Bon appetit...?

While I hold Britain's culinary masterpieces close to my heart - Angel Delight, bread and butter pudding, Marmite - there's no denying that our biggest contribution to world cuisine is demonstrating how many different vegetables can be boiled for a long time.

Now of course I live in continental Europe, and French-speaking Europe at that! The French, as we know, gave the world all the meals, and the Belgians followed this up by inventing chocolate. Or, at least, stealing it from Africa. The gastronomique delights awaiting me here would surely be endless.

Two such marvels entered my consciousness and then my mouth this week. The first was a packet of crisps. Like all right-thinking people, salt and vinegar has always been the best, closely followed by prawn cocktail and the more left-field tomato ketchup. But as Pete and I stood at the tram stop today, our eyes were drawn to a billboard for frites-flavoured crisps! Yes, crisps that taste like chips! Or chips that taste like fries, for my American readers.

What's more, they come in two varieties - frites with mayo, and frites with Andalouse (a classic Belgian spicy mayo). What's even more, Pete and I picked up packets of both at our local supermarket!

A special tasting was arranged, around the kitchen table. Results were...intriguing. The mayo one did taste like mayo, in that comfortingly fatty way, but given both a crisp and a chip share the common progenitor of a potato, it's hard to tell whether one tastes like the other or simply is the other. A question for the philosophers there.

To wash down these sauteed sensations I was lucky enough to see a bottle of Belgian beer I fancied (those supermarket geniuses placing beer opposite crisps on the same aisle). Made by a local brewery called Brewksel, this was a fine, crisp, unfiltered wheat beer apparently improved by the addition of brussels sprouts. Sprouts have been in Europe since the 5th Century (see comment about boiling vegetables to death, above) but started being produced around here in the 13th, hence the geographical name (though, naturally, within city limits we just call them sprouts). Could someone have actually turned this long-despised mini cabbage into a delicious brew?

No, not really. If it didn't have it on the label I'd not have guessed brussels had come anywhere near this Brussels beer. Perhaps there was slightly more farting than usual after I'd consumed it, but other than that - or because of it - I won't be returning for a second bottle.

So that's one hit and one miss for Belgian high cuisine so far! Next on the Davies tasting menu: the Lunchwaf.

The promise.

The reality!

They look like ordinary crisps! Or chips.

Whatever they tasted like, there was no question about whether Pete would finish them.

How could you walk past that on the shelf? Next time, quite easily.

A lot of fizz. Brussels sprouts always create gas, you see?

Hmm...no.

And some things are just too awful to contemplate.

The Lord's game

Many of the social ills facing modern America could be solved with one simple thing: more cricket. Given the chance to contemplate the ebbs and flows of a match over five days, life gains a new, better perspective. The things that are truly important (i.e. beating Australia) stand out, while the ephemera of modern living fades away.

It's a long time since I was able to go to a cricket match, and my spiritual health has suffered terribly. Luckily, the home of cricket - both the country and the actual ground - is but a short underwater train ride away now, as is my friend Ellen who enjoys the game almost as much as me.

When I mentioned we could attend the first day of the summer Tests at Lord's, she jumped at the chance. Ebay made sure we were suitably attired, and so we crushed onto the underground with thousands of others to witness New Zealand take on the unstoppable English. Unstoppable in our ability to lose, given we haven't been too successful for around 20 Tests.

Lord's is actually a terrible place, with all the sickening trappings of the British class system on full display. But the fuddy-duddies who run it did make one good move, which is allowing you to bring in your own alcohol. Apparently the aristocracy wasn't happy with the selection at the Lord's bar.

Over in the cheap seats we had a great time. It was, in fact, a little too exciting, with 17 wickets falling in a day! A can of ready-mixed gin and tonic took the edge off that. Not even walking past David Cameron - and remaining very restrained - could spoil my mood. We went back to Ellen's afterwards, where my poor Goddaughter Meg had been revising all day mid-GCSEs. Then we watched the highlights, to cheer her up, but also because there's no such thing as too much cricket.

Who could we be supporting?

They say British people aren't very friendly, but look how we enjoy hugging each other on the tube!

Only a little further and we can breathe again.

By the hallowed turf.

Cheers!

 Get your hands off our Ashes.

Ellen and I made it into the highlights package!!