menus and soundtracks

The menus and soundtracks for my life of late have been varied but satisfying.

I am about to go to the last Grad Hall of this year (i.e. it’s stopping for three weeks until September. Here is the menu (preceded by sherry in the MCR, followed by port, Bailey's and chocolates in Hall):

Starter: Grilled Goat's Cheese and Chutney
Main Course: Rump Steak
Vegetables: Mushrooms, Grilled Tomatoes, and Herb Roasted Potatoes
Dessert: Individual Summer Puddings (a cookie crust with various fruits and sauce);

Yesterday evening I ate some jacket potatoes which had sprouted, along with grated cheese, a heated tin of tomatoes, mango pickle (not the same as mango chutney) and some crème fraiche with a use by date of June 15th.

On Sunday, after church in the morning, I went to the MCR brunch, where we had a much bigger turnout than previously, such that an extra trip to Sainsbury's had to be made to supply enough bagels and salmon. Afterwards I went for a walk with a friend by the river, in the sun, watching the punts collide. This evening I ate my omelette and camembert on toast with mango chutney, listening to Brazilian pop music with the three Brazilian girls in the house. On Friday I went to an underground cavern with three Brazilian girls and two non-Brazilian guys to listen to live West African music.

The biggest recent happening was my sojourn in Strasbourg last week at the conference of the International Society of the History of Rhetoric, where I presented a paper. I nearly put on odd shoes one morning but realised before I left for the conference venue. Feedback was encouraging.

The venue was the Palais Universitaire, a rather splendid 19th century neo-Gothic construction with a large atrium in the middle of the ground floor, surrounded by pillars, giving plenty of space for mingling, fuelled by coffee and cake. I met younger and more established scholars; Jesuits, Baptists and Mormons; Americans, Germans, French, Korean, Japanese; male and female. An eminently civil assortment of humanity.

Strasbourg, as the mayor reminded us in the reception à la Mairie, is a frontier town, having a heritage French and German, north and south European, being nourished and buffeted by the varied currents of political, religious, social and intellectual history which have marked Europe. There we were stuffed with cake before being bussed to a concert in St Thomas Church, which had historic links to Martin Bucer, Albert Schweitzer, and Mozart. The concert, simple but soaring, put Mozart, Bach and Debussy back into their right setting.

The conference, to which I was recruited by Jameela, was wonderful in many ways, including its intellectual stimulation, its warm and friendly atmosphere and the amiable company I found myself in in the evenings (generally outside the restaurants around the cathedral and by the river).


Some other memories of Strasbourg:

Eating at a restaurant in the open air with the illuminated cathedral front in front of us and jolly oompah music being played behind us, being served by the jolly restauranteur.

Eating French icecream in the rain with a Japanese friend across the road from the European Parliament, having walked along the as yet unfinished tramlines ("let the reader understand").

At the end of the conference, we had a banquet at the Maison Kammerzell, a big medieval house turned into a restaurant which can house 360 people. The menu was:

Chiffonnade de Saumon mariné à l'Aneth,
Poireaux «Adeline»
~
Magret de Canard rôti aux Champignons des Bois,
Flan de Légumes
~
Kouglof glacé au Grand-Marnier sur
Coulis d'Eglantines