Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Good bye London, Hello Mason

May 31, 2011
This is our final blog of this trip. We are now in London after spending a couple of wonderful days with Clive and Angie Morris. We visited Hever Castle, which was the home of Anne Boleyn and later owned by Astors. We only visited the gardens which were very nice indeed. After the castle we took Clive and Angie to The Castle Inn, the historic pub we told you about in the previous blog. Tim asked our server why The Castle Inn was historic. The only reason she could give was that Ann Boleyn ran away from Henry VIII one night and hid in a bedroom fireplace in the pub. We all agreed that that was a pretty good reason for the pub to be historical. The other highlight was the dinner party Clive and Angie hosted last night. Their neighbors, Robin and Pam, joined the four us for a delightful evening of conversation, good wine, and an excellent meal of roast leg of spring lamb, new potatoes, and peas and broad beans. We had met Robin and Pam before and have always enjoyed their company. It was a great way to end our trip.

Here are some random observations and comments that you may be interested in.
The term "pub" is short for Public House. The person who runs the pub is called a publican. Pubs were originally a place for neighbors to get together for a beer, a bag of crisps (potatoe chips) and a good chat. We often hear them referred to as "boozers". They were never meant to be restaurants. But as with all things culinary, the pub has evolved and now there are many pubs that are very nice restaurants. In England these are called "gastro pubs". When we first came to England some 25 years ago pubs opened at noon and closed at 3:00 p.m. and re-opened at 5 and were usually closed by midnight if not before. Now pubs can be open all hours. Most still open at noon but we have noticed in the large cities that pubs open at 7:00 a.m. and serve breakfast. Unfortunately, we also saw a lot of pubs that had closed altogether, particularly in the north. Pubs are really wonderful places as we have found many publicans who take time to visit with us and from time to time provide helpful information.

A few words about beer. Beer is by far the drink of choice in pubs even though pubs do offer a small selection of wines and spirits. Lynda has been drinking lager beer, Foster's or Stella Artois, for example, which are served chilled and use CO2 to draw the beer out of the keg. Lager is the style of beer that we predominantly drink in the States. Tim has been drinking ale's and a style of ale called bitter. In England these are served at the tempature of the keg where it sits in the pub. The ale is "hand drawn" meaning that the publican is actually pumping the beer out of the keg. He/she uses a lot of effort to draw back the handle for the particular ale that you have ordered. While these ales are more "full bodied" than a lager and may seem "heavier" they are actually less filling because of the lack of CO2. You really don't notice the temperature of the beer and in fact, these ales would not taste as good if they were chilled. Every region of England has its local breweries of which the locals are justifiably proud and you can certainly taste a difference from one area to another. Tim has had many excellent beers while in England and promises to continue his research until the moment he flies home.

All of the B & B's that we have stayed in offered a "full English breakfast." You will find the menu for a full English breakfast to be quite interesting. When you enter the dining room there is a table set up with a selection of fresh fruits, cereals, yogurts, and several different fruit juices. You are invited to partake of these offerings and then the host or hostess will take your order for "hot breakfast". This includes eggs, granary toast, bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms and baked beans. Notice there is no potato offered. The bacon is similar to what we would call canadian bacon. Our style of bacon is known as "streaky bacon" in England. One B & B hostess was a bit offended when Lynda asked if she served streaky bacon. Her comment was that she would not stoop to serving streaky bacon to her guests. While we were in London we had a bowl of cereal and coffee in our apartment. We actually looked forward to having a full English breakfast once we got on the road. After several mornings of full english breakfast, Tim, in particular was having just toast and some cereal for breakfast.

A Ploughman's Lunch use to be on every pub menu we would see. This year we did not see it so much. A ploughman is a farmer. We would spell it plow man and a Ploughman's Lunch is what he would take to the field with him to eat. It consists of a large piece of bread, a piece of meat, usually ham, and a large piece of cheese. In pubs it is usually also served with a small salad to garnish the plate and some chutney to put on the bread, meat or cheese. As you can probably surmise, it is a hearty lunch that would certainly get the farmer through his day to dinner. It is a bit sad that it is losing its place on pub menu's.
On this trip Lynda has become a fan of banofee pie. It is a biscuit crust filled with sliced bananas and toffee sometimes with a whip cream topping that has toffee syrup drizzled on it. Another food item that Tim likes and is occasionally served with a ploughman's is a scotch egg. A scotch egg is a hard boiled egg with sausage wrapped around it and coated with bread crumbs and deepfried. We see them in all the supermarkets so we are sure that they are served for more than just an accompanment to a ploughmans.
Well, that about wraps it up. Thanks again for joining us. We hope you have enjoyed your vicarious journey.