Had reason to take a friend for an early AM hospital appointment, them loiter in Skipton for a number of hours before collecting him after his cataract op.
I had a mooch around after my heart attack on a plate breakfast and mentally counted 9 independent coffees shops in addition to Starbucks, Costa & Cafe Nero. Not cafes, but coffee shops serving a few snacky things. They were all quite busy with a mixed range of clientele, heads buried in phones etc.
Obviously this coffee thing has totally passed me by....it must be a lifestyle thing.
If you are ever passing through Skipton, I recommend Coopers on Belmont Bridge. A small independent cafe with lovely staff and an extensive range of grub. Top quality ingredients...doesn’t bare comparison with Spoons and others of their ilk. 3 rashers excellent bacon, sausage, black pudding, egg, beans, mushrooms, beans, fried bread and proper thick brown toast & marmalade. Not the cheapest at £8.95 but sets you up for the day.
At least until early doors beer o’clock
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I’ll stick with a black Americano and a slice of toast. I used to like a fried breakfast but I haven’t had one for years and don’t think I could eat it nowadays Too greasy .
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Grease free at Coopers. Grilled bacon & sausage. I declined the fried bread (yuk).
Only the egg was fried..which is the only thing I ever fry at home.
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"Only the egg was fried"
And the black pudding?
I guess your walking burns off a lot of calories but as you get older and less active that fried stuff really piles on the weight. Even grilled sausages contain a massive number of calories so I try to avoid.
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>> And the black pudding?
Grilled at a guess.
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>>as you get older and less active that fried stuff really piles on the weight
I'm old and eat 10 fried eggs per week. I use a small pan with very little organic sesame oil.
I'm quite active and weigh under 12 stone @ 6ft.
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>>I'm old and eat 10 fried eggs per week. I use a small pan with very little organic sesame oil.
My favourite foods, in no particular order...
Eggs, all types; fried, boiled, scrambled, poached, omelette etc.
Tomatoes.
Mushrooms.
Cucumbers.
Mozzarella.
Eaton mess.
Egg and bacon sandwich (not bacon on its own)
Black pudding.
Pork crackling.
Chicken drumsticks.
I like meat and seafood, it's just not my favourite.
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>> Eaton mess.
Eton, Shirley. Or rather, not Shirley.
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>>
>> >> Eaton mess.
>>
>> Eton, Shirley. Or rather, not Shirley.
>>
A Freudian slip?
www.imdb.com/name/nm0247881/
In her heyday, one would have enjoyed being messy with Shirley! :-D
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Out of curiosity I checked out Wetherspoons Full English.
Wetherspoons publishes the calorie counts of all its meals on their menu – the full English is a 1515 calories.
That’s without the black pudding – which will add another 246 calories.
The breakfast consists of two fried eggs, bacon, two sausages, three hash browns, mushroom, tomato and two slices of toast.
Thats practically enough calories to last you all day!
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Just what every growing boy needs to start the day.
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Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.
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>> That's practically enough calories to last you all day!
>>
... the full "cholesterol surprise".....
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Can't get on with fried eggs, poached for me.
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You cant have a poached egg sarnie......
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Of course you can ! I think i might have one in the morning.
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Each to their own but the coffee culture to me is massive waste of time and human effort.
There are very effective and efficient machines available that will produce probably 99% of requested variants on the theme of strong/weak/long/short/hot milk/cold milk/no milk at the press of a button, yet they prat about with a machine that looks and sounds like a repurposed wild west locomotive for ages while there's a queue of people waving money at them, desperate to get a simple drink and get on with their day.
I and about 3,000 other people went to a thing at Goodwood and the only beverage outlet inside the circuit was the café. Imagine hundreds wanting a hot drink and two people messing about with a machine that can produce two at a time every couple of minutes.
They practically force me to say a "A Merry Carno" when I just want a mug of coffee with milk in. I think it's an Emperor's clothes job.
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The names attached to what is fundamentally coffee, hot water + milk or cream or syrup are no more than a way of parting folk from their money by creating a perception of value.
£3 for a cup of ingredients (often mediocre) which costs about 20p is exploitative, although as a way for people to interact it seems to work for many.
Personally I have not been taken by the coffee culture and only occasionally indulge. In case of thirst bottled water mostly does the job.
Spending £6 on a couple of Starbucks or Costas a day costs ~£700 pa. A quick win for many in the great energy crisis would simply be to fill a themos!
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Well I guess you can always avoid pubs and brew your own beer., avoid restaurants and cafes and take a packed lunch and sit on a bench in the drizzle with your thermos of instant coffee.
All of these places are more about socialising, going out and a change of surroundings than whether or not I could buy the product they sell cheaper.
If I sit in a coffee shop with buy a coffee for £3 read the paper or browse the internet fo half an hour in pleasant surrounding personally I think that’s good value. And a decent espresso machine makes an unbeatable cup of coffee.
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Just this second walked in from having a coffee out, if you see what I mean. An americano and a cappuccino (or as John Shuttleworth eloquently describes it, "a campaccino. The froth is well worth the few extra coppers").
It was pleasant surroundings in an independent little café, and an interesting chat with the lady serving. I asked for one of their "fat rascals", a kind of doughy cherry and currant concoction I've had a few times. Ooh, she said, we can't call them that any more. Betty's tearoom in Harrogate have complained we stole their idea.
So now they are called "Tubby Tinkers". I was pretty sure I went to school with Tubby Tinker, but maybe I'm wrong. The lady thought it unlikely.
On the way to sit down, there was a book on an empty table. As the place often used to have books for customers, I swiped it on the way past. It turned out to be some Mills and Boon thing. I read the first sentence in loud and disparaging tones to Mrs C. I was just saying how typical it was that such trashy things would have such obvious names for the characters, when I was interrupted by an elderly lady on her way to the other table who rather curtly said "Excuse me. You've taken my book".
So that went well.
You don't get that in Starbucks, but equally, "just make a drink at home for thruppence" doesn't give you that kind of experience either.
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This morning, on a dog walk, Mrs dog walker and I stopped off at the local coffee shop, not chain, run by a Sicilian*. Very good cup of coffee, MrsDW had a cartocciata with hers, while I had a pistachio cannoli. Enjoyable way to spend a morning. I am also partial to dipping a croissant inot a coffee for mid morning.
Tell me, what do you anti coffee culture jihadists do when abroad?. Pop into a pavement cafe for a cortado and a pastel de nata, or sit on the bench on the other side of the Calle de los campesinos ingleses with your flask of Pg tips and a rich tea biccy?
*abnormal number of Sicilian cafes round here, suspect its (or was) mafia money laundering.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 31 Aug 22 at 11:53
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That reminds me. Some years back holidaying in Greece we were sitting outside a little cafe which we had come to frequent for a morning cup of coffee and baklava.
A couple from of the hotel we were staying in spotted us and asked if they could join us. I said yes and the couple pulled up chairs and proceeded to unpack a flask from their bag and a packet of biscuits and proclaimed they weren’t prepared to pay cafe prices.
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We park outside the Jamaica Inn twice a week to walk on the moor.
The memsahib has a flask of coffee for when we return, and I have a flask of Ceylon.
We could pop in to said inn for liquid refreshment, but that's just there to fleece the tourists.
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>>Tell me, what do you anti coffee culture jihadists do when abroad?
Same as you. What works in the 17th century square in Delft somehow doesn't in Watford High Street. And the coffee is probably better value too.
I coughed up £2.90 for about 300ml of hot water and a teabag at Silverstone 3 times this weekend. Needs must sometimes. But I did take Tesco meal deals rather than risk the catering.
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>> Spending £6 on a couple of Starbucks or Costas a day costs ~£700 pa. A
>> quick win for many in the great energy crisis would simply be to fill a
>> themos!
Just one drink every weekday would eat up £700. And quite a lot of people do that.
We had a Costa franchise in the office I worked in over 10 years ago. There were always queues, and a good few colleagues would have 2 or 3 per day. The prices were lower than High street but still a couple of quid.
I reckon many were spending over £20 a week on it. That's over £1600 earnings per year for a 40% tax payer. We had kitchens with kettles in them so I took my own tea bags etc.
Bottled water is another racket. I like to have a few bottles in the car. My wife berates me for buying it because of the plastic so I re-use the bottles. When I do buy it, it's from Costco and £3.40 for 40 x 500ml spring water, which shows what it really should cost.
I'm not really tight-fisted, I just have better things to waste money on.
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"I'm not really tight-fisted, I just have better things to waste money on."
I think I'm similar. I resist coffee shops but sometimes I let SWMBO win. She knows just how much additional spend (over the coffee I mean) she can get away with, and it's not a lot :-)
Having said that, we were at a National Trust yesterday and had to take out a small mortgage for a spot of very average lunch. Lovely surroundings though.
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>> "I'm not really tight-fisted, I just have better things to waste money on."
>>
Beer.
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>> Having said that, we were at a National Trust yesterday and had to take out
>> a small mortgage for a spot of very average lunch. Lovely surroundings though.
We get our money's worth out of the NT, with our pensioners' subs, so I look on the cup of tea and a bun as a contribution. But the NT has adopted the repurposed wild west steam engines too. I don't object to them per se, it's their application to mass catering that just wastes everybody's time.
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Here in deepest Surrey, The NT try to outdo each other with the quality of their Sausage Rolls.
2nd place - Polesden Lacey has ones made from local butchers meat, Very Good
3rd place - Hatchlands, good but cant beat 2
1 being. Claremont. Pork and Port.
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You know Norwich don’t you Zero. The very best of sausage rolls are to be found in the delicatessen in Jarrolds. Excellent with a glass of wine in the a adjacent wine bar.
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>> I'm not really tight-fisted, I just have better things to waste money on.
As my dear ole cockney ma used to say. "Get out of it, we all know you are tighter than a ducks a r s e, and thats water tight"
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>> I'm not really tight-fisted, I just have better things to waste money on
...I reckon George Best got the balance about right....
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
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>> "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I
>> just squandered."
I always liked that. Of course the real meaning is that we should all spend our own money on what gives us the most pleasure.
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Coffee culture - CGNorwich
