Bed Pan Cakes

It's Shrove Tuesday here in the holy land (England I mean), so it's pancakes for tea therefore.  I don't normally bother with them, to be honest, but something's prompted me to give them a whirl this year.  I must be yearning for spring and its attendant warmth and light.  Yes, it's been a long cold lonely winter, to quote Audley Harrison.

As we're having them for supper, I've opted for savoury ones, yes, I know, very French.  I couldn't face brown sugar and lemon for me tea.  I'm not eleven, ferrchrissakes.  I picked-up a recipe on the BBC website that was trying rather too hard - it's vegan.  Meat-free would have done me, but there you go.  The thing with p-cakes is what to have with them?  If you ate them on their own, you'd need to neck at least nine, which would be unseemly.  These ones are clad with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, so a nice dressed salad might be in order.  And some sourdough bread.  That would surely constitute an ample meal for the jobbing 6-foot-tall man-about-town?

I also bought the wife a splendid-looking bottle of French wine for Valentine's Day, which we haven't yet necked, so that's going for a burton, I tell you.  I feel reborn today; it's the weather.  It's simply splendid out.  Wine, pancakes and original British drama on DVD.  What could be finer?

Easter time, mistletoe and wine

Today is Maundy Thursday.  It should be a solemn time of course, what with the Jesus stuff soon to go down, but in fact most of us can barely wipe the grins from our chops.  Easter means two 4-day weeks.  Woo and indeed hoo.

The weather is still rather fine in these parts, which means the pubs will be carnage this evening.  People (educated, otherwise genteel people, mind you) will be sucking and champing at tumblers of fine wine like piglets on the teat.  I'll be there too of course, to monitor events and scowl.

Tomorrow it's off to Cambridge, that poor man's Oxford.  There's a rather nice hotel in Cambridge.  It's part of an American chain that Mrs O and I have had some dealings with in the Ud Ss of A.  As well as being comfortable, this chain has a couple of winning customs that we both enjoy.  Upon checking-in you get presented with a giant chocolate chip cookie each, in a brown paper bag.  I don't even like CCCs much, but it's a nice gesture.  I give mine to la wife.  She's finds them most compelling company.

The other service they provide is a pancake-making machine as part of the breakfast buffet.  I'd never seen one until we visited the States.  They're quite lumpy, about three feet long by two high.  They also give off a tremendous noise.  You pour batter in one end and 90 seconds later out pops a fresh pancake.  Well, as fresh as a pancake can be, that is.

If I'm honest, the process is more fun than the result, but I don't like to see average food go to waste, so I normally eat about two dozen before I'm done.