We can Travel Yeah! We are allowed to go to all sorts of places, not the USA ( as we won’t let them in , but not sure I want to go there at the moment anyway). Oh,we are allowed to go to New Zealand, but there is a catch, they won’t let anyone in ! A long way to go only to be turned around!

So virtual Travel is for the moment at an end, but I couldn’t resist just one more. Going through old photos and more I found a few from a bygone age. When my kids were commuting from Houston Texas to the UK after 5 dreadful flights via Amsterdam on KLM, I finally relented and let them fly via London on what had been Texas International, and then Continental ( now United). The joke was always lunch or dinner, the Same Old, Same Old, CHICKEN OR BEEF, always the same and when you flew that route as often as we did it got very old, very fast. The best part of the flight was scones and Cornish cream for afternoon tea!

To celebrate our relative freedom, we are still not venturing out and about more than we have to, but tonight we had only our second take away from Carousel. Carousel is a restaurant down the road from us, we were about to explore and then we were locked down, but meanwhile I have been supporting them in their efforts to feed NHS and homeless. And they Deliver! Even better !

Carousel features visiting chefs and until Mid July it is a Mexican Chef. Many will say, oh, spicy, or carb overload, or fatty, greasy and other such ideas, but from our many many visits to Mexico, we beg to differ. From Street food to top end restaurants, the food is delicious, and yes they do use chillies but for us we miss Mexican cuisine as we only had very excellent food whilst there. ( TexMex is not Mexican). Hence, when we saw that Carousel was offering a Mexican dinner, we invited the willowy Brunette for a socially distanced dinner.

The restaurant duly called and delivered our dinner and I had already download the instructions. Lots and lots of little pots and some bigger ones as well, all labelled with numbers, but weirdly most were number 3, so took a lot of deciphering. ( and I think that many of the numbers were wrong).

So the bottom line is, dessert, Chocolate Mousse was lovely, As for the rest, the Totopos, were like blue cardboard, the Ceviche was OK, the grilled corn broth, seriously short changed here, as I had to add bouillon to make three small servings.

But the biggest disappointment of all was the COCHINITA PUBIL, this traditional pork dish from the Yucatan would normally be very slow cooked pork, cooked in a pit barbecue. Obviously in the modern kitchen this is not possible, but Diana Kennedy, the worlds leading authority on Mexican cuisine, states that the meat has to be cooked for about 5 hours, so it falls off the bone, is then shredded, with all the juices from the pan poured over it. It says NOTHING about leave fat and gristle in. After the first few mouthfuls, when the willowy Brunette nearly threw up, I’m afraid the rest of it went straight into the bin, but not before I photographed THE FAT AND GRISTLE. And the corn Tortillas really seemed stale.

So sorry, Carousel, won’t be using you again !