December was a busy month. The obvious, Christmas stuff, the frantic final texting to relatives pleading for a clue as to anything that they might want, the visits & visiting & the wonderful Dr Who Christmas special, but also I managed two weekends in the home of lovely beer where much lovely beer was drunk & much lovely breakfast was eaten, as well as much lovely curry. Marillion played their traditional Christmas shows & I caught them in Cambridge for a fantastic evening at the start of the month. ...
Much as I enjoy Christmas (and I do, whatever anyone else may tell you - I just think that when it starts so early & you have 24 hour Christmas songs for 6 weeks before together with the attendant shopping frenzy, it gets spoilt & by the time the actual event arrives, it's an anti-climax), I do enjoy the period between Christmas & New Year. I go back to work the day after Boxing day & the roads are empty, work is quiet & all the food is on special offer :o)
And then, as quick as you like, it was all over & before I could draw breath, I find myself into Spring. Not that you would believe it having seen the weather today, icy winds & heavy (but fortunately brief) snow showers. However, it's true, Winter is over & Spring burst into life at 5.10 am on 20th March.
February half term week saw us take a short break, using our usual criteria of`where can you fly to cheaply from Stansted'. After previous winter trips to Venice (misty & a little bit nippy), Prague (real proper big snow, damn chilly) & Tallin (real proper brass monkey weather - some evening temperatures around -15 degs, water was freezing between leaving the lower ends of drain pipes & hitting the pavements!), we chose to visit Krakow in Poland.
Cold, but not as cold as Tallin, Krakow was a very friendly city with great architecture & some marvelous cellar bars - great places all with vaulted ceilings & various chambers & levels. If I could have had a pint of Bury St Edmunds finest, I think I might have stayed!
The darker side of human nature & history are also in evidence, with the very moving Holocaust memorial in the old Jewish ghetto area, not far from the Schindler Factory. The indescribable & infinitely moving Auswitch is about an hours drive away.
It was here that we experienced one of those `small world' moments that should be incredibly rare but seem to occur more than they should. Having debated the best way to travel to Auswitch, we decided on the easy option of allowing the hotel to organise a minibus with English guide at the site.
The bus picked us up punctually from the hotel, having obviously made previous pick ups. One more pick up was made before making the hour long journey. This was only a 15 / 16 seater bus, so imagine our surprise when we recognised four people get off the bus as we arrived. They had been sat at the back so we hadn't noticed them as we boarded, I was gob-smacked to see the barmaid from the pub not fifty yards from my flat in Bures, with her husband & 2 other chaps I recognised from the pub. Now, Bures has a population of around 1100 & this bus had around 16 seats so to find 6 people from the village on it was pretty spooky.
Chatting with them back in England, they said that a similar thing had happened to them in (I think) Prague.
A nice simple serving suggestion this time - a chicken fillet in breadcrumbs. At first glance this seems straight forward enough - serve with peas & mash & cut one end off so the recipient ca see what lies beneath the tempting crispy breadcrumb coating. Further scrutiny reveals a couple of interesting (ok not that interesting) points of note.
Firstly, the disappointing proximity of the instruction to `keep frozen' to the words `serving suggestion' (unfortunately this hasn't come out too well on the scan so you'll just have to trust me!)
Secondly, if you look at the actual size of the fillet, the suggestion appears to be to serve this on a saucer sized plate. I feel anyone coming home from a hard days work to be presented with such a dinner is unlikely to be overly impressed!
I realise looking at the (in)frequency of my posts that I am becoming lax! Whilst I will never be as prolific as some, I really must make the effort to post at least every month!
Anyway, that's all for now, next post due before the end of April! The serving suggestions are mounting up & need to be shown to the world!
Til next time, take care, stay alive & serve correctly.
1 comment:
What I love about that box is the "100% Chicken" text, that appears to have been seared or "branded" into the box. ;-)
We just didn't fancy going to Auswitch when we were there... don't know really how to explain it, but we just didn't...
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