UKCruiseJeff

Good Afternoon Coolers, from a warm and sunny England. Today we had Keralan lamb curry with a bhindi, aloo, gobi pilaf. But I think we were both out of salts today and was recovering from the shock of what has been a consistent regular annual seam of our lives which was our Eurovision. It has become so extremely poor, and also so unrepresentative of the majority’s normality. It has become a freak show of untalented performers with poorly written material derailed by angry ignorant minorities trying to ensure that the minorities control the quiet lives of the long-suffering majorities. One of the enriching new’ish and growing components of Eurovision is how it became a real annual adoption and focus for the gay community. I think they elevated and made the experience considerably more fun for those people that aren’t gay. But yesterday, most of the London pubs were cancelling the gay Eurovision events through fear from political violent Gaza protests. So we had already lost a Eurovision that we could make any sense of and lost the gay events that enjoyed it anyway and made up for it’s awfulness and took us along with them. I have no idea whether this makes any sense to non-Brits let alone fellow Brits but that is where I think a quiet but large number of Europeans felt. We feel, bewildered, bereaved and marginalised by loud groups that make no sense. Anyway ….. here is the plate! Jeff

I must admit that was the one thing I didn’t think of asking anybody. 🙂 This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but perhaps as an addition to the daily funnies Coolers might not have come across a lovely Youtube channel called Letters Live. The majority are extremely funny and tickle the cranial buds and this is a nice one from Miriam Margoylyes. I got her to do a Cameo for my wife acouuple of years back for our anniversary and she was lovely. These letters nearly always bring a smile.

It was all so utterly depressing, we spent most of the evening listening to live music stream of early music from Assisi and it was captivating. Jeff

I asked them but they wouldn’t answer me.

Excellent. It is once of our favourite vegetable dishes. Waxy reds diced largely and steamed until just under, fried slowly’ish in butter and olive oil with a sprinkle of ground nutmeg, pepper and sea salt and parsely. It is sweet and lovely. 🙂

Glad it was helpful. We’ve been talking about taking a few trips back. We are so fortunate that Paris is so close and so miss our stomping grounds of Coupole, Bofinger, Lipp etc and all those great value Michelin lunches. A bit surprised by the ptice of the laurent perrier grand siecle. Hope you get there. Jeff

I thought you would be interested in this story from The Times: The Paris restaurant where you choose your wine — and it chooses your food. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7bf5820e-648b-422f-b5a0-eef184b2c255?shareToken=6aab31af42c7cde24309336e91a371ce

Been watching the live Primavera streams over the last few days .. not sure how much is left …

Good Afternoon `Coolers, Today was a special request from The Boss. Salmon and my cheats sauce. And for Spins ….. PEAS!

Cassettes? 8-Track surely much better! And with it brings the opportunity to listen to two tracks at the same time plus a loud clunk in the middle when changing tracks. 🙂 Do I detect slightly less bounce in your step in the last post? Hope stuff isn’t exceeding the mid-niggle point. Keep your pecker up. Lie back and think of England. Jeff

I saw what you did there.

Take your wine with you so that you do not need to subsequently whine.

I appreciate wine. I like almost any wine. My preference is if someone else buys it and pours it in a mug for me. And when my mug is empty buys more. It has in fact never happened, I am the dribbling man in Dirty Rotten Rascals.

Lucky you … nothing this far south but watching it live on Youtube from an East Midlands back garden. You can run the feed back to see some earlier highlights. Hope the link works …

Good Evening Coolers, An unsuccessful day on the cake front! 🫣 The boss declared she was in a cake mood this afternoon so I set about making an almond cherry Madeira cake. But even with the proper precautions the cherries sunk. 😞 So I’m too ashamed to post a piccy. Last night was another heavily sleepless night and at around 3am I had the yearnings for some bread and butter and a little jam. The great thing about always having a couple of boxes ready in the fridge is that you can be eating some slices from a well developed dough in less than an hour. The new oven proves bread in 20 to 30 minutes and then I can bake it with a few steam squirts in another 30 for a lovely crisp fresh baton. So last night was a lightly malted onion ficelle with butter and house red in a lovely silent kitchen. Always keep a box of dough ready for emergencies. Have a great evening all. Jeff

Hi, I think that it is often bewildering to find that what others might find disappointing when it is simply pretty unimportant to ourselves. Therefore I think it useful to remember dear old Lucretius's observation that "One man's meat is another man's poison". Bless him! 🙂 As a recently mentioned example, one poster stated that the only wine on board was Chardonnay and if I remember correctly they were told that if they didn't want the Chardonnay then the all-inclusive promise was to be ignored and they would have to purchase an alternative off of the wine menu. To a Chardonnay drinker that would probably not be too much of a disappointment but to those that hate the stuff (like us) it would likely make them pretty grumpy. Human nature being what it is, then what almost inevitably then starts to happen is that being disappointed you then start noticing further things that displease. We're mostly the same about products, services and even people. That's why we place in life some importance on first impressions because it often that first impression that too often guides our further inclinations. It it starts badly it then often seems to progress badly. And vice versa to a lesser degree as disappointments are often noticed more emotively than simply having our expectations adequately met. For a company to discharge it's obligations to all or at least most of it's customers it should meet their reasonably expectations consistently. Reasonable expectation could be created both by the company's promises it chooses to make and by more generally what one should reasonably expect perhaps taking account of what has been paid. It's interesting to note that this obligation is the law in some countries but not in others. So in the UK, EU and Oz and other places it is clearly set out in consumer legislation but in other countries there is virtually no protection as law-making is more corporation biased than consumer biased. Some would say that we get the laws we deserve depending to a small degree on who we appoint to govern us. To make life difficult for some who try to guide a corporation in what is required they often hide behind the country their are headquarters are in, in the misguided belief that it is only their home countries laws that they need respect. But in fact organisations are often obligated to comply with the countries laws in which they operate. The consequences acadmeically can be bizzarre. For example in the Chardonnaygate scenario, a Brit sitting at the table might reasonably expect the wine waiter to open up a normally chargeable non-Chardonnay wine at no charge but some non-Brits ( 😉 ) may expect to pay. The further issue is the Brit arging his case but being refused. But that's another topic. 🙂 From a personal point of view, I think it positive and useful that all people can access all opinions/comments both negative and positive. We can then make up our own mind as to how likely we are to be confident in receiving an acceptable level of our own personal expectations met. That's why I think we should be a little careful about commenting too harshly on other peoples' disappointments in case we might not then get to hear about something THAT IS personally important to ourselves. Like being force-fed Chardonnay with no other choice for example. Jeff

🙂 Don’t be fickle, make some ficelle.

I do like it when you talk dirty! 🙂 When my wife catches me watching bread stuff on Youtube (yes I know it’s sad) she says “Have I caught you watching that smut again!” I have a 11 day light malted ficelle for tomorrow. I like rehydrating dried fried onion and adding it. We have a very old established Salmon smoker in the UK called Formans. We buy their London Cure and I have a pack. https://www.formans.co.uk/our-story/london-cure/ I have to make a few batches of dough tomorrow as I’ve been a bit lazy. When I add a touch of malt with a white and rye mix (80/20) and add a fair dose of steam in the bake it tastes fairly close to a traditional bagel without all of the palaver. Jeff ps. They were nigella seeds!

I so hope my post didn’t put you off balance in any way. It was my general observation. For what it is worth, I think (I know) you are on the right track and suggest you push on and enjoy things. Your main obligation is to enjoy yourself. Just drink a bit more and worry an awful lot less. It’d be great if you posted back about your experience.

I’m bewildered by the obsession by how angry people get about what others are wearing. There is enough to compromise holiday enjoyment without fretting about what other people are wearing. And trajectory is with me. Everything that everybody has said is currently correct for themselves but isn’t sensibly sustainable. The reason why all this debate is heading for an obvious implosion is simply this. Halfway through the last century when I was a toddler, mumsy imposed on me everyday what I must wear. As I progressed in life, I took over those choices and in the end I was sufficiently confident, irritating and empowered to decide on any given day what I would wear. Except for school uniform when I submitted and gave up for a few years until I was thankfully expelled. After this I decided where and what I might wear and spend my money on and what I might eat. So when eating out and when not going on an over-priced ship with extremely disappointing food I sort of left it at the point that others would wear what they want and I would never be too perturbed by what they were wearing but simply enjoyed that what cemented us all together in common food suffering and what we commonly enjoyed at the moment was the meal we were all eating. I would never “tut” or judge others unless they smelt of something. I liked that we were all happy in our own way and laughing and being happy and getting to know each other. And at the same time I ensured as best I could that I wouldn’t smell of anything ie perfume or anything bodily. So why on earth going forward should sensible people claim that the enjoyment of their meal on a ship has been compromised by someone else who isn’t wearing a tie on a table somewhere away from them. If I like them dressed up as a Christmas tree then why should they object to me being unsmelly and casually lovely as I always am. Everyone can rationalise why I am wrong but what they might better need to confront is that it might better to shrug and accept the trajectory of life. If the response to this opinion is anger .. well so be it. But if I’m an ill-informed idiot and you wish to educate me then be kind and explain. Jeff

Fletch, I so loved your post. To expect inevitable daily disappointings but to be completely blindsided by the unexpected positive surprise is like banging your head against the wall and then enjoying the experience of stopping. To truly experience the full “Austrians” your Gruner Veltliner must be in a mug. A big mug. And it must be bottomless. A bit like ‘er indoors. Your description of your meal today is the first time for a long while I have read of an SS meal and wished I’d tied the napkin around my neck and been at the table. Knife and fork akimbo. Did you by any chance left a morsel for us two? Jeff

Good Afternoon Coolers, particularly those in the “Sleepy Do” sub-committee! 🙂 It is a sad example of how low my life has sunk that I have been looking forward to this small box of 10 day “sleepy dough” in the fridge that I made into today’s light lunch ficelle . To explain ficelle is simply a much thinner baguette and is our favourite bread. it’s less crumb and more crunchy crust. It is a glorious bread and seems to be overlooked by many who would love it. So today was a bottle of house white with previously mentioned ficelle and live TV of two KC’s on the Post Office enquiry live feed taking bits out of each other. I’ve enclosed a picture of the dough to hopefully show how it’s time rather than kneading that gives sublime open texture. It ended up as a Milanese salami ficelle with tomato and mayo. The confusing thing to me and has always been how simple peasant eatings often offer so much more pleasure than so called “sophisticated” eatings. Jeff

WWfT, Great looking loaves. I bet they’re fragrant. Are they soft and sweet? S, If you prefer sourdough can keep for between 3 days and a week or so - helped if you add a little olive oil do it doesn’t dry too quickly. Hope you post some piccies. Jeff

Lola, I now "turn-in" at roughly 4am. I cannot make sense of it but it improves slightly with some Absolut Vanilia. Sleep is a really weird thing. You have a greatest day. Jeff

Thanks WWfT - that is a great precis of pragmatism and I enjoyed it. Forgive me being a clutz with multi-quote but more and more technical stuff seems to defeat me. But you'll get my reply I'm sure to both of your bits I'm sure. I so wish I had chickens. My life would be a touch more complete. We get fresh eggs every few days or week or so and my wife's first decision is to dump whatever I had planned for supper but to have a lightly boiled egg and have some bread. I do not begrudge that. They are fresh Burford Browns. And she must what she wishes. 🙂 My own overall personal direction is to continue to simplify. If there is anything remotely like the words " ...... with a twist ...." then I develop a twitch and go back to simplicity. This is true of stuff like the orange cake and my bread. What I want is the taste of orange and almonds - so that is what I distil down to a cake. As you might detect I need not too much of an excuse to add the effluence of incohol to anything, but I'm trying to relearn. So I eat the cake and drink the incohol. I'm so pleased to read of your dough journey. I think that bread is sort of visceral and prime-evil. If you think about it, there has never been a moment in our worldly development that all of us need to find common ground. And if I had to pick one thin it is "our daily bread". Rice cements less people. So does potato. But "give us our daily bread" is the largest common denominator. If I was calling a peace summit for those in conflict I'd invite them for breakfast and give them some bread and talk about bread for a while. 99.999% of the world that make and eat bread have got on for thousands of years and probably none of them have ever looked at a bread recipe book. Because it is actually simple. the other 00.0001% (I think!) consult clever peoples recipes and mess it up. Hence my backward journey to first principles. Anyway. I'm always going backwards and it is what keeps me going forward. WWfT, do you actually make Tiramisu? How about some pictures of that and what else you make? Jeff