Kerala

Duvel promotion at Sainsbury's. 4 for 3. With new funky graphics and motivational guff. I needed no further persuasion. On the 4th bottle: "It takes time to become a legend in Belgium. True to a refined tradition upheld by the 4th generation of Moortgat brewers, each Duvel gets to ripen no less than 2 months in fermentation cellars. Still, it's a short wait for such an intense sensation."

Bacon and egg. Another 5-item cooked breakfast. Lunch: heavily dusted with pepper. Chicken curry and rice. Where do I begin? Some kind of Mexican thing, as authentic, I'm sure, as the previously shown curry. It filled the hole.

Fission chips. 6/10. Perfectly OK. I'm at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham. A few years ago I was at a medics pub quiz and the best team name was The Queen's Gynaecologists.

Sausages, I think. I asked the lady behind the counter. "Yes, my love! Fried bread is deep fried. We can do you toast if you'd like?" I sent for the healthy option today: a hash brown!

Apparently not necessarily*deep* fried.

Yes, the young woman was confused. Definitely nothing French about that bread.

@Smithy Fried bread is literally deep-fried sliced white bread. Conventionally it would be deep-fried in lard. It's a very traditional part of a cooked breakfast in the UK, but deeply unfashionable. Nowadays it's usually replaced by buttered toast. I've only had it a very few times in my life, on trekking holidays etc. Funny seeing it on an NHS hospital breakfast menu, but that breakfast would be deeply tempting after an overnight on-call.

Hospital cafeteria food, as a visitor. It's never good to be in a position to eat here. Breakfast of champions. Scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, baked beans, fried bread. The standard is strictly mediocre, like a railway caff or a roadside van. You could say it is as it should be. One of the customers kept calling it French toast. Lunch: (chicken) katsu sando. That's what they called it! Chips were my addition. Salt and lots of pepper. I'm rather cross with the universe at the moment, so I'm somewhat in the mood for self-sabotage.

Looks delicious, as your breakfasts always do. I was somewhere in the same vicinity this morning: Sourdough bread, frikadelle, gruyere, coleslaw, peperoncini paste. There's tea in the mug.

Oh, I do love anchovies! No one else at home eats them, so it's not that often I open a tin or bottle. I don't like the olive oil clagging up in the fridge, so I'll search out some packed in salt.

That's an air fryer jacket potato on the plate with the sardines. These were very good with a dab of peperoncino preserve, mashed into the spud. I used the olive oil from the tin instead of butter.

Shepherd's pie.

I'm in Norfolk on the coast this weekend. Bit of a splurge at Gurneys Fish Shop.

We moved to a more upmarket area as my career progressed a few years ago. I was impressed to find pigs ears in the local Co-Op. Ooh! It took me a few beats to realise I was in the dog food section.

I'm not really posh, so I use the fork concave side up for peas and baked beans. If I'm in posh company I would most definitely use concave side up to stay true to my working class roots. Welcome to the British class system. The overhand grip on the knife is the generally accepted technique in the United Kingdom. The "English hold from below grip" sounds like a pen grip? It's not standard in the UK but people do use it. I would sneer at this grip, and acknowledge my horrible bourgeois programming. While continuing to use my fork upside down.