Saturday, January 7, 2017

Rick Stein: Long Weekends BBC 2 and the Jones family




Woke up this morning at exactly the time the alarm would have gone off on a week day. Today is Saturday so I am supposed to sleep on but that is not going to happen. Steve was still fast asleep so I located a sweater and pj pants by torchlight, picked up my kindle and glasses and trundled out. Steve is always saying that me trying to be quiet is like a herd of elephants heading for the water hole so now I don’t bother with trying to creep.

                                Rachel Jones and my own sunburned back in Japan at Worlds 

When I woke up I was thinking about one of the BBC 2 programmes that’s we had watched on catch up. It was Rich Stein’s Long Weekends series and the episode we had just seen was in Berlin. That was of particular interest because we did have a weekend there in the middle of last year and actually ate at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski where we went to meet our friends Steve and Rachel Jones with their children Harry and Emily who are not children any more.
 With The Jones Family In Edmonton, Canada 2014

The famous Hotel Adlon Kempinski is right next to the Brandenburg Gate and is rather grand, so it was surprising that as we approached the hotel, having passed through the Brandenburg Gate, that we were greeted by Steve Jones bellowing out ‘BELTIE’ in the most un-gentlemanly fashion at a volume that was heard by the entire swarming mass of tourists below the seventh floor hotel window that he was hanging out of!


So the other coincidence of all this is that we had only yesterday got the Jones family Christmas card/newsletter as a double reminder of the lovely catch up evening with friends who we only see rarely and then usually at international triathlon events. The continuation of the group coincidence is that on Facebook this morning FB had thrown a memory photo up and Steve Jones was in that photo.

 Steve Jones in the Blue sweat shirt, Beltie in white, me centre bottom

One thing the Jones family did not invite us to indulge in when we met for dinner in Berlin was the famous Adlon Hotel cocktail, The Kaiser Cup. In truth I had not heard of it on that night with the Jones but Rick Stein in his programme last night did have the TV audience watch one being made and then drool as he drank it.


Kaiser Cup Recipe
Have ready one chilled coupe Champagne glass
Cut one strawberry in half
Dice ¼ apple & ¼ peach & 3 slices of orange
These fruits should have been soaked in the alcohol that is to be added afterwards.
1 cl Gin (don’t like gin so would substitute a drop of Voddie).
5cl Cointreau
A dash of Grenadine
Add all the above to the chilled coupe and fill with champagne.
Pretty as well as tasty.
MMMMMmmmmmmMMMMMM

Maybe an Easter Sunday treat when Steve makes me a cocktail before lunch.

Mean while back in the real world once Steve woke up we did a 90 minute turbo session up in our little back room where it was a darned site cosier and dryer than it was outside the window.


No comments: