Victorian Night in Chesham

The local businesses have been advertising Victorian Night for quite some time. What does that mean? For one of the local hair salons it means luring in people off the street for a glass of wine as the movie Moulin Rouge blasts from the television. They may have missed the point just a bit, but they were not alone. There were people here and there in Victorian dress, but I don't think the Victorians were big on carnival rides and there were many. The rain did not at all impact the party.

After I stepped in a puddle that went all the way up to my ankle, I decided to call it a night. L had made shepherd's pie for dinner, which was perfect comfort food for a rainy English night.

David Sedaris

Last week at dinner with the B&B gang we got to talking about book clubs. Everyone living in the house reads a lot and we have a stack of paperbacks that is starting to take over the communal dining area. I told them about the book club that I joined when I first moved to STL to meet people. The woman who was hired by the school district to facilitate the group, didn’t really understand what a facilitator was supposed to do. For the first 20-30 minutes of the meeting we basically got a monologue from her about her life and her kids who were all living the word of God, which was demonstrated by their dedication to one of the most expensive private Catholic schools in St. Louis. The more she talked, the more you realized that she was very close-minded, and in my opinion then not really living in a Christian way, but I digress. You might be wondering, why did I keep going? The rest of the group was wonderful. It was a really mixed bag with an age span from college student to retiree. We actually discussed the book! Maybe it was the evil side of me that when our facilitator asked for “light” recommendations for the month of January, I mentioned David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day, knowing that while our facilitator was bound to hate it, the rest would love it as I do. True to form, she hated it.

When I mentioned this book to the B&B gang, N laughed out loud. He told me he had read that book, not knowing what it was going to be about and found himself laughing out loud. He started quoting the book, especially the first essay, Go Carolina. I told them that I have a copy of that book in my office. So if I’m having a really bad day, I can read a little and it always makes me smile. I brought the book home for H to read and she is enjoying it. Another work colleague is also now reading it. For my David Sedaris loving friends, know that I am spreading the word, and that nothing about his work is lost in translation!

For those of you not familiar with David's work, here's a clip of him reading an essay on Letterman. I remember watching this with H when it originally aired, and even he smiled.

CCTV

I am a rule-follower. I don’t know if it is nature or nurture that caused it, but that’s me. I recently was watching a film about football hooligans and one of the characters said to the other “we’re the most watched country in the world”. He was referring to the CCTV cameras everywhere in the UK. H had noticed the numerous cameras on our trip here in June and we even have them at work in our parking lot and can monitor them inside on a two different televisions. One morning over breakfast my housemate N said to me that because of the way I walk to work, I’m probably on the cameras the whole walk. This freaked me out a bit, even though I’m innocently just walking to work.

After thinking about this, I was sitting at the tube station in Chesham and someone was handing out flyers for a town meeting. I read the flyer and was about to just sit it on the bench when a voice in my head said “Don’t do it! CCTV will think you’re a litter bug!” I know there aren’t necessarily people watching the footage as it happens, but I have heard of people getting traffic tickets for answering their mobile phones while driving here thanks to the cameras. I also heard B playing cops with a friend in the house one day and he was suggesting that they rewind the tape from the CCTV cameras to check where the criminal had gone. It’s just a fact of life.

The Hustle and Bustle of Oxford Street

You can tell it is now the Christmas shopping season. I held my camera up over my head as I was being pushed through an intersection on Oxford Street on Saturday.

Last Comment on the Meal Last Night

In preparation for cooking the Thanksgiving meal last night, I had done my conversions from Fahrenheit to Celsius. When we lived in Germany I had the formula to figure this out hanging on the refrigerator since our oven dial had Celsius temperatures on it. As I went to pre-heat the gas oven at the B&B and I was faced with 1 through 9 on the dial. What is this? Here is the history.

Thanksgiving Sunday

My husband H can tell you, if I get annoyed or in a mood, it is sometimes difficult for me to snap out of it. I know it’s immature, but I never said I wasn’t that. So today was the day for Thanksgiving dinner at the house, and think about this… shopping for Thanksgiving dinner for seven or eight people without a car. It was a good thing the temperature warmed up today because I had to make two trips to the grocery store with my backpack and several bags in my hands up the hill back to the B&B. The dressing recipe that I was planning to make was a bust because I couldn’t find polenta which my friend M had said should work for cornmeal. I decided to just wing it and I was in a mood. Here was the menu.

Wine (lots of it)
Roast Chicken
Sweet Potatoes
Green Beans
Sausage Dressing
Apple Brown Betty with Ice Cream

We ended up having a lovely meal or they were all lying to me, and I didn’t have to ply them with alcohol! I didn’t want to have to go into London to get pumpkin, so I went for one of my daughter A’s favorites, Apple Brown Betty. I am glad the meal is behind me.

I, Restaurant Critic

Last year during the Christmas holidays I read Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires about her experience as a food critic. Although she had tired of the job by the end of the book, it did not sway my opinion that being a food critic would be an awesome job. However, I also know my limitations. While I love food, and have the hips to prove it, my inability to distinguish flavors as she does in that book would probably make the reviews pretty short. It didn’t stop me from accepting the challenge when Timeforone asked me to review a Persian restaurant for them. The context of any restaurant review for them is if the restaurant is a good choice for a single diner, as well as the food and the service. I can certainly do that! It also gave me my first excuse to wander into Chelsea and check out the area.

The dinner was really delicious and if I had not been doing this officially, I probably would have missed out eating there because the candlelit atmosphere looked a little intimidating for a single diner. However, the service was so good that I didn’t at all feel out of place. There will be more on the website about my experience. The host ordered for me after we discussed the menu and his recommendations were spot on for my tastes.

Humous and hot pita (chickpea and tahini dip with garlic and lemon)
Kulouche (feta cheese in light phyllo pastry)
Joojeh Kebob (chargrilled chicken kebob marinated in lemon, garlic, and yoghurt)
Jewelled Rice (basmati rice with saffron)

After Dinner – Latte with a small piece of baklava