Food, Glorious Food!

It seems the English have a variety of ways to prepare eggs. Every breakfast selection offers eggs. Poached, fried(an English favorite), boiled, scrambled, with sauce, without sauce, you name it. This was fine and dandy for the Battys, but there was one little hangup. None of the Battys, except me will eat a soft centered egg. And, if you don't say anything to the waiter, all yolks will be runny. This is when we started to wonder if Grandpa Batty really was a Battty because clearly his direct ancestors were soft yolk people.

It took courage to order the soft centered egg because of the awkwardness of asking for special treatment, but what's a Batty to do? Simple, one would muster up the courage to ask for a hard center and the rest of us would take turns chiming in, "Me, too!" Oh we Battys, we stick together! Of course, we are always curious about food because our ancestors have a l-o-n-g history with growing and preparing it. In fact, nearly every Batty loves potatoes; thankfully this trip has shown us why!! It's in our genes or jeans!

Eggs aren't the only thing we were eating every day (we decided we'd watch cholesterol levels when we got home...). One night we ate in a lovely French restaurant (hypocrisy?) and were offered a delightful selection of all inclusive meals at a single price. Plus, it included a full bottle of wine for each person.

Or two giant draughts (they looked more like quarts) of beer or three bottles of beer per person. We thought those French were really onto something, and realized why no one would probably invade them anytime soon or have an uprising. Perhaps France will be the next place the Battys venture to....

Of course, this all in one price was ideal for us. All that digging in handbags for exact change to split every meal four ways was simplified. No one had to pull out their tip calculator, try to figure out whether or not to pay the VAT(we didn't know exactly what that was anyway) or whether or not the tip was included. We were content to just pull out our funny money, pay the bill, hop in a taxi and off we went!

We also discovered we have a way of sticking together even about our food. It turns out we never want to be singled out. So, this means that when one of us orders, the rest of us order the same...nearly every time. Or if we want a variation, everyone of us wants a variation. But since we were raised to never complain, we soldier on despite some of our food appearing with a raw tomatoes or runny eggs. We are clever with covering fish heads with lettuce, so the rest of us can eat, stirring the runny egg around so it mixes with something else or carefully cutting away the firm white of the egg away from the yolk. Battys know what Battys like and there is no middle ground.