A journey through the past – Wales edition

At the Dallas airport on Jan. 1, 2010, Amy ordered a hamburger while awaiting our flight to London’s Heathrow airport.

“How would you like that done?”

“160F please”

“Does that mean medium-well?”

Sigh.

We booked an airport hotel for one night to recover from the trip – and to learn to drive on the wrong side of the road, with a stickshift on the wrong side of the steering wheel, and negotiate the many, many roundabouts.

We ate dinner in the hotel bar where the only thing on the tele seemed to be … darts.

Next it was off to Oxford where we spent a quite lovely day and night with a colleague of Amy’s and her husband (above, right). Dinner was baked wild haddock with parsnips, carrots and other roasted veggies.

Today, we travelled to Newport, Wales, where many of the Powell’s hail from, including my father, grandfather, and others. We visited with a spry 80-year-old Keith Powell (below, left), a son of my grandfather’s brother, and dined at a carvery – a pub offering British fare of turkey, ham or beef carved from an intact bird or roast and served with unlimited roast veggies and other sides. While the food safety possibilities exist with carveries, this one was well-maintained and under the watchful eye of the carverer. Sorenne must have been starving as she gobbled up turkey, and when I refused a bowl for fear Sorenne would throw it at Keith or elsewhere, he asked as I put the meat directly on the high-chair table, “Are you sure that thing’s clean?”

Must run in the family. When I returned the table-top, the first thing a server did was wipe it down with a cloth soaked in sanitary solution.

Tomorrow, Cardiff.
 

Guelph is no Oxford – but the food hygiene sucks at both

When I began university, staying in an on-campus residence, the occupants had to sign up to a meal plan. That was 1981, and you could buy five pitchers of beer on a $20 meal card in the local dining hall at the University of Guelph.

The food was gross, but we always ate in our rooms, saving the meal cards for beer.

And maybe we were on to something. Because 18 years later, the uppity Oxford University has been outted as having horrible food prep standards.

At New College a mouse was found eating food from a wheelie bin and dirty work tops were identified.

Rats were discovered scurrying around the rear yard outside kitchens at Mansfield and Pembroke Colleges.

Council workers were appalled by the dilapidated state of kitchens at many of the old buildings and said they were badly in need of a re-fit.

At Worcester College part of the ceiling collapsed in the area where plates are washed but staff continued to carry on working around it.

And in the typical leadership fashion of most higher institutes of learning,

A spokesman for Oxford University said it was a matter for individual colleges and they would not be commenting.