UKCruiseJeff

Good afternoon Cooler folks! Today’s bagels …. I hope you can taste and smell them …. 🙂

If it isn’t against forum rules - then may I suggest some extra virgin olive oil?

Perhaps you are getting crusty.

That is lovely looking bread. Is it my imagination - or is that bread smiling? It’s lovely that you share it with older neighbours. Jeff

Good evening Coolers from a grey and wet Hampshire. I had told myself no more bread posts but tonight my baguette bizarrely invoked Eric Clapton and “wonderful tonight”. For a very small minority of cooler bread squinters I played with steam on my new oven and it provided this. Some of it will be with lot’s of good French butter and thinly sliced young Gruyere (note this Swiss lady!) and the bit left over will be with far too much strawberry jam. Hers was identical. I perfectly accept that it isn’t funny but as Homer Simpson would say “dough!” 🙂

Thanks! 😊 No day is ever complete without putting tomorrows baguettes into the fridge for a contented doze. 😄

Hello, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your post about your passion for your baguettes. For sone reason that totally bewilders me almost all of the commentary about breadmaking had taken me - and I feel many others- down unsuccessful paths. They like to make it a black art to preserve their perceived skill. As you may recall, I then decided to simply combine a lot of water with flour instant yeast and salt and leave it to the water to do it’s magic. No mixer, no mixing, no complex kneading just a lot of water and scraper kneading in the bowl and a lot of leaving alone. I handle it as little as possible. That is why they are ugly and misshapen. I now hydrate to 80%+ and leave it overnight. We have baguettes every day and the whole process only takes around a couple of minutes of labour. I’ve also just bought a worktop 4 in 1 combi oven which has a steam function and is effectively a perfect crispy bread/baguette oven. The manufacturer doesn’t seem to know because they barely mention bread. It also proves bread to same day perfect baguettes as if they are 36 hour bread. It is easy. So I can make baguettes to my normal quality in just a few hours. It tastes like poulish/biga starter bread. Sadly much of real baguette baking in France has been replaced by rebaking bought in bulk stuff and we are eating better than anything we have ever had in France. Anyway you know what I’m like about bread! 🙂 Last night she wanted Naples salami with tomato and a smear of mayo and a mug of white. Happy to provide. I thought you might like the piccies although I’m afraid you cannot see the crumb. They remain ugly delicious. Enjoy and thanks so much again for taking the trouble to tell me about your bread. Jeff

Good Afternoon Coolers …. Glancing in I thought I’d just say how lovely it was to see that the Cooler 5 has had a million views and 20k’ish posts. What on earth happened?! 🙂 I wonder how many posts and views there are since we collectively started this mini-community which was intended to be specifically about nothing too important and it is a credit to all new and established members that stop by and sometimes even stay a while that it survives and is a place of sanctuary and sanity in an increasingly bewildering world. Anyway, self-indulgently I’ll share that it is our 50th Anniversary today. and I’m so happy that she still hasn’t found the combination of the padlock and made her escape. She is simply the loveliest thing on two legs and I’m so happy she has enjoyed our journey together. Some still might like my mundane food piccies so today was chill garlic enormous prawns with home made baguette and Laurent Perrier. Keep enjoying this community and if you are a lurker who has yet to post please just visit and post. Bestest wishes to all.

Hi, Great memory. Yes, and I think we’re only half through the champers lake. I’m so pleased I converted all my miles to something more userful. Jeff

A shorty to wish all Coolers the very bestest for a cool and lovely 2024. It is extremely lovely to “pop” in and not only see so many founder Cooler members seated in their allotted stools at the bar and posting - but also so many who have opened the door and sat on a stool by the bar, ordered a drink and now stay and chat. I do so hope they stay and welcome every newby who ventures in. Some here (mostly me) enjoy reading of other people’s every day sustenance and in that spirit I share today’s eatings of sushi for lunch with Laurent Perrier and later supper on a plate on the lap in front of the TV of a bacon and chip with sea salt and Sarsons sandwich in tiger bread (with some dipping fries left on the side) and a lovely second bottle of frozen LP. Always bestest. Jeff

Loved the post. AA Gill was a citizen of Soho and was a part of a very colourful cohort of people who I don't believe will ever happen again. The world will become bars full of AI bots laughing at each others jokes! You seem to be struggling with the change of work ethos as many others will increasingly do! It's best to withdraw as rapidly as possible and pour some zappy tomato! May I muse? One of the lucky things about being a person that is ageing ungracefully is that we have the advantage of living in the pre-woke world when everyone who enjoyed thinking and learning were lucky enough to be surrounded by a wide range of contrarians and we were fortunate enough to understand that people that hold the same views as oneself have nothing we can learn from. They only offer the reassurance that we were always right along. How boring. It is only listening intently to people with what we may have previously refereed to as different or "irrational views" can sometimes seem to talk some basis of a different view or sense and so if "open minded" then we might slip into learning and adjusting ones views with all the satisfaction that can bring. It saddens me greatly that in this wonderful new world as more and more people are perceived to have committed some sin or other that their work might then be cancelled with often the unexpected consequence of collateral damage to perfectly innocent people. If for example an "artiste" turns out to be an idiot and they cancel all their programmes what about the other innocent members of the cast relying on their repeat fees to eat! And how can you learn about what is bad if you never see it 😞 When you start on that path without specifying in advance how low the "must be cancelled" limbo bar will be set in the future, you will inevitably end up with a whole generation of people never learning from other peoples mistakes or stupidity or evilness or their ideas and that it seems to me is a major cause of why so many younger people today (to me at least) all look and sound the same but with a greater degree of anger towards everything in general and at the same time nothing in particular. And when the limbo cancel bar becomes increasingly lowered then the group of people who will never safely limbo under it will become smaller and smaller and people will become so much more monochromatic and boring and the world will simply be fuller of less thoughtful, ill-informed educated boring people. On the very positive side “our generation” whatever that might mean are fortunate enough to have been bursting with inquisitiveness and an insatiable desire to learn from a world that is opening up. That world seems to be morphing into a world where you can have a better conversation with an artificial intelligence bot than a human! I jest .. of course ….. On the topic of lunch, I'd like to claim that everything I ever did was carefully planned and worked out exactly as I had intended but the reality is that with a reasonable degree of IQ only exceeded by my laziness I found much to my surprise that I could conduct an increasing amount of “work” over all day lunches normally at my place. For some reason daft ideas and proposals always seemed so much more sensible after a bottle or three of wine and some schnapps. As long as you can remember roughly what was agreed and with what fee. I don't know about others but I'm finding myself wanting to be less exposed to the changing world and I quite like having increasing hermit instincts and simply driving between the country and a balcony overlooking the sea. There will be spelling errors and typos amongst my aimless drivel and so I apologise.

Thanks Muchly. Counted all my bits and all present and correct with some needing oiling. Druch is a goodish word for a meal unsullied by work or other tedious obligations. Often think of you and your partner and your flamboyant travels! 🙂

Thanks Terry. 1. Botanical Gardens and the Orchid Garden. 2. Satay street at Lau Pa Sat EVERY evening for 40 mixed sticks and a jug of Tiger from a Tiger “Aunty”. 3. Gardens By the Bat at niight for the two light shows. 4. Tiong Bahru hosing estate and the hawker center. Don’t over think. It’s all cheap simply try everything and in particular stuff you thin you should never eat. You will be suprised. 5. Chinatown food complex. Hundreds of stalls missed by almost all tourists. Try anything but if in doubt join a queue. Enjoy Jeff

The thing is, that breakfast is always in the mornings and dinner is always in the evenings but lunch can start whenever you decide and end at any time and can end whenever you decide. And what is the point of the rest of the day that isn’t lunch. If your circumstances permit then lunch everyday can be almost all day. And for the sake of forum continuity lunch on a ship is when everyone else has got off to explore a boring place with thousands of other ants. So far as boozy or unboozy is concerned then lunch at home or on land anywhere with it’s timely elasticity allows you to siesta and wake up and fill the rest of what is left of the day with something worthwhile like thinking of tomorrows lunch.

GD, I loved your post. It has always seemed to me that A. A. Gill understood life at the very least because he was a confident contrarian and drank almost always whilst he thought and when he could remember to write. It’s possible to feel a degree of affinity with him if you are unencumbered by continuous sobriety and are happy to live oddly and think a little differently. I don’t like breakfast or dinner much largely because of it’s timing as to me lunch seems such a perfect time anywhere in the world or whatever the circumstance. You can prepare a bit earlier and stop a bit (or a considerable time later) and the rest or the day can stretch around lunch. breakfast and dinner seem so much more stiffy to me. I have so many memoeries of lunch with people but can’t recall any breakfasts and very few dinners. Lunch is king. The art is to take the very best from breakfast or the very best form dinner but have it at all at lunch time and linger at it forever. And drink more because you can doze afterwards. The thing that can be improved on the great British Breakfast is to stop thinking of it as a morning meal - who on earth wants to get up early if you went to bed at 3am? ) and wouldn’t want to substitute the mug of tea with a well frozen bottle of decent champagne and after a late rise make your way to the kitchen and have an early morning Electric Tomato (OK …. a Bloody Mary …) whilst you fry up a great British Lunch Brekky. This to me seems civilised. A big shout for each and every and all Coolers …. great to see it aging gracefully. jeff