Just Food Photos . Which is your favourite?
Sometimes it is nice to take a look at nice food items you have photographed. Here are a selection from the last few months. A mixture of foods ranging from exquisite Cod to piles of toast . 
Arcticterntalk.org
The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world
Archive for the tag “beer”
York Marriott. Could Their 3-course menu for £21 be the best bargain in UK?
Many hotels hardly seem to bother with their restaurants. They charge inflated prices to guests for often very average breakfasts and evening meals are often lazy affairs. Charging upwards of £20 for an average steak in a soulless environment. York Marriott is bucking the trend . During a recent stay a decision was made to eat and drink in the hotel as the bar and restaurant areas looked welcoming . The bar had a good selection of beers and the restaurant a decent menu. I took a decision to eat off the three course for £21 menu where there were 4-5 choices for each course . The food was delicious and the ambience great .
Bread cost an extra £3.50 but there was plenty for three and came with oils and butters. 
My starter was an excellent fish salad and not small either 
Others chose Leek and Potato soup
Fish pie and Chocolate tart completed my feast .
Lastly the service was good and people serving happy and smiling, not always a given in hotel restaurants. If you happen to stay here it is well worth eating and drinking here too.
Distracted By The Moon Over The Ealing Road End During Brentford v Bolton
During the second half of the recent game versus Bolton, the view over the Ealing Road stand was as good as any I have seen in years watching Brentford. So instead of photographing Neal Maupay rampaging through the Bolton defence , I spent 5 minutes capturing this beautiful moon. 
When we move to Lionel road I will miss hugely Griffin Park and moments like this will forever be remembered. 
These three photos were taken only a few minutes apart and using different exposures. Don’t let anyone ever say it’s easy to photograph the moon. Sometimes you get lucky and some of the trees behind the Ealing Road stand can be seen in front of the over exposed moon making an interesting image.
Reethi Beach Resort Maldives
Reethi Beach is one of the newer resorts in Maldives. For those not familiar with Maldives, they are essentially a series of islands, some of which have been transformed into resorts. 
Reethi Beach is a good resort although the complexity of travel in the Maldives means that getting there might take a bit longer than some other resorts. Flights arrive in Male and for some resorts a speedboat transfer is relatively quick – for example one could be in Kuda Huraa in less than 30 minutes. Most, however, require either a seaplane or an internal flight. Seaplanes look incredibly cool but do not come cheap and can add almost £1000 onto a holiday cost. 
Getting to Reethi Beach requires an internal flight, then a short bus ride and finally a 20 minutes boat transfer each with its obligatory delay. So upfront I will say that the only negative about Reethi Beach is having arrived in Male at 8.30 am it was near enough 13.00 before arriving at the resort. The rest is entirely positive. If your bank account allows it seaplane is recommended but also remember a 20 kg luggage maximum and 5kg for hand luggage.
Reethi Beach is one hour ahead of Male time so it operates +5 compared to UK. The island takes maybe 30 minutes to walk around on the beaches.
Accommodation is chalets. A few water bungalows. Chalets are comfortable and clean but this is the Maldives so the occasional insect and cockroach cannot be discounted nor frankly prevented. Meals are buffet style for those on all inclusive. The food is superb beyond belief. Plenty of vegetarian options. The weather depends partially on the seasons, but you can reasonably expect 28-30 C sunshine most days, the occasional full cloudy day but rain showers also most days. These usually come and go in an hour. Beaches are idyllic. You can pay for a whole variety more of course including various dining options and range of water-sports. Snorkelling is not so good as some of the other islands but not too bad. Stingrays come right to the sea edge to get fed at 18.00 but also some with either bigger stomachs or cheaper watches come any time to say hi. Three herons patrol their beach territory and allow you within about 5 metres. Maybe less. 
Prices in other locations vary enormously but essentially paying more gets you relatively less. I would personally recommend Reethi Beach for most people unless you expect the luxury that you get from other resorts paying perhaps 3-4 times more.
Things to recommend though. Pay for coffee in the Moodhu bar that sits on stilts over the sea. Views are great and the coffee is sublime . Expect to pay maybe 5$ for a superb hazelnut latte .
Around the edges of the island you will find huge man-made sandbags that probably contain more rock than sand, to prevent erosion of the beaches and create some quiet little inlets. As with all Maldivian islands probably a week is enough or ten days maximum. After that maybe most have had enough sun, food and relaxing. I would personally recommend Reethi Beach. All the photos you see here were taken by myself in October 2018. Lastly there is free WiFi in public areas and also if you position yourself on the beaches near the bars and restaurants you can access it there too.
The resort also make more effort with night entertainment than many others. Live music, DJs and Quiz evenings are actually not a bad effort considering the geography.
FA cup First Round. The grounds are hardly crowded. Why ?
The media are full of the glamour of the FA cup. Sadly for many if not most teams that glamour is somewhat tarnished.
Not everyone is aware that the FA cup starts in August and ends in May. The early qualifying rounds are a god given chance for nonleague teams to make a small amount of money from the moderately attractive prize money on offer. By the time the first round rolls round in November the media suddenly awake with their stories of candlestick makers and funeral directors somehow managing to combine a job and a nonleague football career. Curiously they manage that on each of the other 364 days. As overheard at the recent Met Police FA trophy game a player when asked if he was playing on Tuesday simply answered negatively as was working. As Moriarty famously said in Sherlock “ that’s what people do”.
The glamour of the first round however comes with sadness too. The crowds at many grounds , sometimes famous grounds in FA cup parlor, were poor if not pathetic. The reasons may be varied. Clubs that decide not to offer deals and retain normal charges . Clubs that poorly advertise. Clubs that simply do not care as the league club imagines that the prize money more than compensates.
Let’s take a look at the winners and the rogues gallery. Starting with the rogues;
- Colchester. We all recall Layer Road and the Leeds cup tie. The crowd v Oxford City a pitiful 1775. Oxford won 1-0.
- Coventry. A crowd of 3370 saw a 2-0 victory over Maidenhead.
- Charlton. Another ex-premier league side . A crowd of 4494 saw a 3-1 victory over Truro. Around 1000 were Truro fans
- Blackburn. Premiership winners . A crowd of 3710 saw a 3-1 victory over Barnet
- Wimbledon. There has been enough miserable moaning from the club over the last few years about MK Dons and Franchise FC. The famous FA cup winners persuaded only 3394 paying spectators to attend their game against Lincoln City who had an incredible run last year. Terrible in my opinion. Need I continue.
So where were the decent crowds? The nonleague sides playing at home. Hereford who are a reincarnated club but with great cup history had 4712 watch them defeat another nonleague side AFC Telford. Almost matching the highest crowd of the round at Luton v Portsmouth. 5333.
What realistically can be done? There are three options
- Do nothing and watch the history and glamour of this great competition die
- Allow the FA to subsidise prices for the first two rounds such that the maximum ticket price is £10 or less and children are free
- In the first round seed all nonleague teams to have home advantage
To do nothing is not an option.
Cricket at Arundel Castle. Sussex v Leicestershire 2017. The Dogs enjoyed it.
Cricket is an unusual sport in that in the county games it takes four days to get a result (sometimes) and fans generally are less passionate about their own county than in other sports. a nice aspect is that many counties take a few games away from their main headquarters and take them to “out grounds” which are often cricket festivals and well supported. Sadly the crowd this year was smaller than in other years possibly due to the downturn in the success of Sussex cricket club over recent years.
A few photographs from a day in the hot sun. Some action photos including the wicket of Luke Wright, one of the most entertaining batsmen I have seen in 2017. A few folks hiding from the sun and a rather hot dog enjoying the sun. In fact cricket is one of the few sports where dogs are usually welcome and Arundel is am example of a ground with plenty of shade, walking space, and grass. A good place in fact to bring a dog, although this year with temperatures around 25c dogs were mostly seen in the shady areas.
Hot dog.
No Sun Allowed
Arundel Castle Cricket was not at full capacity in 2017
The Ice Cream sellers were amongst the most important folks in the ground
Luke Wright the ex-england batsman is bowled
A great name for a cricketer. Will Beer.
Painting Of Corpus Christi Festival Benalmadena Pueblo By Vincent Van B
Corpus Christi is the Catholic holiday in honour of the presence of the body of Christ in the holy water. It is celebrated throughout Spain and is held in either May or June depending on when Easter occurs. To calculate the next Corpus Christi date, look for the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday (the eighth Sunday after Easter) and you’ll know when the fiesta is set to begin in towns and villages throughout Andalucia.
This is a painting from Benalmadena Pueblo by Vincent Van B from Corpus Christi 2016. Today it is still typical to carpet the streets of towns and villages with greenery for the solemn Corpus Christi processions. This adds a special ambiance to the processions. The Corpus Christi parades also tend to attract all the local authorities, and in some cases, military personnel as well.
What can be seen here is not the petals that adorn the smaller streets but the greenery that is essentially decorative only.
Reflections on 24 Hours in Helsinki.
This is not a city that I find easy to enjoy. Maybe this is me and not Helsinki. Walking around the city seems bland in comparison with other Scandinavian and Baltic capitals. A kind of hidden vibrancy is missing, something almost invisible cannot be seen.
There were few smiling faces. Many engaged with their headphones, music and phones and not so much conversation going on even in the cafes.
The obligatory young persons uniform. Cigarette, headphones and phone. just dont let the world in
The harbour and marina areas looked tired and uninterested in visitors.
There were indeed many historical looking buildings, some grand and some not. But none enticed anyone inside.
Even the high steps did not seem dangerous or challenging when walking down them. There were in fact few people around. Maybe at different times in the year the feel of this city will be different but in April this city seemed comatose. The only time it came to life for me was when sitting in a hotel bar and in the next room a private function was taking place , maybe a record launch, with a singer and her singing was amazing. Amazing enough to download Shazam and discover who she was. A rasping voice that oozed feeling. The singer is called Katea. The song was California Baby. 
Much of the city centre is a melange of shops and shopping malls. There was little evidence of any pavement cafe society even allowing for the April weather. Few smiling faces. The architecture surely can be described as grand but is it beckoning? Even the trams looked sad as they slowly went their way through the city, with less self-esteem and grandeur than Amsterdam or Manchester trams, that would happily sweep you off your feet.
The only sign of life was inside coffee shops and the one that caught my eye was Strindberg down near the harbour area where enough people were inside to give me a feeling that I was not alone on this earth. The other one that also escapes my criticism is the Neuhaus cafe shop, that sold the delicious chocolates but also functioned as a pleasant street cafe. A cup of tea (3 euros for a teabag, but served in a curiously interesting mug) and some homemade mango cheesecake, though no-one ever states in which home it was made, kept me occupied for the best part of an hour.
The shop was run by a highly efficient girl who gave the image of being an academic student ( like a Latin or Greek scholar maybe) who not only ran the shop, sold the chocolates , took and ordered the food, but also made whatever had to be made. Clearly not a British employee.
The boats looked sleepy and disinterested. As though waiting for a different week or month to attract people.
In huge areas there were so very few people walking around. Part of the harbour area had some tents erected that were mini-restaurants selling mostly Finnish food, such as reindeer hotdogs and other more usual foods. 
Restaurants in the city centre of course there were many but often impossible to know if they were open or closed. Food was expensive. In many restaurants, just average ones, the main courses were around 20 euros and with a starter and a drink that made a fairly simple lunch cost over 30 euros. It was easy to find set course lunch menus costing 50 euros or more. Lunch seemed curiously to start around 10.30 am and by 11.30 am ” ladies that lunch” could be seen sipping champagne and having important conversations in some of the more eloquent looking restaurants.
There was little evidence of the wonderful and artistic graffiti that adorns many European cities. In the central part of the city rather curiously the only sign of graffiti was on the door leading to the National Library of Finland. In short the best adjective to sum up 24 hours in Helsinki is Neutral.
As in all cities there were a few characters to be seen, together with some interesting takes on hair styling. The exceptionally tall man in the bowler hat I oddly passed twice in very different parts of the city. People observing us might conclude that we were both spies meeting for our assignments. Considering spies there was no evidence of a queue at the Russian tourist board office.
A plethora of expensive shops abounded. Tumi, who some might recall I encountered at London City Airport, when finding a small carry on case there that looked good, then finding the cost was £675 ( and yes I checked the decimal point), was present. I saw one professional beggar in the same position on the same street, who started ” work” at around midday, and who incidentally wore better clothes than I own.
There were sights to see of course, but even these were quiet and few tourists were visible. Maybe I need to go back here on a different day or different season.
Do you want to help Bury animals? RSPCA do.
This just made me laugh. Another graphic designer who may need another job!
Lebanese Salad in Auckland Fattoush Photographs
Does anyone recognise what type of salad this is? It was eaten in an excellent Lebanese restaurant in Auckland called Beirut. It was called Fattoush. The food was excellent and was best eaten as a number of small dishes to be shared.
Fattoush traditionally is different to this version and is described as containing watermelon, beetroot, cucumber, parsley and orange blossom.
Fattoush
The menu contains a mixture of excellent other items. However not all versions of Fattoush are the same it seems. If we go to other websites we it described very differently
Fattoush is a Lebanese salad made with vegetables and crispy toasted flatbread, which soaks up the dressing beautifully. It’s a simple recipe, packed with freshness and flavour – serve this salad as a side to grilled meats.after midday —after midday —
A Great Place
The rants and warblings of an active and some would say disturbed mind. A Brentford Fc supporter and a psychiatrist and photographer. Welcome to my musings and rants.
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 