Harry Potter dinner
For the conference banquet, we went to the King’s College banquet hall. Immediately several people exclaimed that it looked just like the dining hall in Harry Potter. Indeed it did! Long wooden tables running the length of the stone hall with a domed ceiling. The walls were lined with somber portraits of good old boys—deans, deacons, provosts, professors, and the like. The stained-glass windows depicted various college crests and university symbols, and some were labeled with important dates. The earliest I spotted was 1555. Wow! That’s tradition.
The food was pretty good, but perhaps only pretty good. The appetizer was an amusing attempt at nouveau: fish presented with salsa. It was tasty, but the description read, “Smoked salmon with chili salsa and pea guacamole.” No kidding—the pea guacamole was mashed peas with some kind of mildly Southwest spices. The salsa was good, but it was standard tomato-onion-cilantro salsa, with nary a chili. The Europeans called the cilantro coriander (that is indeed the plant—perhaps they just don’t have a different name for the leaves), and one guy identified it as “that spice used very often in Thai cooking.”
The main course was less impressive—either chicken breast or a portabella mushroom stuffed with brie and leeks. The chicken came with a sweet-potato dumpling, and the veggie option with a baked apple, and both had butter-drenched pea pods and green beans. But impressively, the vegetables were cooked crisp-tender, not boiled until totally dead, which can happen to veggies in Britain.
Strawberries and clotted cream for dessert—I think that refers to what happens in your arteries! Anyway, it was fun. The conference hosts regaled us with Latin blessings said before each course. I could just catch a word here and there-- gaudeamus igatur, for instance. I thought maybe we’d get a magic demonstration or see some members of Gryffendor House, but no luck.
When I visited the bathroom, there was a sticker with various emergency phone numbers for things you need in college: suicide hotline, AA, drug counseling, pregnancy tests. One interesting item noted that the morning-after pill could be purchased at most chemist’s shops for 20 pounds, and could be taken up to 72 hours after sex. You don’t see that in America.
When we emerged to go back at 10 pm, the sky was still light, although the sun had set. I always forget how far north Europe is, and this is almost the summer solstice. When I woke up around 3:30 am, the sky was beginning to lighten into pre-dawn!
The food was pretty good, but perhaps only pretty good. The appetizer was an amusing attempt at nouveau: fish presented with salsa. It was tasty, but the description read, “Smoked salmon with chili salsa and pea guacamole.” No kidding—the pea guacamole was mashed peas with some kind of mildly Southwest spices. The salsa was good, but it was standard tomato-onion-cilantro salsa, with nary a chili. The Europeans called the cilantro coriander (that is indeed the plant—perhaps they just don’t have a different name for the leaves), and one guy identified it as “that spice used very often in Thai cooking.”
The main course was less impressive—either chicken breast or a portabella mushroom stuffed with brie and leeks. The chicken came with a sweet-potato dumpling, and the veggie option with a baked apple, and both had butter-drenched pea pods and green beans. But impressively, the vegetables were cooked crisp-tender, not boiled until totally dead, which can happen to veggies in Britain.
Strawberries and clotted cream for dessert—I think that refers to what happens in your arteries! Anyway, it was fun. The conference hosts regaled us with Latin blessings said before each course. I could just catch a word here and there-- gaudeamus igatur, for instance. I thought maybe we’d get a magic demonstration or see some members of Gryffendor House, but no luck.
When I visited the bathroom, there was a sticker with various emergency phone numbers for things you need in college: suicide hotline, AA, drug counseling, pregnancy tests. One interesting item noted that the morning-after pill could be purchased at most chemist’s shops for 20 pounds, and could be taken up to 72 hours after sex. You don’t see that in America.
When we emerged to go back at 10 pm, the sky was still light, although the sun had set. I always forget how far north Europe is, and this is almost the summer solstice. When I woke up around 3:30 am, the sky was beginning to lighten into pre-dawn!
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