Festival of colours

We’ve all seen that advert by Sony where the couple get involved in a paint throwing festival in India, or probably a spread in National Geographic about the Hindu celebration or you may even have a friend who headed east to find themselves and got caught up in the mix.

For me I always thought it looked so much fun but a trip to India was not an immediate priority having just moved countries and dealt with all that. I plan on leaving those far off destinations until I am a little more of a seasoned traveler, I wouldn’t want to go all that way and miss something!

Luckily for me a US company hosts their very own Holi festivals all over the country, they have yoga tents, DJs, Hare Krishna chantings and amazing food to fill your time between the hourly paint throwing. The festival is a family friendly event, they have a strict no drugs, no drink, no smoking, policy which I loved! And unlike most festivals, despite growing in popularity, these guys haven’t upped their prices, they haven’t used their name to attract bigger names or changed their core values. It’s a fun, family day out, reasonably priced (all in it cost us $13 a head) with a great atmosphere.

The festival ran 11am-5pm, we arrived at noon and bought our paint packets and the throwing began.
They have an hourly mass throwing where everyone counts down and throws at everyone and the sky, although to be honest I preferred to watch this from afar more than be in the thick of it. I mean I’ve dealt with mosh pits since the tender age of 13 so the crowd didn’t scare me – this one was far nicer than a bunch of hardcore kids, it was just so pretty to see the puffs of neon paint fly up into the bright blue sky.

We three paint on each other, on strangers passing by, and were attacked by the groups of children running wild and free. But no one did it aggressively. I felt like a hippy in the 60s, all peach and love, baby!

We left the festival after about two hours. Rus, his sister Kellie and I are all whiter than the driven snow and being out in the sun is a dangerous hobby of ours. But we’d seen all the clothing tents, we’d eaten some fabulous vegan food, we’d chatted to the holistic therapists and got well and truly covered head to toe in a rainbow of colours.

The paint is a powder paint, on the website it suggests shaking your clothing free of as much paint powder as possible prior to washing to avoid staining which is what it does when wet. The only problem is you can’t help but sweat in the heat of the day and purple armpits at the gym certainly receives attention!  

And can we all just take a moment to appreciate my husbands beard…

 

Queen’s Bakery – A review

One of the main things I miss about the UK is the food – the price, the ingredients, the availability, the quality, the taste. Just everything. So every time I see an attempt at British style food, be it fish and chips offered on the menu, a cadbury chocolate bar, an Irish themed pub (I know Southern Ireland isn’t politically British anymore but geographically it’s the same land, the same food grown, the same love for potatoes).

Some experiences have been amazing, we visited Dublin4 and had the most amazing meal there, some have been pleasantly surprising, I was not expecting Red Robin to provide such perfect fish n chips and some are down right disappointing.

I had one such experience at Queen’s Bakery this weekend.

I saw a ‘groupon’ for high tea for two at the Queens Bakery and got really excited. I looked on their website to see what sort of place it was, trendy and stylish offering delicious sounding (and looking) cakes and treats. I’ll be honest, I didn’t research too thoroughly. They’re taking the Queen’s name, that cannot be done in vain, so it must be bloody brilliant, it was a $20 offer and how hard can tea and sandwiches be?!

Well, if you’re a Southern Californian resident apparently it’s really hard. I blame it on the lack of decent bread, y’all don’t understand how good a simple sandwich can really be!

We walked in and I was immediately disappointed. What looked online like luxurious yet quirky decor was cheap and poorly finished, Queen Elizaebeth I’s portraits were wonkily framed cheap Ikea frames, the back wall was covered in a bad silver wallpaper job, the pink paint was tired and badly cut in and there were more tables than they really had room for.

But that’s just decor, their tea list was quite impressive.
I chose Earl Grey, Rus opted for a strawberry green tea. Our tea arrived first – with no milk, no sugar, no lemon, no honey. No NOTHING. Please do not limit my options and assume how I should drink my tea. That is not your job.
The milk, sugar and honey were all brought for us, upon request, along with two scones. Two blueberry scones served with strawberry jam and cream, no butter, and the cream was squirted out of a can.
Yes, squirty cream on a scone.
I understand clotted cream cannot be purchased here, but it is not hard to whip some double cream. It is just as simple to add some vanilla and make yourself some Chantilly cream.
The scones were okay, but small and flat, very hard on the outside with just a little bit of soft fluffy doughy goodness on the inside.
In fact they weren’t really scones at all, rather half-set shortbread biscuits lavishly sprinkled with crystallised sugar.

Next came the sandwich course, because everyone starts with a sweet prior to the sandwich. We had not been given a choice of sandwich, we were not asked a bread preference nor for any dietary requirements. We were just given eight sandwiches with four different fillings.
First we had tuna fish, quite a common sandwich filling the world over. For some reason the kind people at Queen’s Bakery had opted for forgo the ever popular mayonnaise that usually accompanies it and instead chopped up chillies to for the odd spicey bite. Each served on a quarter of a brown, slightly stale, bap.
Next was pureéd spinach with something the waitress couldn’t pronounce or didn’t want us knowing about so muttered. On white bread, crusts cut off of course because this is a sophisticated affair despite what the cheap pink walls say.
Thirdly we had cream cheese and cucumber. Again on white, no crust, bread. This was actually their one winning sandwich if only they had their ratio right! The cream cheese was spread thick, while the cucumber was thinly sliced so much so that it was more an essence of cucumber than a hearty crunch of the good stuff. Cream cheese is perhaps the only cheese this country does well. I’m not sure if Queens Bakery just buy an awful off-brand of if all cream cheese tastes so awful when served at room temperature. Living in a country where good hard cheese is so readily available and not obscenely priced I am not yet a connoisseur of cream cheese.
The last sandwich on our platter was a nutella sandwich, served on brown crustless bread, with some sort of nut-shaving to give the nutella extra crunch. Because there’s nothing worse than smooth nutella…? I love nutella, I plan on buying some for Pancake day this evening. But there is a time and a place for all things, and high tea is neither for nutella. But I’ll admit it was the only sandwich I could stomach on the entire plate.

Dear Queens Bakery, please invest in some ham, egg, mature cheddar, hell even jam for your sandwiches!!

Finally we made it to the dessert course. Even though we had technically started with it with our scones, we got some cakes to end on too. We had two bite sized brownies, two bite sized cupcakes and two cookie baskets filled with coffee buttermargarine-cream frosting filling. Also bite sized.
The cakes were okay. They were grey, they were mid ground, they were miles from the delicious pastries and cakes I can buy for less than £1 at my local bakery back home. After the awful sandwich course I was mainly just happy that they had made standard cakes and not decided to pureé anything.

We were just wondering about tip-protocol when something awful happened, nay two awful things happened.
Normally Rus leaves tipping to me. In the UK we do not tip all servers, it is not a career choice it’s a part time job for students – for the most part. A tip is commonly left but it is not a percentage of the bill, it is not dictated on the receipt what should be given, it is a ‘thank you for going above and beyond to make my experience more pleasurable, buy yourself a drink later’ amount of about £3-5.
I don’t appreciate it being expected here, I often find service is worse because they just expect to get 15% of your bill added on as a tip. I often don’t, I apply my British tipping method if the service has impressed me.
Rus’ brother is a server so I’ve already been told how awful my attitude is. Whatever, I’m on a budget.

So Rus and I were deciding if a tip was worthy, the waitress had done an okay job, I mean she hadn’t dropped anything, and she did seem to be working alone, and I had not proof that she had invented the pureéd spinach sandwich.
Firstly she approached the table next to us and asked them to leave – I was four inches from this table, we were practically eating together while politely ignoring each others existence. Their table was reserved for someone at 1:30 and they had been there since 12:30 so if they could just finish off. In the waitress’s defense she did seem to cringe as she said it.
Then I heard her approach the table behind us and offer to top the tea up with hot water.
I went cold. The tea was a little weak already, I had had to squish and squeeze the teabag to get it to release it’s beautiful flavour. And now this lady’s tea was at risk of being further diluted! Did she know or did she think that tea was meant to be a weak flavourless, slightly brown, beverage?!
The room started to spin and I had to leave.

I don’t know if Rus tipped, I just said “I’m done, take me for mexican” and left in a flurry.