Back from Milford SF
Oct. 4th, 2008 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaceyI'm tired out, but it was a great week full of fascinating people, mind-blowing ideas (almost literally) and about 160,000 words of intense critting. Twelve writers, 25 pieces of writing, 25 hours of formal critting and who-knows-how-many-hours of reading. The standard was scarily high. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mevennen , bluehairsue , maeve_the_red and chrisbutler were all there, plus some old faces and some new.
Chocolate and alcohol featured in varying amounts. Much useful information was shared. Post-crit discussions continued to chew over stories and ideas. Meal-time discussions often turned gory and at one point we realised that the Welsh language class - which came in on Tuesday morning and stayed for lunch - had gone very quiet just asbluehairsue was expounding on cannibalism.
Trigonos - the centre where the week is held - is a fabulous place with its own frontage on to a Welsh lake with Snowdon peeking up in the distance and the Nantlle Ridge looming up above. This is the view from the main house down to the water. Wherever you point your camera you come up with a magnificent landscape - even in the wet. It's not a hotel, but it's very comfortable and the atmosphere is welcoming and easy-going.
The only slight drawback (for me, but not for others I hasten to add) is the centre's food policy - excellent and totally praiseworthy in theory as it's sustainable (mostly from their own garden), but it's vegetarian with a strong vegan bias and sadly not really to my taste (or my digestive system's) as I'm a) not vegetarian b) definitely NOT vegan and c) not keen on vegetables except when served up with meat/fish and lots of gravy/sauce, veggie or otherwise - and cooked with SALT (please!). Breakfast was toast/cereal/fruits etc. so no complaints there. Lunches were fine (delicious home made soups). Starving was impossible because there were also yummy cakes with afternoon tea plus delightful desserts at dinner. But sadly the main courses for dinner diverged from my definition of food. No one else seemed to worry, but root vegetables al-dente aren't my thing. Crunchy green veg is grea, but I find crunchy potato and swede less appealing. I feel guilty for griping because the chef took great pride in his cuisine and for many people it's one of Trigonos' plus points. Also he very kindly made me other stuff when pulses or peppers were dish du jour. Unfortunately my idea of comfort food is shepherds pie and his is roast courgette and tomato with brown rice. Nuff said?.
Anyhow, I came home and made liver, bacon and onions casseroled in rich gravy. Ah! Much better. It's not the meat I miss, it's the gravy.
mevennen , bluehairsue , maeve_the_red and chrisbutler were all there, plus some old faces and some new.Chocolate and alcohol featured in varying amounts. Much useful information was shared. Post-crit discussions continued to chew over stories and ideas. Meal-time discussions often turned gory and at one point we realised that the Welsh language class - which came in on Tuesday morning and stayed for lunch - had gone very quiet just as
bluehairsue was expounding on cannibalism.Trigonos - the centre where the week is held - is a fabulous place with its own frontage on to a Welsh lake with Snowdon peeking up in the distance and the Nantlle Ridge looming up above. This is the view from the main house down to the water. Wherever you point your camera you come up with a magnificent landscape - even in the wet. It's not a hotel, but it's very comfortable and the atmosphere is welcoming and easy-going.
The only slight drawback (for me, but not for others I hasten to add) is the centre's food policy - excellent and totally praiseworthy in theory as it's sustainable (mostly from their own garden), but it's vegetarian with a strong vegan bias and sadly not really to my taste (or my digestive system's) as I'm a) not vegetarian b) definitely NOT vegan and c) not keen on vegetables except when served up with meat/fish and lots of gravy/sauce, veggie or otherwise - and cooked with SALT (please!). Breakfast was toast/cereal/fruits etc. so no complaints there. Lunches were fine (delicious home made soups). Starving was impossible because there were also yummy cakes with afternoon tea plus delightful desserts at dinner. But sadly the main courses for dinner diverged from my definition of food. No one else seemed to worry, but root vegetables al-dente aren't my thing. Crunchy green veg is grea, but I find crunchy potato and swede less appealing. I feel guilty for griping because the chef took great pride in his cuisine and for many people it's one of Trigonos' plus points. Also he very kindly made me other stuff when pulses or peppers were dish du jour. Unfortunately my idea of comfort food is shepherds pie and his is roast courgette and tomato with brown rice. Nuff said?.
Anyhow, I came home and made liver, bacon and onions casseroled in rich gravy. Ah! Much better. It's not the meat I miss, it's the gravy.
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no subject
Date: Oct. 5th, 2008 01:14 pm (UTC)I haven't actually checked my weight. Because I didn't find the main course to my taste I dived into the desserts and cheese enthusiastically (I was hungry) and I never passed up on cake. That's not good.
:-)
To say the chef constantly tells us he's a professional chef his meat cookery - such as it was - was not good. Juicy was a word not in his vocabulary. I'm trying to think back to the meat options. There was ham in the risotto on day one which was tasty but hadn't been trimmed sufficiently well so had some dubious bits in it. The chicken legs were OK (better than last year when they were not-quite-undercooked). But the sliced cold ham was horribly salty (and I like salt) and the colour was poor (it looked as though it had been sliced and left for too long). Was there any other meat? There was certainly no dark meat
We had the fish pie one day which was OK and one day the chef kindly made me mackerel as alternative to pulses, but cooked it by laying a piece of mackerel on top of some plain sliced potatoes and baking it in the oven without a covering and with no liquid, hence it developed a tough outer layer and was very dry.