Punting the River Cherwell

Punting is one of Oxford's great traditions.  Upon my first visit, I recall a number of people asking me if I'd written it into my agenda, but embarrassingly enough, I had no idea what they were talking about. Since my moving here, Fi's mentioned it once or twice, & finally, last Friday (Good Friday, as it happens), we found some time to partake.  Being an Oxford lady, she'd been punting on a couple of occasions before, during her time at Merton, & was excited to show me what it's all about.

 I will fight you.

For clarity's sake, by punting I do not refer to kicking a football on 4th & long; that would just be ridiculous.  In Oxford, punting means river boats, called 'punts', which look & feel something like a cross between a johnboat & a canoe.  Punts have flat bottoms, ideal for navigating the shallow canals in & around Oxford.  Instead of paddles or a motor, propulsion is managed by thrusting a 16 ft. aluminum pole into the riverbed, bank, or any firm surface within reach, then walking your hands up the pole's length, thereby pushing the boat in some direction, hopefully forward.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  My initial 15 minutes or so reminded me of trying to reverse a truck towing a trailer for the first time.

Low clearance is written into the English building codes.

Fi & I rented our punt just under Magdalen (pronounced 'maudlin'--still don't know why) Bridge on the River Cherwell where we'd be punting.  Once we'd secured a boat, the experience wasn't much different from tubing the Guadalupe.  Having packed ourselves a bag of snacks & a couple of bottles of liquid refreshment, we embarked down the river without a care for destination so long as we could take in the sights & enjoy a little peace & quiet.

Eat your heart out, Thoreau.

Although punting is quite a popular activity in Oxford, kicking back in relative privacy was fairly easy to accomplish.  Once we made it past a boatful of froggy buffoons in front of us, the next half hour or so it was just she & I & my bacon sandwich.  All told, we passed about two hours on the river, & that time made for a super enjoyable afternoon.  If it sounds even remotely fun or interesting to you, please say so when it comes time to plan your visit.  I'm all about going again.

 

 To punt or be punted

East Anglia

Fi & I have had all of this week off work, our own little Spring Break 2K11.  The fortuitous concourse of Easter, the Royal Wedding, & May Day allowed people in the United Kingdom to take only TWTh of this week as vacation in order to secure 11 days off in a row.  God save the Queen, right?  With that chunk of free time, we decided to take a little road trip up through East Anglia, visiting some friends & family along the way.

 This Sausage is brought to you by to Google Maps

Bright & early Monday morning, we bargained another Vauxhall Corsa from Enterprise, occupied the rear end with a couple of days' worth of crap, & struck out from East Sheen toward Colchester, where Fi's sister Kirsten lives.  We'd arranged to meet her for lunch on Mersea Island at a place called The Company Shed, one of those seaside goldmines valued for its cheap seafood, vinyl tablecloths, & good cheer.

 No time for love, Dr. Jones

Fi & I each ordered a cold seafood platter, a table-sized dish crowded with king prawns, shrimps, cockles, salmon, mackerel, crab, crevettes, mussels.  Armed with lemon, french bread, & a bottle of white wine, we indulged to over-indulgence.  By the end of the meal, our worst done, only a few stray cockles dotted an otherwise clean plate.  Glory.

Abandon all hope, crustacea who enter here

After lunch, Kirsten treated us to a seaside ramble, then we retired to her house for an evening of her warm hospitality, prosecco, & cupcakes.

 Thanks again for having us, K!

Tuesday morning we rose with the roosters for an early start to the day's journey.  Having said our thanks & goodbyes, Fi & I continued our northeasterly tack, now heading for Southwold, but pit-stopping at one of England's great archaeological locations, Sutton Hoo, a renowned 7th century ship-burial site.

Hwæt!

Having spent the majority of my time in grad school studying early medieval England, it was really exciting for me to see Sutton Hoo in person.  For your consideration, I'll abstain from the Anglo-Saxon history lesson & just say it's worth a visit if you're into that sort of thing.

After our romp around the mounds, we drove for Southwold, a small town on the coast where Fi went to boarding school as a girl, now a destination for beach-combing Londoners.  Fi was also excited for us to visit some of Southwold's pubs & sample the local beer from Adnam's, a nationwide brewery situated among the fancy restaurants & shops in the center of town.

Delicious beer.

We broke for lunch at The Lord Nelson, a salubrious pub just off the beach featuring pretty much the best fish & chips I've ever eaten.  Couple that with a pint of Adnam's Broadside, & I am a happy man.

Strike a pose.

Another pint later, this second one from the Harbour Inn, Fi & I tore ourselves away from Southwold & decamped for Holkham Estate, a spread of land two hours up the road, where we'd be spending the night with a couple of Fi's friends from way back, Nick & Jessica Forde, & their two youngins, Eleanor & Arthur.  Since Nick's sister, Sarah, is the Countess of Leicester, he & Jessica have special access to Holkham, including the cottage where they hosted us Tuesday evening. 

Great Barn Cottage

As it turns out, Holkham is kind of a big deal.  With its many regal buildings & picturesque settings, the estate has played backdrop to a number of events, movies (Shakespeare in Love; The Duchess), & other extravagant to-dos.  Perhaps the best-known attraction is Holkham Hall, the grandest example of a 'country house' I've ever seen.

Wicked. Large.

The Hall was closed that day, so unfortunately Fi & I didn't get to see inside.  Nick & Jessica did ferry us around most of the estate's other noteworthy parts, though, including a centuries-old icehouse, the estate obelisk, & even the monument to Thomas Coke, agricultural pioneer & 1st earl of Leicester.

North of the estate is the Holkham National Nature Reserve, which extends up to the coast in one of the most expansive beaches I've ever seen.  I'm not even sure a panorama would do its breadth justice.  It was enormous.  Nick explained that the British army used the beachhead for D-Day training missions leading up to the invasion, which made for an interesting perspective.

For me, the highlight of our time at Holkham was shooting Nick's rifles in the yard behind their cottage.  Nick is ex-SAS & has what you might call a buoyant enthusiasm for blasting things.  He knows more about guns than anyone I've ever met & was keen for me to try out his pride & joy of the moment, a recently purchased HMR .17, straight from the land of the free.

Note the moderator capping the barrel

Around 6 or so in the evening, Fi & I packed up the car & made off for London.  It's always tough to drive home following a day's worth of activities, but the rental car was due back at 11 pm that night, so off we went.

Oh.. that flower reminds me, one more item worth mentioning is all the Rape!  At the moment, the English countryside is blanketed with swathes of Brassica napus, & it's like nothing I've ever seen in America.  The rolling yellow hills made for extraordinarily scenic drives.

Egad, that's a lot of rape.

That's all for now.  Time for me to go get my Royal Wedding on.  Hope you're all celebrating!

Eating My Way through Easter Sunday

Happy Easter, everyone.

Today's sausage is all about food, specifically the sort that began its day in the Mooring kitchen, pit-stopped on my plate, then undertook the perilous journey through my digestive tract.  My day in London began with a crumpet.  I'd never tasted a crumpet before coming to the UK, & I daresay that doesn't put me in the minority.  The crumpet seems very English, doesn't it?  It's the sort of word that we Americans say when imitating a British person--tea & crumpets, mate?.  That being said, I'll confess that until I ate my first, I had no idea what a crumpet was.  Should you find yourself in that boat, here's a visual aid:

 Puck-shaped breakfast delights.

At first glance, I was surprised (& kind of revolted, honestly) to see one side riddled with holes.  The reverse is flat & uniformly brown, but the top's surface is completely cratered.  I have no idea why.  The divots do make it easier to slather on twice as much butter, though, & according to my English girlfriend, crumpets are a vessel for butter & Marmite, so.. game on.  The taste & texture are reminiscent of an English muffin, so I'd recommend dressing yours with a poached egg, smoked salmon, & half a pint of Hollandaise.

Second breakfast turned out to be a real treat.  As many of you know, the Mooring ladies love Italy.  Nearly all of them have lived there for some length of time; they speak the language, cook the food, & even own a special cable box for watching Italian television channels.  Today I benefited from their Italophilia in the form of cake.

 Mmmm... tinned cake.

On Easter Sunday, many Italians celebrate with a Columba, short for Columba Pasquale (tr. Easter Dove), a bird-shaped sweet bread very similar to Christmas panettone.  As such, the Columba was a headlining act in the Mooring kitchen this morning.  Here's the piece I ate:

It's fine if you're jealous.

After second breakfast, Fi & I spent a few hours preparing lunch, an ambitious menu of Greek & Middle Eastern delights.  The feast consisted of a glorious spread: spanakopita, grilled halloumi, tabbouleh, falafel, pita, tzatziki, hummous, & a green salad with olives.

 Om nom.

The sun decided to show up too, so we lunched on the patio to take advantage of the warmth.  Tania even mixed up a pitcher of Pimm's for us to sip with our meal.  Thumbs-up.  Dessert was a variation on the traditional English trifle, which is a dish of layered fruit, sponge cake, cream, & custard.  Ours featured rhubarb, ladyfingers, prosecco-soaked strawberries, orange whipped mascarpone cream, & crumbled pistachio praline.  Disgusting, I know.  Repugnant as it sounds, I'd be remiss not to supply a photo:

 Invitation to a sugar crash

As I write this post, I'm munching leftover spanakopita, one of the highlights of the lunch smorgasbord.  Were I to recommend any one thing from the plate, that'd be it (Fi did a fantastic job on them!).  Oh, & I'm washing the leftovers down with a Jennings Cumberland Ale, also very nice.  Overall, not a bad way to treat your stomach on Easter Sunday.  Hope everyone's turned out just as tasty as mine!!

Huevos Rancheros

I was feeling a bit homesick in the latter part of this week, so I decided to inaugurate the holiday wknd by cooking some huevos rancheros for our breakfast.  I still have a few dried chiles left in my stash, & the rest of the ingredients, thankfully, I was able to find in our grocery stores, even the corn tortillas (Mexican anything is extremely difficult to come by here).  Fi'd never tried huevos rancheros before yesterday, so it seemed an appropriate time to whip up some of that goodness.  Here's a shot of how they turned out:

Buenos dias!

Pretty nice, right?  The recipe for the ranchero sauce is one I've been using for awhile now.  For the most part it consists of rehyrdated chiles & roasted tomato, onion, & garlic, all thrown into a blender for the chop treatment.  I did some refried black beans as well.  Helluva way to kick off an 11-day vacation!

Afternoon Tea

Last weekend I attended my third afternoon tea, & I'm here to tell you, I'm sold.  Even days later, I still find myself fantasizing about scones, clotted cream, & strawberry jam.  Barring real ale & perhaps baked beans for breakfast, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a British tradition I enjoy more than afternoon tea.

 The Landmark's finest

Don't let the name fool you.  Afternoon tea is far more than a cuppa.  Each of those I've experienced was three courses in total.  The savory round, which consists of various types of finger sandwiches, comes first, thankfully.  This is a boon, because, preparation for afternoon tea runs along the same lines as Thanksgiving dinner, i.e. fasting all morning & afternoon.  By the time the food's arrived, it's all I can do to keep from double-fisting.  Sandwich offerings are fairly consistent.  I've seen chicken salad, egg salad (called egg mayo here) with cress, smoked salmon, mozzerella & pesto, roast beef & horseradish, & of course, the coveted cucumber.

 Not even for ready money.

Scones make up the second course, usually a basket of plain & another of currant.  These are traditionally accompanied by clotted cream & jam, though not necessarily in that order; in the Mooring camp, there's some dispute about which is spread onto the scone first.  Much to my regret, I never tasted clotted cream until I came to England.  Would that America knew how decadently toothsome it is.  CC's not just a one-trick pony either.  I've seen also seen it on the table served as accompaniment for other desserts too.  The British love dairy with their pudding.

Check out the napkin, folded into a lotus basket. Straight class.

The final spread means pastries, but that's something of a misrepresentation, since they've been there all along.  Probably the hangover of some torturous Victorian exercise in restraint, the desserts are featured on the table from the outset, daring you to breach decorum & gobble one up out of turn.  Although I gush about the scones, pastries tend to be the most impressive part of tea.  They're the one part of the meal not so confined by the tradition menu, so creativity & extravagance make for some beautiful plates.

That macaron was ridiculous.

My one beef with the pastry course is that it's last.  Restraining myself during first & second waves, inevitably, presents a problem, & I'm left weighing the discomfort of over-stuffing my craw against the dainty goodness of a bite-sized lemon tart, with it's delicate, golden-brown peaks of meringue.  It's a tough life sometimes.

I couldn't possibly have another cake.

As yet, I've sampled the Lanesborough, the Langham, & the Landmark for tea (all the best places are 5-star hotels with names beginning "Lan-").  Each had its charms, & I'd gladly return to any of them.  Fortunately, the Mooring ladies have offered to take me for my birthday, so 9 months down the road, you can anticipate a follow-up post featuring more delicious scones!  In the interim, let me know if you'd like to go to tea during your visit (hint, hint).  I'm always game.

Rhubarb Crumble

Tuesday evening Fi showed off her domestic chops by whipping up a delicious rhubarb crumble.  We got the rhubarb stalks from a Mooring allotment harvest, one of the first this season.  Fi suggested using them for crumble, & I found myself agreeing before she was even finished speaking.  I love crumble.

Stock photo.  Fi's looked 10x better than this, 

so I was too busy cramming it into my belly to take pix..

Though I can't recall eating much in America, crumble seems to be a pretty common dessert here.  That reminds me: they call it pudding.  In fact, all desserts are called puddings.  The question, "What're we having for pudding?" would in no way sound strange to British ears.

Pudding is for pudding.

Anyhow, as you can glean from the photo, crumble's a bit like cobbler, cooked fruit & sugar base topped in a streusel of sorts, usually butter, flour, & sugar, which then browns in the oven.  While we Americans would welcome a spoonful of ice cream on the plate with our cobbler, the British drizzle a warm custard on top of their crumbles, perhaps their version of a la mode.  Any way you translate it, the dish is delicious.

Atomic Burger, Hobgoblin, & Oxford billiards

Fi & I spend most wknds in London.  It's so close, & two of the other lovely Mooring ladies are there, so more often than not, making that east-sou'easterly journey on Friday after work is a no-brainer.  Plus, we always seem to have something to accomplish in the city--shopping, work, goings-on about town, etc.  As a result, I've spent quite a lot of time there since my arrival.  In many ways, having the Big Smoke just a few bus-lengths down the M40 has made for a fairly easy transition from NYC.

This past wknd, Fi had to be in London for her second job, but I opted to hang back in Oxford for a change. There were any number of to-dos in the apartment, & if bored, I could always venture out for some sight-seeing.  Oxford is quite small, but I still haven't seen all of it.  As it happened, MC was on his own for the wknd too, so we made plans to meet up on Saturday evening for a nosh & hit the pubs.  I'd read about a place called Atomic Burger on Cowley Road, supposedly the best burger in town, so that seemed a logical place to start.  Check out who was guarding the bathroom:

Goodness, gracious me.

The food at Atomic Burger was top-notch, so MC & I couldn't help but stuff ourselves silly.  Burger babies gestating in our bellies, we cruised up Cowley toward a former haunt of MC's, the Hobgoblin.  Compared to most other Oxford pubs I've visited, the Hobgoblin was huge, a wide open plan with plenty of tables & standing room everywhere.  They aired sports on the big screen & offered a selection of real ales, including Wychwood staples like Brakspear Oxford Gold & my local favorite, the namesake brew Hobgoblin.  In fact, I'm drinking one right now.  Go team.

From there, MC & I repaired to another Cowley pub called Star, rumored to have a couple of pool tables, which are a rarity in Oxford boozers.  God knows why.  Get some skills, people.  Anyhow, we arrived, secured some beverages from the landlord, & sought out the billiards room.  Sure enough, toward the back were a couple of standard English tables, 3/4 the size of the smallest one I've seen in an American bar (billiards engineers here must attend the same school as the automotive designers).  I deposited my £1 in the slot, far more convenient than clumsily trying to fumble in 6 quarters.  Much to my surprise, when the balls emerged, they were colored like this:

Stripes or solids?

Good luck trying to play 9-ball.  This country is so weird sometimes.  Anyhow, a few games & a few beers later, MC & I reached our fill of Greene King IPA & pygmy pool, so we toddled back to our side of town for some Zzzzs.  Great night!