I was talking about my poor man’s holiday with a friend, and she accused me of being obsessed with what I was eating.
Yeah, well.
Day One
Chicken curry on rice with spicy chips, eaten with a friend in the gardens of Norwich Castle. And later in the day I picked up Infinity, the new Magnum (which is pretty much the old Magnum given a new name), from the kiosk in Chapelfield Gardens.
Day Two
A bowl of Lincolnshire sausage and potato salad, with other green stuff of unknown provenance stirred into the mix, eaten while sitting on the front at Gorleston and watching the world go by, providing necessary ballast so that the tide wouldn’t sweep me away when I went for my customary seasonal paddle.
Early evening and late night found me in Yarmouth, where on arrival I devoured a cheap and cheerful cheeseburger from a kiosk on the front, followed by a tray of chips drenched in curry sauce and then two scoops of Carte D’Or ice cream, amaretto cherry flavour (they no longer do Greek yoghurt and honey, which used to be my favourite).
Day Three
I started the day at Nibble’s Cafe in Lowestoft, where they do an ‘eat as much as you like’ breakfast buffet at £5 a head, with rashers of bacon, eggs, sausage, baked beans, hash browns, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes and some really tasty fried bread. I’m embarrassed to admit that I could only manage two platefuls.
Later in the day I had a Strawberry flavour Callipo (Calipo?), which was excruciatingly cold, and I ate that while sitting on a bench in the Sparrow’s Nest Gardens, listening to a man play show tunes on an organ. Then, because I’m a greedy beggar, I had an Orange flavour Calipo (Callipo?) while wandering along the seafront
Day Four
Things start to get boring now, sort of. I had a cone of chips with curry sauce off one of the stalls on Yarmouth Market, followed after a suitable hiatus by a foot long hot dog purchased from a food outlet that has recently sprung up on Regent Street. Finally I indulged myself down on the Golden Mile with more Carte D’Or ice cream, this time stem ginger and dark chocolate flavour.
Day Five
Almost but not quite a repeat of Day Four. Again I opened my account with chips off a stall on Yarmouth Market, this time with sweet chili sauce, and I have to admit that these were the best chips I’ve had in quite some time, living up to the legend ‘Now Frying New Potatoes’ (this is one of the most exciting phrases in the English language, not quite on a par with somebody saying ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’, but getting there). And I was so smitten with these that about three hours later I came back and bought another cone’s worth, with mayonnaise as my dressing of choice. Alas, they weren’t quite as tasty as their predecessors. And, to round out the day’s self-indulgence, I had a couple more scoops of that stem ginger and dark chocolate flavour Carte D’Or.
Day Six
Two Jumbo size hot dogs off the barrow in King’s Lynn, one smothered in English mustard and the other topped with hot chili relish. I suppose I should admit that I didn’t actually eat them one after the other – the first was on arrival in Lynn and the second just before departure, with several hours between the two. I couldn’t find any Carte D’Or, and in any event it was a wet and miserable day, so I wasn’t much in the mood for ice cream.
Two Other Random Days
These involved healthy stuff like salads, so I’m not going to discuss them on the grounds that to do so might undermine my trencherman reputation, which is already sufficiently shaky in the wake of the Nibble’s foodfail.
Tomorrow I may talk about what clothes I wore on my hols and the books I read, similar rivetting stuff. Or not.
So what’s the last guilty gustatory indulgence the rest of you guys treated yourselves to?
Trumpetville 
Like you, Pete, I am an unabashed admirer of the noble hot dog.
The best hot dogs I ever ate came from a wooden shack a street over from where Mary used to work, in north Dallas. The street itself was a “fast food row” of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mr. Jim’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Popeye’s, and a dozen others. We’d usually pull into the drive-through of one or the other during lunch, at the end of running errands.
One time, out of curiosity, we gave the shack a chance. At the drive-up window was an older woman, dressed all in black. Directly behind her in the shack, accidently bumping into her occasionally (crowded quarters), her brother manned the grill. We each tried their foot long chili cheese dog. Each dog was showcased in a pure white cardboard carton, absolutely drenched in chili and cheese to the point where it was hot and heavy in the hand. Himmel! They also made an extraordinary cheeseburger, tasting like one off a backyard grill, each bite filling the mouth with beef, cheese and grease, with a black pepper finish. God, they were good!
Unfortunately, the poor woman apparently was not entirely balanced. As much as we loved her dogs and burgers, we would still occasionally visit the other fast food places. She apparently would watch our car come down the street, and become distraught if we pulled in somewhere else. It reached the point where when we did go to her place, she’d berate us for not going to her every day (“What is wrong? What is wrong?”). Towards the end, when we’d pull up she’d be in tears, refusing to talk to us (I am absolutely serious about this.) We became so uncomfortable, we stopped going to her altogether. My mouth has never been the same.
However, tomorrow, for breakfast, Mary and I will each be having two hot dogs, mine with grey Poupon mustard and sweet pickle relish. In anticipation, I will sleep fitfully tonight, tossing and turning like a small child on Christmas Eve.
Hot dogs for breakfast Rob! That sounds agreeably decadent. And those shack hot dogs sound absolutely heavenly, though perhaps with a little hellish kick, courtesy of the old lady.
Ignoring ‘proper’ restaurants, my favourite hot dogs come from a barrow in the Riverside area of Norwich – large, succulent, meaty and reasonably priced. Regardless, I occasionally go to the nearby supermarket and purchase a salad instead, and I’m sure as I walk back into the city and go past him, the guy on the barrow gives me a reproachful look. Maybe it’s just guilt on my part.
You forgot to have any candy floss. I am so disappointed in you.
Yes, from your blog I see that you are a big fan of candy floss though for some reason I imagine you eating it after dipping the candy floss in rum or even absinthe. Hmm…
That sounds like a plan.
I like experimenting with food mixes. Brandy butter on crumpets at Christmas is highly recommended. On the other hand I once fancied a glass of lager and black, but didn’t have any lager in the house and so used shandy instead, and that turned out to be a disaster.
Woman I once used to know had a thing for raspberry jam and mayonnaise sandwiches. I’m not sure, I’m really, really not sure.