Cornish Cows, Cream and Ice Cream

I was going to write a post about London, but after watching the Eden Project DVD that I forgot that I had, I was eager to post about Cornwall. I went to Cornwall about a month ago, newly recovered from a monstrous illness that made me sleep 18 hours a day, or approximately 3 whole days out of 5. Determined to get better before I left, I took a load of antibiotics. If I was a cow, I would've thumbed my nose at me and refused to consume any of my dairy products or meat. Hell, I'd even consider my saliva toxic. But what can I say – I love human antibiotics when consumed responsibly and I don't plan to be eaten by any organically conscious carnivorous meatatarians on a blood thirsty food trail.



This is the standard postcard and painter's view of St Ives, a hilly little town by the sea. I decided this was going to be home base and found a B&B on the hill. Check out the view! This was just one of the windows of my room. There were 5 in my room.



I know England is the home of B&Bs, but I've had some pretty amazing B&B experiences in America. I stayed at Tregony Guesthouse and they offered either the full English breakfast with two kinds of bacon and more food you could stomach, or a healthier smoked haddock and poached egg. Either breakfasts come with cereal, fruit, yogurt, juice, toast, jam and coffee. Enough to push me over the edge if it wasn't for the absurdly steep hills with handrails to climb.

Anyway, I wanted to get to Porthcurno. The bus stop in St Ives is nondescript. The roads are so narrow, it's doubtful that a big bus could pass through them. Candice warned that buses were infrequent and things were difficult to get to in Cornwall if you didn't have a car and it was really a place where 2 or 3 days didn't cut it. No biggie, I had a bunch of time. So on the first day, and the most beautiful cloudless day, I decided to go to the hardest place to get to. No trains went there so it was alllllll bus. When I finally talked to the bus station manager, who rolled into work at 9.35, he told me that the best way to get there was to take service 300 all the way around. St Ives is on the top right corner of this crappy webcam screenshot map and Porthcurno is at the bottom, 1 stop past Lands End.



Jeepers.

When I boarded the first bus of out St Ives, I asked the driver what time we'd get there. And he said well, it was 9:45 now, and we'd get there at about 12:15. I balked. Then hesitated. Then I probably made a face. "But it's a LOVELY ride!" sigh. I paid the £6.50 and hopped on, thankful that I was still groggy from the overnight train ride into Cornwall and wasn't aware that the return ride was also another 2 1/2 hours.



It was probably the most beautiful bus ride I'd been on. It was open top and I roasted to a crisp on a cloudless day as we drove by fields and coastline. One of the first places we drove past was Zennor, which is between St Ives and St Just where Moo-Maid ice cream is from.



Actually, there is a legend about a mermaid of Zennor. But who cares about mermaids when you can eat some MOOMAID ICE CREAM? Especially when the ice cream comes from happy cows such as these:



This is how all cows should live, but big industrial agribusiness says NOT. So make sure all your beef and ice cream is grass fed, y'all.



Indeed, nobody can resist a moomaid! Unless you are unfortunately lactose intolerant.....or is that reallllly a deterrent?

On another day, I went to Trebah Gardens. Apart from a very nice garden map, giant rhubarb taller than you, some fresh fish and some Roskillys ice cream at the award winning cafe, I wasn't that impressed. It was rated one of the best gardens for children and since I'm easily entertained, a garden good for children is usually good for me. However, apart from a couple of kiddy signs and playgrounds, there wasn't anything every entertaining about it. Double disappointment, especially since I'd taken 3 trains and walked a mile to the bus terminal only to find out that the bus information was wrong and I'd missed my bus and the next bus was in an hour. I was fuming. I took a cab and when I arrived there, I told the concierge flatly that there was misinformation on the website and for an organization that prided itself on being green, encouraged sustainability and strongly suggested green travel, they made it AWFULLY hard to get there by foot and public transportation. I'm not that into gardens, but I'm into food. Flowers couldn't really make up for it. Only some Roskilly's Cornish Clotted Cream Ice Cream could.



Could you NOT be happy after this unless you had clotted arteries???



Look, happy bunnies!

Ice cream is all over the place in Cornwall. When I was so grumpy at Trebah, I made up for it with 3 ice creams. I had an extremely chocolatey one in Falmouth, the Roskilly's at the Garden and some Moomaid when I got back to St Ives. Good thing ice cream scoops in England are small. I also had some Kelly's clotted Cream ice cream in Porthcurno, but that was pretty unspectacular.

The Eden Project's ice cream was something to shout about though. I had 2 scoops of honeycomb and 1 scoop of ginger with the loose change I had left in my backpack.



This is an ice cream place under a verrrry cute cafe in St Ives, about 5 minutes from my B&B. What I'd like to know is...what is the Hokey Pokey flavour....

ONWARD.

Jesus ice cream. Does it mean ice cream by Jesus? or Jesus! ice cream! I'm not sure. But I was driven in a complete daze (I might as well have been kidnapped) from the Munich Hauptbanhof (central station) to lunch at Maria



where I ate Bavarian wurst and Peiz made faces at me as we put on and took off sweaters and scarves about 5 times in half an hour. Her cousin pointed out that this cafe was called Maria, Jessas was on the left and Joseph (a restaurant bistro) was to the right, and further right was a bar called Amen, which would quite fittingly put an end to the day. It is interesting that they would start off the day with ice cream instead of a proper meal. I LIKE this way of thinking.



The ice creams and sorbets came in a wafer cup and in true German efficiency, eliminates the need to stock cups and wafer cones. It also minimizes waste! I had the basil lime sorbet, and sweet Jesus, it was good.

good baked goods

Any map of the city center in Reykjavik is a little deceiving. Everything looks like it's a bit of a trek when actually it's a 5-10 minute walk. Reykjavik is a tiny and low lying city. So when Candice and I set out for what we thought was the long walk to Sandholt bakery, the oldest bakery in Reykjavik, we stumbled upon it unexpectedly quickly and it was right opposite the record store that launched Bjork & Sigur Ros's careers.





On the second day of eating and nature, I had a twisty cinnamon and chocolate pastry that comes in a long braid and you can tell them how much you want. I didn't realise they weren't in serving size portions, so the lady who was serving me looked quite horrified when I said I'd like 1 piece and I'd like to eat in instead of taking it away.



It's the most cinnamon crammed into a pastry I've ever tasted. Candice got a meat and potato quiche which was tasty tasty tasty. We both had a bad case of food envy and ordered what each other had had the next day.




They also had some earl grey ice cream, the best tea flavored ice cream I've had. The other ice cream that makes my top 3 favourite ice creams of all time was a tiny scoop of lavender honey Cornish ice cream at Borough Market in London.



These were some confections at the bakery. I have no idea what the chocolate bottomed cream boat was, or the curious green flying saucer like thing chocolate around it was, but I was sadly too stuffed to be tempted.







Icelandic pastry is yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmy. It doesn't look as golden and toasty as its French Croissant counterparts, but it is infinitely more tasty.


This is a picture of Mr Sandholt.

I met a couple who were raving about the gas station pastry they bought when they were driving around the perimeter of the whole country....mmmmm gas station food.



INCIDENTALLY, Icelandic gas stations have to be the most picturesque pit stops. This was the view from a gas station at Vik, which means bay in Icelandic. Reykavik means smokey/steamy bay) at the south coast (Suderland). Iceland is a hotbed for geothermal energy, so streets are heated by hot water that leaves the heating systems in the house so in the winter, they don't get icy. Verrrrry efficient. In older times, bread was baked not in a fire or coal oven, but in a cave heated by a hot spring.

Speaking of gas station food, this cafeteria was connected to a gas station and was where we stopped for lunch. I was a little hesitant about ordering lamb chops at what seemed to be a semi fast food joint. But all Icelandic lamb ranges free, and I am free to order it without too much of a how-was-this-food-raised struggle. In fact, this has been the one place where I can stop worrying about where the food comes from since land and fish are so abundant and there aren't that many people to feed – so enormous, crowded, dirty and unsafe farm monstrosities don't exist. I saw tons of sheep happily munching with tails wagging on artic herbs and grass on the way down and a happy sheep makes a tasty lamb. If you lived outside by enormous waterfalls, drinking glacial melt and eating angelica flowers, lounging in artic grass, you would be tasty too.





It was incredibly juicy!!!!!!!





I'm not sure what is up with the Zorro/Incredibles powerguy on the lime green juicebox, but there are plenty of weird food characters here. These jumpy frogs on ice cream boxes for example:



Finally, we had dinner at Fishmarket. I'm not sure if it was the surprisingly wonderful lunch that we had, or my tepid feelings towards Asian fusion food, but it was a litttttle bit of a disappointment. There is no reason to oversauce and over salt fish so fresh, and even though it was good, this restaurant was plenty hyped up and if you are ever in Reykjavik, there is better fish to be had.



They do make a mouthwatering passionfruit cocktail though!