All posts in category: Food & Drink

What will you do over the holiday season?

November 13, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Technology
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Why...

Does the impending holiday season now revolve exclusively around my TV? Firstly I should say that while tapping out this blog, the sky here in Malta is blue and the dogs are sunbathing in 22c/72f. Thanksgiving and Christmas are about as far from my mind as next year’s tax bill. However television commercials insist on dragging me away from my balmy reality into the fantasy of snow, turkey, goodwill to all men….and get me to start buying. I really do not understand how these companies who start commercials in November and scatterbomb the schedule for nearly two months with the same message, think this warms viewers to their cause. No matter how brilliant a commercial is, there comes a tipping point when repeated viewing turns into watching it again is worse than nails dragged down a backboard.

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For ffff fakes sake

October 10, 2022
Animals/Pets Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Technology
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Why...

Care about a fake? I note with interest a puff piece in The London Times about the Hollywood nouveau riche hiring Art Consultants. The need is because these well coiffed beings can shuffle their A list clients to the heads of the queue to get a chance to gobble up a piece of art before anyone else. It also makes A listers feel less insecure having someone there to praise or confirm their good taste or have the expert lend Hollywood Royalty some of their own. Really? I agree if you made a few zillion dollars parading around in Spandex with the superpower to create a hurricane by blowing through your nose, you don’t really have much credibility as a Serious Actor; but in the art world, like any other, money is money. If the Hulk is prepared to pay more than a Titan of Wall Street for a scribble and dots by Cy Twombly, let the richest man win. I would lend more credibility to all these art experts were it not for the unfeasibly large amount of fakes or overbid artwork that has been sold to our brave Hollywood friends! As long ago as 1989 Sylvester Stallone sued his art consultant for $5m.(Brave person. I would have been more worried about a jab and a hook rather than a law suit). Steve Martin bought a fake Heinrich Campendonk (crazy name crazy guy) as have hoards of others. It appears these consultants no more protect you from a painting by Pinocchio rather than Pollock as anyone else

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Just don’t mention the weather

Why...

Can I not turn on the news or pick up a paper without screaming about the weather? The UK news media liken what would be a warm day where I live as akin to the UK living in hail and brimstone. Beelzibub and his minions are stalking the hell-like streets. Pah! However, here in Malta this summer has been hot enough to poach an egg in my underpants. I like the beach as much as anyone but I cannot understand people flocking to be staked out on the sand with the sun hot enough to turn their bodies the colour of condemned veal. Certainly most locals shake their heads in disbelief at the tourists gently sizzling on the shoreline. So instead, my wife, the French bulldogs and I enjoy the view of the Mediterranean from the comfort of the air conditioning, with the occasional sprint into the pool. Even the dogs hop across the garden flagstones to jump into the flowerbed to pee. Forget booties for the snow, you need them to protect your tootsies from turning into ten chipolatas!

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Screw you, or do you want to get pulled?

Why...

Do I still prefer pulling a cork rather than unscrewing a cap? Logic has gone out the window here. No other business in the world would tolerate a (conservative) 5% failure rate, which is the figure given for 'corked' wines. That's one in twenty. We have hissy fits when one in in ten thousand IPads just blink. Can you imagine if one in twenty cars were faulty? And yet.... That seductive pop bursts so many pent up emotions. The sound rivals the soothing tones of a $500 an hour shrink. That pop can just as easily equate to the escape of bottled up sexual tension on a first date, to the release of frustration after the week from hell (I suspect David and Sam Cameron may well have yanked a few corks after Brexit). Then there is the whole wonderful bullshit theatre of the sommelier. Firstly he thrusts the bottle under my nose, ignoring if I was in mid-sentence or even mid- joke, demanding my undivided attention in his far more important world. I can barely remember the name of what I have picked out, let alone the year but I gamely play along with the charade, putting on my specs to carefully inspect the bottle. Then, deftly using one of those tiny contraptions I can never get to work, the wine waiter swiftly extracts the cork. If he is a sommelier par excellence he might even sniff what he has removed, and with a look of supreme indifference, pocket it as he pours me a thimble full of wine to taste. Of course if he really knew what he was doing he should know instantly if a bottle is bad and simply apologize and produce another. But he has his reasons and waits as I take a sip. The moment of truth. Occasionally when the bottle is so badly corked that my tongue dials the fire brigade, I am brave enough to challenge the wine waiter and suggest the bottle of botulism he has presented me with ain't quite up to standard. However I am ashamed to admit most times I am too intimidated if I think the wine is punching me in the throat rather than caressing my taste buds. Usually my party have drunk half the bottle before someone has the courage to say that "rather than suggesting a bouquet of raspberry with a hint of chocolate and whisper of tannins, this tastes like a bus driver's sock.” We then haul over the wine waiter. Depending on if we look like we might know what we are talking about he will inspect the glass and mutter an apology, or simply whisk the offending bottle away. I have never seen a sommelier actually taste a corked bottle. A good one that is not corked, yes. But a bottle of rancid wine juice? Never. As I said, they know from the get go, but hope your too sloshed to notice. The reason they say nothing is the staff will of course chalk up the bottle as rancid, add it to the claim of dud bottles they present each month to the supplier and open (hopefully) a decent bottle of the same vintage to enjoy once the bloody patrons have left.

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It only has to do one thing

July 30, 2022
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Technology
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Why...

Is it so difficult for simple things to do the one thing they were designed for? We have a set of drawers in our bathroom in the built in cabinets around the sink. However, they are all coy. Instead of fully opening they half open. I have checked the runners etc. They are specifically designed only to be drawn out half their depth! I spend my life with my arm half bent rummaging around at the dark recess of the back for medicines, pills, chargers and other bathroom paraphernalia having to sweep them to the front so I can see them. I would really like to meet that designer and warmly shake him by the throat.

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Hmmmm. A gorgeous hint of bullshit, with on-the-palate flavour of Edward Lear nonsense poems and a strong aftertaste of swallowing a quaalude and The Complete Oxford dictionary. Welcome to tasting notes on wine and spirits

May 8, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Life
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Why...

Are descriptions of taste so pompous and indecipherable? I read recently that a wooden cask tub of Macallans Whisky, which was bought for £5,000 thirty years ago on a whim of I suspect some rich dipso, has just sold for over £1m! To justify this ludicrous bar bill, that works out at around £2,000 a bottle, the descriptions of the taste have reached epic proportions of nonsense. Can anyone really tell me what… “a yellow halo with a mesmerising nose with a scent of salted caramel drizzled chocolate brownie restrained with a background of fresh orange marmalade and neroli with a dying hint of tobacco leaf” really smells like? To me it stinks like an Oreo cookie covered in Robertson finest Golden Shred marmalade, sprinkled with fag ends. And that’s just the smell. The rapturous pretentious waffle goes into overdrive when describing the taste; I dare you to read this and take it seriously. “On the palate waves of sweetness carries and mingles mature oak and library leather bound book dryness. This breaks into a regal spice mix of nutmeg ginger and ground coriander, over a wash of ginger perkin biscuits, soft buttery dates and freshly baked Danish apricot pastries.” (London The Times 27 April 2022) A perkin biscuit? WTF is that? I mean, just line up six whiskies and tell me which one they are referring to. “I say, Cedric, I think it might be this one though I not sure if the spice mix is regal enough and I think sweaty sock juice mingled with old leather football boots more apt than library books.” What makes my jaw hit the floor in admiration at the effusive nonsense is the ingredients of scotch are simply malted barley, water and yeast. And yet it reads here that someone tipped half the content of the unused drawer in the kitchen into the still used to ferment the whisky. The people who write this tripe I assume double as Real Estate novelists. The people who describe bathrooms as bijoux when you have to stand on the loo to shut the door.

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🎶 Here comes summer … or does it?

May 1, 2022
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Technology
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Why...

Is the weather schizophrenic? Winter this year has behaved like the house guest who outstays his or her welcome. I have to admit that summer 2021 was hot enough to poach an egg in my underpants, therefore I was relieved for the respite of a winter chill. However, it’s now the beginning of May , yet Nanook of the North would have pulled on extra clothing over Easter here in Malta. Grey skies, a wind that could yank the eyebrows off your face and rain horizontal enough to win a limbo dance competition. Today the sun is shining but according to the forecast, it’s a deception worthy of David Copperfield (the magician, not the Dickens character). In a few days time, the temperature is set to drop low enough to make my pubic hair crackle; so the Ambre Solaire will go back in the cupboard and out will come my hot water bottle.

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My wife can’t shut the front door

Why...

Can my wonderful wife not close the front door? In nearly everything she achieves levels of saintly patience with me that would justify beatification. However, she likes to play the hokey-cokey with the front door. She closes it. Thinks. Opens it. Goes into the house to drop something off, retrieve something or check if something is switched off, then closes it… and repeats. I have asked a few of my married friends and they all admit this particular square dance with the front door is more common than I thought. I assume most airline stewards/stewardesses are not married or they would never close the aircraft door.

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I never know what to put in each recycle bin

April 10, 2022
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Technology
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Why...

Do I have so many types of garbage bins when I deeply suspect it all goes into one galopata galopata machine anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I am doing my best to save the planet, whether it means only cleaning my belly button with a Q-tip once a month, or recycling my dogs poop by tossing it over the wall onto my next door neighbours’ geraniums. But bins? I have a battalion of these things standing to attention outside my door. The list is endless. Bins for bottles without screw top collar, sacks for those with them… and then subdivided between clear green and brown. 6 just for glass. Life is all receptacles for spectacles, crates for ash from grates, containers for retainers, hoppers for party poppers and repositories for suppositories. The subdivision for rubbish has gone mad. Surely what burns easily and is non synthetic like paper, real food, clothing and coffee grinds in one and synthetics like plastic, tin and any takeaway food in the other… and maybe one for glass.

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Things I want to buy Duty Free

March 27, 2022
Finance/Law Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
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Why...

Are we so desperate to buy Duty Free? The truth is duty free is daft. I mean who said… “I know. Let’s fill all departing aircraft with more weight to burn more fuel. In addition, let’s fill the passenger compartment with a bunch of combustibles; booze, perfume, tobacco and raffia or plastic tat.” The truth is airports don’t give a fig about passengers so long as they can claw money off you in the two hours they hold you captive. The logical thing to do of course is to buy items to be collected when you land, thus avoiding transport cost and safety issues. That means all the crap you buy at the airport for friends and relatives because you forgot to buy on holiday will fall by the wayside. And no more local hootch that most of the time is used as paint thinner anyway. If you are desperate to buy a diamond encrusted watch or unobtainium rings because they are massively cheaper than at home, then search them out and buy them when you land. Makes the custom clearance queues shorter for the rest of us.

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Orgies are overrated

March 20, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Sex
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Why...

Ever since some Roman Oligarch came up with the idea of a vomitorium, have orgies have gone down hill? In this little cubicle there was a flowerpot full of feathers with which you could tickle the back of your throat, throw up then go back to eating and fornicating with an empty stomach so you could start eating again… but with breath that could strip wallpaper. I mean would you snog a puke smelling orgy participant, even if it was Bradus Pittus or Angelina Jolia? The orgies from the Ottoman’s must have been as exciting as watching paint dry. One bloke, the Sultan, and dozens of members of his harem. I suspect the whole shebang lasted five minutes with most of the girls just casual observers till the Grand Vizir, seeing his Lord and master already spent, called for a time out with a round of backgammon and some squares of Turkish delight. A male fantasy but in reality all over before all the ‘toys’ have been unwrapped.

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🎶 I’m busy busy busy doing nothing 🎶

February 27, 2022
Finance/Law Food & Drink Technology Work
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Why...

Am I exhausted?

The last year has seen a few upheavals and I now find myself with a bit more time on my hands.

I am being horsewhipped into training five days a week, with my wife giving me the evil eye every time I even mention a carbohydrate.

“Get fit. More energy. More time to do things,” seems to be the mantra.

There is only one solution to get any relief. Find another challenge.

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Before I agree to sign on for 2022 I want to read the small print

January 4, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends
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Why...

It is good riddance to bad rubbish that was 2021. Everyone seems to have suffered. In my case, multiple surgeries, a law suit and a multi-coloured silk shirt my wife decided looked like a kaftan on me and nearly led to divorce!

I used to think ‘annus horribilis’ was a polite way of describing a bad case of piles. However, 2021 will take some beating as a pretty grim year and in fact a pretty grim decade. The only roaring of this Century 20’s is from frustrated revellers and travellers!

Much as I look forward to the sunny uplands of 2022, I can envision the lookalike of Harry Potter character Dobby, a.k.a Putin taking a bite out of the Ukraine and depending on the West’s reaction, Panda Xi helping himself to a new form of Chinese takeaway, Taiwan.

Then we have a Winter Olympics in which all western dignitaries have stamped their diplomatic foot and refused to partake of Dimsum and a glass of Baijiu with the hosts. In addition, despite locking down anything that moves, COVID seems intent on derailing that spectacle.

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????Kwanza is coming, The non-force-fed goose is becoming plus size ????Please transfer a bitcoin into the yearly challenged person’s electronic hat

Why...

Is the term Christmas offensive to some but if I suggested to my Muslim mates that they renamed Hadj or Jewish friends came up with a more inclusive term for Yom Kippur or Sikhs and Hindus festival of Diwali should be changed to ‘fancy dress day’, I would quite rightly be told to sod off.

I am confused as to what is wrong with cultural identity. It’s not offensive to others, just saying:

“Hi there, this is our excuse to let our hair down. Join in if you like, but these are the rules of the game!”

And to be honest a huge number do join in.People of all faiths pull crackers and put on silly hats on December 25th and I don’t hear many objecting to getting the day off.

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Buzz Aldrin is why I drink and my sex mad Uncle is why I cook

Why...

Are there such tenuous connections in life that lead to extraordinary outcomes?

When I was first employed at Lloyd’s of London for Kidnap and Ransom insurance it was during the heady days of the four martini lunch…followed by a discreet snooze in the afternoon. Then after Big Bang, it was all red braces and Porsches, and the only thing to put in your body was hair gel. As Gecko said, lunch was for wimps. Step forward a wimp.

There was a discreet upmarket cocktail bar and restaurant called the Victory Rooms in the City. So Old School you expected to meet Tom Browne, Mr Chips and Jean Brodie, in her prime.

Now I believe it’s a gym for your lunch break. In my day at lunch time it was manned by the super famous Savoy American Bar cocktail waiter, Joe Gilmore. My first day whilst sitting at the bar trying to work out what to order, I noticed a tiny framed a picture of Apollo 11 resting on the USS Hornet, the recovery vessel after that historic flight.

“Why is that there,” I asked.

Joe beamed and brought it over. I could now see the signatures of Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin. ‘Thanks. Would never have got through it without you’ it read.

When the three astronauts were asked what they would like to keep

them occupied for the two weeks they were locked in quarantine, Collins and Armstrong asked for various books and music. Buzz said, ‘“Fuck that. If I am going to be locked up I want to be blissful. Get Joe from the Savoy to keep us smashed”.

Joe poured me a combination of grapefruit, orange liqueur, and a hint of rosewater, topped with Champagne. “It’s called a Moonwalker,” Joe explained. It was heaven in a glass. I owe Buzz Aldrin my love of cocktails.

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Now it’s wind power that’s killing the planet

Why...

Is wind about to destroy life on earth?

At the recent COP 26 (have there really been 25 others) there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am by no means a climate denier but I am also a realist. Much as Greta and co would like, I am not reverting to eating mung beans nor limiting my travel to bicycle or Ox and cart.

In terms of transport, Genies once out of bottles are impossible to put back in. You have to replace them with a better one. Horses for steam train, steam train for car, car for plane… etc, etc. So, if fossil fuel must pass, it will only be because we have something as good, if not better. To me that does not mean running around in cars fired by a battalion of AAA batteries. I am quite prepared to wager major sums of money on two things.

The internal combustion engine is extremely efficient with lowering levels of pollution and will not disappear in the foreseeable future.

Battery cars are the Betamax of transport. The future is hydrogen.

Trains will doubtless move from polluting generated electricity to magnetised super trains and planes will get faster as our insatiable appetite to travel and save time continues to grow. I suspect jet technology will be around for at least another half century unless a real Scottie can be found with Star Trek’s dilithium crystals.

In any event, blocking motorways or just shouting in a march resolves nothing. We need brainpower to solve our current problems, not the boos and hisses usually the preserve of pantomime audiences.

So it’s really power stations, insulation and packaging that need the wake up call. Which brings us to wind. The kind cows emit.

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Stop. Open wide. Swallow. And be grateful

Why...

Are some of my health pills the size of an ice hockey puck and more difficult to swallow than a politician’s promises?

After my recent bout of infection following surgery, I was taking enough pills to sound like a maraca. This has now reduced to about twenty a day, a significant amount of which are health and supplement pills. Some are the size of an M&M, some covered in gel (I know Vegans hate gel) but a significant number are the size of a Buick and have no coating. Surely technology can get these down to a reasonable size… or it is just marketing. Make it look like you are getting something for your money!

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Whatever happened to the three martini lunch?

September 26, 2021
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations
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Why...

Have we let naked ambition put cordial working relationships on a strict diet? Of course I blame purple braces, red Porsches and Gordon Gekko. The first casualty from Big Bang in the 1980’s was the three martini lunch. If lunch was for wimps, then count me in (if that’s no too much trouble)! I remember my early days in the City working in Lloyd’s Insurance market on Kidnap and Ransom insurance. Twice a year I would have lunch in the Directors boardroom at Fenchurch Street Brokers with an underwriter who got deeply offended if after cocktails then wine, we did not finish off a bottle of port. Of course we were fried as owls and no work was done that afternoon, but we never had a row, always got our man back if someone was kidnapped and the world shone brightly through the gimlet of the bi-annual assault on our livers. Could this Underwriter have been a touch richer, more ruthless and generate more moohlah for his company? Possibly? But then I probably would not have wanted to spend time with him or give him my business. In 1980 everything suddenly got serious. Fun was out as the new slave drivers assured us no one could possibly get rich being a bit silly. I suppose that’s one reason why shortly after Big Bang I left the City and ended up working for a man who had made millions sticking his hand up a Frog’s bottom. Jim Henson and The Muppets were back then an Entertainment behemoth... and not that we ever overindulged in anything to the detriment of that wonderful company, but indulge we all did. And it all (like Kermit) went along swimmingly. Chalk one up to the silly people.

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Be still my beating heart. No, I’m not lovestruck. I am about to get on a plane

August 29, 2021
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Travel/Nature
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Why...

Am I so excited to get on a plane again?

After a catalogue of medical oopsy-daisies and the dreaded Covid lurgy-lockdown, my wife and I board the big silver bird soon. For me, the first time in 20 months. Love Malta as I do, you can carpet it in an afternoon. I have increasingly felt like Dustin Hoffman or Steve McQueen in Papillon, waiting to jump off a cliff with a net bag full of coconut shells to drift away to somewhere new.

I really don’t know what to expect at the departing or arriving airports. It appears things are totally random. When my wife flew to the USA earlier this month the words Covid or vaccination were never uttered in Washington DC, yet as she flew out of Frankfurt she was made to feel she should be hermetically sealed and vacuum packed. We have friends who have been grilled with more questions than a debrief of a defecting spy, while others drifted through without ever producing a vaccine certificate. As usual there is no consistency or joined up writing between what various health ministries decree and what happens on the ground

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If you are at home in summer it’s too damn hot. If on holiday it’s not hot enough

Why...

Do exactly the same events draw different reactions whether at home or on holiday?

It is a given if you live in a country with a hot climate, that summer is a bit of a chore. No one who lives here in Malta would dream of going sunbathing in August, let alone spend all night in an unair-conditioned night club. Yet as soon as we break the island’s shackles and go abroad everything changes. We all lay out like coffee beans slowly going from red to brown under a scorching sun in Marbella or visit a sauna with music that is some Greek nightclub in Mikanos. There we bop the night away as we slowly melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, to scramble back to hotels as dawn is breaking only to be woken an hour later by bin lorries.

Despite paying through the nose we actually put up with a lot more on holiday than we do at home. That explains paying silly money for a plate of pasta at a beach side bistro or a kings ransom for a bottle of champagne in a nightclub; neither of which we would ever pay at home.

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All posts in category: Food & Drink

What will you do over the holiday season?

Why...

For ffff fakes sake

Why...

Just don’t mention the weather

Why...

Screw you, or do you want to get pulled?

Why...

It only has to do one thing

Why...

Hmmmm. A gorgeous hint of bullshit, with on-the-palate flavour of Edward Lear nonsense poems and a strong aftertaste of swallowing a quaalude and The Complete Oxford dictionary. Welcome to tasting notes on wine and spirits

Why...

🎶 Here comes summer … or does it?

Why...

My wife can’t shut the front door

Why...

I never know what to put in each recycle bin

Why...

Things I want to buy Duty Free

Why...

Orgies are overrated

Why...

🎶 I’m busy busy busy doing nothing 🎶

Why...

Before I agree to sign on for 2022 I want to read the small print

Why...

????Kwanza is coming, The non-force-fed goose is becoming plus size ????Please transfer a bitcoin into the yearly challenged person’s electronic hat

Why...

Buzz Aldrin is why I drink and my sex mad Uncle is why I cook

Why...

Now it’s wind power that’s killing the planet

Why...

Stop. Open wide. Swallow. And be grateful

Why...

Whatever happened to the three martini lunch?

Why...

Be still my beating heart. No, I’m not lovestruck. I am about to get on a plane

Why...

If you are at home in summer it’s too damn hot. If on holiday it’s not hot enough

Why...