Fresh milk in hotels please!

Last week I was down in London for the Business Startup exhibition at Olympia, with the rest of the FreeAgent team.

We didn't all stay in the same hotel, so on the morning of the second day we were comparing notes about the hotels where we'd stayed - and none of them provided fresh milk with the tea and coffee facilities in the bedrooms. It was always those little cartons of UHT.

Now those may be not too bad in coffee, but I think they taste horrible in tea. Particularly in my favourite Rooibos. (No, hotels never provide Rooibos teabags either. I take them with me - much to the disgust of some of my colleagues who can't see the point of tea without caffeine. Sorry Ed and David, it just tastes good, that's why I drink it :-) )

So I always take, or buy, a bottle of fresh milk when I'm staying in a hotel.

Then I've got the problem of keeping it cool. That's usually overcome by filling the bathroom washbasin with cold water and putting the milk bottle in there. And hoping that, if I'm staying more than one night, room service don't empty the basin and leave the milk to go off.

I honestly can't see why hotels can't provide little fridges just big enough to take a pint of milk, preferably containing a pint of milk, and get rid of the little cartons. Tea and coffee taste so much better when they're made with fresh milk instead of (yucky) UHT.

Come on Premier Inn (where I usually stay when I travel on business, unless I know of a good B&B), start a trend!

A recommendation for Finches

We've stayed quite often in the past at Finches B&B in Cambridge.

And whenever we go to Cambridge (which is as often as we can - we're graduates of Cambridge university and still have a lot of friends living there), we always try to stay there.

Even though it's a 3-mile walk out of town.

Why?

It's very comfortable and always spotlessly clean.

It's not every B&B where the hostess greets you at the door with a hug (though of course Jane does know us well, as we've stayed there a lot before!). She and her husband Nigel are always friendly and welcoming, and to be met with a pot of tea when you've driven from Cumbria is bliss.

And the breakfasts are delicious. Home-made fresh fruit salad to start, with watermelon and mango in it, and no cheap cocktail cherries. Matt followed that with the full English, and although it did have baked beans, there were only a small pool of them - not covering half the plate to disguise the lack of anything else. I had poached eggs on toast. Mmm. Good quality seeded brown bread, fresh eggs and lashings of real butter. (B&B hosts who put margarine on toast and call it butter should be custard pied.)

We're already planning our next break in Cambridge..

What makes a good B&B breakfast?

Anyone who knows me at all well, knows that one thing I say a great deal is "My Dad says..."

So I'm going to start with one of his pet quotes... which is that you can tell the quality of a B&B breakfast by two things.

First up - the quality of its sausages. Sausages stuffed with rusk and other fillers, or made with not-very-tasty meat, drag a breakfast down. Locally made, good quality, seasoned sausages are pricier but boy do they taste better.

And the best of all are home-made sausages like you get served by Elizabeth at Ashcroft Farmhouse just outside Edinburgh. (Matt also loves her haggis and black pudding. Unfortunately I don't like black pudding and wouldn't eat haggis for breakfast, it's too strong for that early in the morning, though I like it for an evening meal.)

Dad's second tip for telling how good a B&B breakfast is - good B&B's don't fill the plate up with baked beans. They're a cheap way to fill a guest's belly and not much else! I can agree with that, and not only because I can't stand baked beans :-)

I also like something a bit different but special. Like the home-poached fruits, flavoured with herbs, that Reta at Violet Bank House offers as part of breakfast. Or Pete and Annette's home-made bread and Derbyshire oatcakes at Jaret House.

And one final thing - the milk for the cereal must be cold not lukewarm!! Lukewarm milk is reminiscent of school milk which I can - just - remember!

What makes a B&B breakfast for you?

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my new blog!

I've decided to start keeping this blog about two of my great passions - good food (cooking and eating it) and staying in a nice bed and breakfast.

I'll be talking about good places to eat that my wonderful husband Matt and I have discovered, and good B&B's where we've stayed.

Please feel free to comment and share your stories too.

Let's enjoy great British food and comfortable B&B's!