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Wednesday, 26 October 2016

Tennerfest - Treat or Trick?

Now, a little back-story for you today, dear reader.  I have to give you this back-story in order to defend my corner.  For I've been doing a fair bit of dining out of late and there will be times when I have to drop my recently-adopted lily-livered approach to food shots on this blog and give you pictorial evidence of what I been up to.  For I have been eating.  Rather a lot.

You see, during the month of October, we have something over here called the Tennerfest.  The idea is for restaurants to produce 3 course meals for £10 and sort of compete with each other for the locals' trade.  This creates a buzz on the island and boosts restaurant trade in the relatively quiet period between summer and Christmas. 

That's how it started about 20 years ago.  Needless to say, whilst a few restaurants still honour the £10/3 courses, most have over time either increased prices so that a meal is no longer a tenner, and/or have reduced the number of courses for a tenner.  But a restaurant near us, here, is one of the few that does an amazingly good 3 courses for £10 ...


... and that is where I headed happily when I wore this.

(3 courses? £10?  I have told you I am tight, eh?!). 


(For my Sibs - my Little Boy Blue pose!)
Woolovers heather long-line jumper, Peacocks grey jeans. M&S snake print flatties.


And an embroidered mauve shawl, last seen here.


Nicely togged for a short evening stroll down to the nearby restaurant. But that's not what happened.
For the heaven's opened and the rain belted down.  So instead of a nice leisurely 10 minute stroll we had a 2 minute dash in the car.  I couldn't take shots of the pretty walk to the restaurant.  I didn't even get any pre-prandial exercise to justify my gluttony! 

That's autumn for you, eh, unpredictable.  Even BBC weather can get it wrong this time of year.  Err, Michael Fish and his infamous no-storm forecast hours before The Great Storm of October 87, under whose eye our island nested?

And now, with due restraint, I post you food pics but also with an added bonus, a recipe.


After fish bon bons, I had Beercan burger with gorgeous spicy chips.  I just had to try this from the menu as I'd first seen this burger on a Swedish blogger's site some months ago and had made the dish myself.  So I wanted to taste a Pro's efforts.

I'm justifying this food pic primarily because I want to share my recipe with you.
Here's what you do.  You roll your minced beef mix (mince with added onions, seasoning, herbs etc) into a ball then press down a can in the centre to make a well.  You fill the cavity with whatever gorgeous stuff you fancy and top with cheese.  I filled mine with red onions, cherry toms. mozzarella and lots of herbs. The restaurant's version was a mix which included mushrooms.  Oh joy! :-(.
Anyway. stuffing chosen, you then wrap the sides of the burger in streaky bacon and bake for about 20-25 mins, or less if you like it pinker.  
It really is rather yummy.  Fancy giving it a go?


But back to the pictorials of my gluttony, I'm also fessing up to pecan tart slice.


Very nice food, very nice servers.  Three courses. £10.  Thank you very much. 

And there you have it, dear reader.  My name is The Pout and I ate out thricely last week and I will be eating out three times again this week.  I am supporting local businesses during a quiet period by my over-eating, that's my altruistic starting point.  And I'm catching up with lots of friends.  All good.  

But now into my second week of gluttony, I am starting to feel decidedly uncomfortable, yet the meals keep coming with frightening regularity.  And I really don't know if I can take my 
altruistic task to term.  I don't know whether I can truly face my last few meals of the bunch, coming up scarily soon.  

I guess this is my own personal self-induced Halloween scare - eating out is now feeling more of a trick than a treat!



A la perchoine.