As I turned the corner into the churchyard, on a quick dash to the launderette,
I noticed The Heritage Center A board had been moved from the gate to under a
tree. Strange I thought, until I read the sign “Bees escaped” with an arrow
pointing upwards, as I looked up I realized Humphrey’s bees had left their hive
and taken up residence in the tree, WOW what a sight. This is a reasonably
regular occurrence, but they normally cling to the church walls, so to see them
all hanging in a mass formation was quite a sight. By the time I returned only
a few minuets later, quite a crowd had gathered and some gent had already set
up his tri-pod and was merrily snapping away. A touch of country life.
World Cup fever has
grabbed the majority of the nation, but obviously not everyone is a fan, so
what does a country pub do? With
over 7 years of being in Bampton, we have learnt that the summer and sunshine
is not always good for business, with weddings, music festivals and the
opportunity to have mates around for a bar-b-que, the pub can sometimes feel a
little deserted.
Paul and myself both enjoy football, so we decided to show every game,
mainly in our upstairs room, which is normally used for dinning, meetings or
private parties of up to 20 and show the England games downstairs in the bar.
Oh how the tabloids get the picture so wrong, we had no topless men, big flags
or drunken yobs, but a great bunch of male, female, young and old supporting
their nation. Some people elected to eat upstairs but the majority elected to
eat in the bar and soak up the atmosphere, which was great if sometimes a
little loud.
We supplied food at half time on the first England game, well it was
late and some were starting to flag. The next game saw us up against Uruguay,
Paul tracked this down, Chivito is
the name of a sandwich-style national dish in Uruguay, and consists
primarily of a thin slice of steak with mozzarella, tomatoes, mayonnaise, black
or green olives, and commonly also bacon, fried or hard-boiled eggs and ham. We
sold a fare few of them at half time and what a sandwich it was. For the last
tea time game we offered fish and chips at £5 we had at least 20 takers and
even though the squad was on its way home we had a good crowd in, who says
we’re not patriotic?
The Monday saw a “zero” birthday for me and Paul whisked
me off to Dublin for 2 nights, the pubs there were packed and lively, well it
would have been rude not to have looked. We did invite everyone to a disco the
following Sunday to help me celebrate, so thank you all and a big thank you to
our understanding neighbours, we did warn them.
With the hot weather arriving, food doesn’t keep so well
and this is an old favorite I put together this week to use up those black
squishy bananas (honest for this recipe its best that they are like that)
MOIST BANANA
CAKE
4oz butter
6oz sugar
2 eggs
2 well mashed bananas
1-teaspoon bicarb
2 tablespoons boiling milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
8oz plain flour
Method
Set oven at 350 F
(gas mark 4)
Cream butter
and sugar, beat in eggs 1 at a time, add bananas, followed by the bicarb
dissolved in the milk. Sift in flour and baking powder. Bake in 2 greased
sandwich tins for 20 minutes, or add a touch more baking powder and bake in a
deeper tin for about 50 minutes.
The smell is delicious, we served ours with homemade
pistachio nut ice cream, and you could serve it with any of your favourites,
cream, custard or vanilla ice cream. Enjoy, I promise you won’t be
disappointed.
Donna
