Food and Phones

On Sunday night I went to one of Jenny’s friends houses for dinner. His name is Martin and he’s a semi-professional chef who took part in Channel 4’s cookery show Come Dine With Me.

For the last week, Martin and four other people from Belfast were followed around while they looked for ingredients, took it in turns to cook their meals and then voted for each other to find the best chef by the end of the week. Martin came a very commendable second and his meal on Sunday night was very nice (a cheesy pasta bake, beef bourguignon, several types of bread and an excellent black current dessert). I’ll let you all know when the episode is aired on TV.

The meal was an excellent accompaniment to my home-made wine which, while sweet and more along the lines of port in its taste and strength, seemed to go down slightly less well with the group. I still feel it was six months of fermentation well spent, although I would encourage any potential home-made wine enthusiasts out there to make more than 2 demijohns worth (less than 12 bottles for half a years work – a measly 2 per month average!).

All this food reminded me that I needed to do some shopping before the holidays over the Twelfth (more commonly denoted by scenes like this). Most places are shut for marching day here and the shops that open tend to have no bread, milk or much at all as deliveries are also postponed for the holiday.

Phil had warned me on Sunday that you can’t get any reception in Sainsbury’s, so yesterday I was happy to put this to the test when I realised I had to call home to see what all I had in my kitchen. Low and behold, it was impossible to get more than a bar of reception and a text that was sent to me took over 10 minutes to arrive while I walked around looking for somewhere to be able to use my phone.

Eventually I found out that you can get excellent reception in the freezer section but ironically terrible reception by the mobile phone stall. Maybe it’s because the chest freezers are large and made of metal, acting like an aerial. Who knows, but the one thing you apparently can’t buy in Sainsbury’s is the one thing your phone can get everywhere else for free...