this weather that doesn’t involve a large body of water is a serious error. Rivulets of sweat literally poured off me. I think I made a fine sight wandering around the thankfully air-conditioned supermarket.

Speaking of lakes, I went for a swim in the lake yesterday with Vera’s sister and one of the housemates (slight Big Brother moment there, my apologies), where we decided to swim across the lake and back. This is a little over 1000m total distance, which I can now confirm is a long long way to swim when there are no sides or bottom. We didn’t even get to have a break on the far shore as a swan family looked at us rather threateningly. And swans do seem somewhat more threatening when they loom over you. Anyway, lake swim complete, death by swan avoided.

I now sit under the covered area pondering the rain, chewing on water melon, pretending it is chunks of squirrel, and thinking that perhaps it may be about to cool down a bit, possibly even dropping below thirty five for a time, which would be ok by me.

Finally, I spent a while sorting out some of the videos from the Australia trip, and these are now on youtube for your viewing pleasure. Find them on my youtube channel, here.

Summer, elle arrive

And so, with sylph like grace summer has arriven, brushing back the clouds and warming us all with blue skies and endless hazy days, lazing in meadows eating daisies. Or, in the non fairy tale world which we sometimes have to endure, it’s grey and cold. One of these two sentences is true to my current situation.

We went to a house party a couple of nights ago, where the aforementioned spaghetti bolognaise was liberally applied. I have fairly strong opinions on the creation of spaghetti bolognaise, which comes in myriad formations (I prefer the addition of most of a bottle of wine, some chopped bacon and if we’re feeling crazy, even a dash of liver) but the chef who had created this particular blend of Italian spices and minced meat was clearly no stranger to the chopping board and hob, having created a dish of sublime excellence. Suffice to say, the party was off to a fine start.

Beer was also liberally applied, another excellent part of any house party. I have observed that the concept of a bottle opener is not really something that the inhabitants of Germany are totally up to date with, instead I believe training occurs from an early age as to the use of a lighter and ones knuckle in order to prise the bottle cap from it’s location. I have damaged many lighters in an attempt to learn this technique, I am currently relying on the “pass the bottle to the girlfriend who knows what she is doing” philosophy of bottle openage.

I have also learnt that the addition of some form of pet can really help with the whole language barrier thing. Someone on your side who doesn’t speak German either really smoothes things along. Admittedly my ability to speak cat isn’t really any better than my ability to speak German, but you can at least stroke cats rather than talk to them, an approach which doesn’t work so well on people. For the most part. There were also some dogs at the party, but they were too busy stealing duck eggs to chat with me about the weather. A fire was another welcome addition, I can stare into a fire for hours, mesmerised. So that was all good.

Today as well as Summer and her accompanying solstice, we are marking the start of Wimbledon. The ball, the flying through the air, the net. It’s just like football really, as viewed through some form of reality distortion field, with the addition of rackets. Strawberries and cream all round.

Life without fridges

When I travelled in Oz, mostly on the move and living out of a tent, one thing we pretty much didn’t have was a decent fridge. I thought some information on life without fridges would be useful if you are considering this sort of trip, and wondering if you need this option.

First off, I admit we had a fridge. But it was a totally crappy thermoelectric jobby which was basically a glorified coolbox. It ran off the 12v cigarette lighter which meant, as we didn’t have a funky dual battery set up, that it only ran when the engine was running. Really we only used it to keep beer cold between purchase and imbibing, usually not a large span of time later. If I was going to do the trip over, then perhaps a second battery powering a slightly more advanced electric fridge, or a gas powered fridge, would be an option.

When we started the trip I was so used to living with a fridge that living without a fridge for came as a bit of a shock. How, therefore, does one cope?

You need to realise, straight away, that there are some things that just aren’t going to feature in your new fridgeless lifestyle, unless you happen to be travelling somewhere excessively cold with the windows open all the time. And who wants that?

Butter, for example, is pretty much a no-go, as is most dairy. You can get UHT milk in small cartons, if you are desperate for milk. It’s easier however, just to get used to milk free coffee/tea/breakfast/life. Cheese could be kept for short periods, if you happen to be into sweaty cheese. Nice.

So what else is there? Most vegetables can survive without refrigeration, just stick them in a cardboard box with some newspaper or something like that to stop them getting squished. Don’t leave them in their plastic packaging, they tend to go goopy quickly. Onions and garlic in particular last for ages, and having a few fresh things in your food makes all the difference when cooking.

Otherwise, it is time to embrace what we lovingly referred to as the apocalypse diet. This largely consists of tinned food. It’s pretty amazing how many varieties of tinned food you can get hold of these days, not even counting the slightly dodgy pre-made meals. We were travelling with a pescatarian, so thankfully we were not really getting involved with the strange pre-made tinned meals, but my Dad swore by tins of Irish stew on his trip round Oz back in the mists of time, so that’s certainly an option for the meat eaters out there. However just a few basic things, with a good combination of spices, can be thrown together to make a fairly wide range of tasty food.

Things you probably want to keep stocked include tins of tuna, (all kids of fish come in tins, get whatever you like) tomatoes, vegetables (peas, corn and mushrooms were all deemed fine, asparagus was not the most tinnable of items we learnt), as well as pulses like kidney beans, chickpeas or lentils. You can get tinned fruit as well. With a good selection of spices, from the essential mixed herbs, through to paprika, Chinese five spice, curry powder, chilli, and that old favourite, Tabasco, it’s quite amazing what you can make. Dried foods travel easily, like pasta, rice and noodles. Eggs are an option, but need to be securely packaged, particularly if you happen to be travelling off the beaten track.

From a relatively simple base of ingredients you can chuck together meals ranging from tuna bolognaise, to three bean chilli, curries, goulashes (paprika, despite my travelling companions best efforts, is not a replacement for every missing spice), and even simple Chinese dishes. Mix it up a bit. Get some tinned coconut cream, some tinned pineapple, add lentils and curry powder, and voila, some kind of dhansak dish magically appears. Sometimes imagination is admittedly required when your travelling companion presents you the same mashed up pile of reddish goo you’ve been eating for the previous two weeks disguised under a different name, but with a bit of creativity you really can have enough variety to avoid meals becoming static.

When you do go shopping to re-stock, which we did every two or three weeks, buy some fresh stuff and cook it that evening. Get some steak for the bbq, or some fresh fish and fresh veg, the kind of stuff that you can’t keep for too long normally. Bacon for the following morning breakfast is a nice one too. Obviously baked beans survive forever. Bread should last up to five days without going mouldy.

So, that’s surviving without a fridge, the basic guide. It’s also a pretty cheap way to live. There are probably some environmentally friendly credentials, if you don’t happen to be navigating in a 4.2 litre diesel monstrosity. Hopefully it was either useful, of interest, or kept you from doing something you really didn’t want to do for five minutes ;)

Scrambled eggs

Ok food lovers, I will give in to your needs and give you a recipe for instantly impressive breakfast. Presumably you have a need to create instantly impressive breakfasts. After all, who doesn’t?

Over in Australia, it is possible to buy smoked mussels for the bargainiferous price of a dollar a can, homebrand style. I did a taste test of these against your standard John West smoked mussel, and couldn’t tell the difference. I was less impressed by the smoked oyster offering. I am not sure as to the availability of cheap smoked mussels in Europe, perhaps another reason to move to Australia permanently. Anyhow.

Smoked salmon and scrambled egg is a fairly common theme, but smoked mussels are somewhat cheaper, and even come in oil. Here is what you do.

Take one can of smoked mussels. Open it, and pour the oily goo into a frying pan. If you are feeling lavish, add some butter. Scrambled eggs always taste better with butter. Crack some eggs (quantity dependant on number of people, I’d say factor in two to three eggs per person) into a bowl and whisk.

In your pan, which you will have heated to a medium heat by now I expect, chuck in the eggs, to which you could have added some black pepper if you so desired. With a spatula type device, stir away. Add some toast to a toaster. Keep on moving the eggs around the pan, ensuring they don’t stick. Just before they are done, which is the point after which they stop being so goopy and before the point they become dried out crusted yellow powder, chuck in some rocket leaves. Rocket is an all round winner. I find throwing rocket on top of anything makes it instantly impressive. The rocket will wilt pleasurably in the pan.

Serve on toast. The toast can be buttered, or carefully spread with mayonnaise. Add more rocket leaves if so desired. Et voila, scrambled eggs with smoked mussels. Cheap, impressive, tasty. What more could one want ;)

Barbeques

We went over to a friends house for a barbeque, where I was able to observe the cultural differences inherent in this summertime ritual. Additionally, it was a birthday celebration, so I also learnt that happy birthday is sung in English, apart from the bit where they say dear X, which is said in German. I was nearly able to sing along.

Ok, so the barbeuque’ing ritual is largely the same across the world. More sausage and pork is featured, burgers did not make much of an appearance, but the overall theme of placing large amounts of meat over hot coals and charring it to within an inch of its life is the same. Oh, and beer was provided from kegs, which was particularly nice. There was also cake, and more varieties of pasta salad than you can imagine. All good therefore.

I am currently led to believe that some kind of worldwide sporting event is nearly upon us. I wonder what that will be like here.

Adventures in herring

Over in the land of Oz, I lived for most of a year without a fridge, and a diet that revolved largely around tinned foods was therefore the norm. It’s not all five star luxury folks. Additionally, one of the people I was travelling with was (and still, in fact, is) a Pescetarian, someone who allows fish into their diet but no other living beings. Although I feel plants probably count as living. Biology aside, the prime part of the protein in our diet was sourced from tuna, of the canned variety.

Tinned tuna in Australia is available in tens, if not hundreds, of interesting flavours, with taste sensations ranging from the you’ll taste lemon flavoured burps for the rest of the day lemon and pepper, to Japanese, to Salsa. The varieties are practically endless. Even after a year we were still finding new flavours to tickle the taste buds. I attribute my weight loss to the marvels of tinned tuna.

Over in Germany, it seems, tinned tuna of the flavoured variety is not so available, rather, the usual choice of in brine, in oil, or in water, are pretty much your lot. On the other hand, they do have a fascinating range of tinned herring with a range of flavours, the options which put the Australian ranges to shame. Thus far I have tried tinned herring with cranberry and chilli. Today whilst wandering through Aldi, where they also had three litres of beer for sale for the mesmerising price of 1.7 Euros, I found herring with pineapple, cream and curry. This sounded way too exciting to miss out on, so I purchased it, and will be letting you know how that goes. I am yet to get hold of beer with cola, but don’t worry, it’s still on the list. 

German Sushi

Last night we went out into Cologne (it’s called Köln in Germany, I am still bemused as to why different countries have different names for the same places) and had Sushi with Vera’s siblings and assorted friends. There were seven people at the table including me, all of whose native language was German, all of whom spoke English because my German is largely non-existent. It’s fairly humbling to realise quite how rubbish my grasp of foreign languages is, and how well other people speak English. Even the waiter spoke English. I consider myself humbled. I can confirm however that sushi is also called sushi in German.

We took the train into Cologne at around about the time that most people are returning from their real world jobs to their real world lives, and it reminded me how much I used to hate commuting. The atmosphere on the train was positively funereal. I think cows have more fun being led to slaughter.

In Cologne, we went into a newsagents, which also happened to sell beer, and bought beer, and drank it on the street as we walked to the sushi restaurant. In Australia, such a practice would be fairly unheard of. First off, you wouldn’t be able to buy beer in a random corner shop. Secondly, drinking beer on the street is mostly forbidden. In the UK, beer is certainly no less ubiquitous, but drinking on the street by ordinary folk must usually be done surreptitiously, or from a brown paper bag whilst you shout at pigeons and passers by. No such legal hassles exist in this land, if you wish to meander the streets of the city drinking a bottle of Kölsch, this is not only your prerogative, it is your right.

After sushi we went to a bar, where I noticed that it is still legal to smoke in bars. Apparently this is due to some legal loophole, not all bars allow smoking, and they have to be a smoking club or something, but still, if you wish to light up in a bar, the option exists. Handy if you wish to smoke and drink, which I don’t, but many do. Additionally, table football is a popular game over here, with the table football table elevated to a location of considerable pride. I am pleased to report that I didn’t win a single game, despite being paired with pretty much everyone we were with. There is a table football table in the house we are living in, so some practice is on the cards.

Finally, we have been granted access to a car, a venerable convertible, and as i understand it we will be using said convertible to head out in the countryside and stay in the family cottage. I’m not sure which gods I pleased to allow this lifestyle to happen for me, but I will continue to burn offerings to them where I can.