The Sage and I went to a wine tasting this evening. It was a lovely evening in fact, at the Yacht Club in Lowestoft. I've been a member *forever*, the Sage since he moved to Lowestoft in 1968 (in fact, my membership in the book dates from the date I turned 18, but I was a junior member from small childhood). They can't have made a lot of money from it, they were pouring reasonably expensive wines (from £11.50 to £19.00 a bottle) in generous half-glassfuls (unless you stopped them), and there were eight of them, and plates of substantial and beautifully cooked tapas came along, a different plateful, each with two different items on, per wine, and we paid £18 each.
I did drive home. And yes, I was perfectly fit to. I limited myself to three sips (not gulps) of each wine and I doubt I drank a standard glassful in the whole evening. I, the Sage and our friend were, I suspect, the most sober persons in the room. We were certainly the most sober people at our table.
I learned my lesson a very long time ago, when I went to a wine tasting with cheese. I can drink, or eat high fat food, I can't do both with impunity. I also learned that, when you're drinking a part-glass of several different wines, you can't keep track of the total. So, even if I hadn't been driving, I'd not have had much more than I did.
Earlier in the day, I did a large flower arrangement to help decorate the church for Harvest Festival, then helped serve teas after a funeral (my friend Brenda did most of the work, I just lent a hand) and then took boxes of fruit and vegetables and arranged them around the church. Some churches, I know, discourage gifts of fresh produce and prefer tins and packets of food to be given. I find that dispiriting. I take potatoes, carrots, apples, pears, tomatoes and so on. Proper harvested food. The village schoolchildren will take them round to elderly people in the village after the weekend, each with a bunch of flowers.
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Quite agree. Fruit and vegetables in baskets, bunches of carrots and flowers look well around the church and on the window ledges, along with drapes of hop bines. Tins of soup and packets of rice do not. That sounds like a real Harvest Festival.
I like to see a "proper" Harvest Festival too, with the church all decorated with produce, to give thanks to God, and managed the other year to persuade our church to go back to that. We auction the items off on the following day and send the money to a missions charity. (it was getting difficult to find enough folk to take items to).
Are you a flower arranger too?
There are a couple of areas in this post which could set me off, but I'm of a mind not to allow myself.
The school keeps a list and it's updated each year, there are about 45 retired people who live alone in the village that are visited. There's no need for a connection with church or school.
My mother used to belong to a flower club and sometimes took me to lectures so I picked up a few tips, but I'm no flower arranger. I turn out reasonably competent arrangements, that's the best that can be said. Anyone who knows what they're doing could see that I don't really!
Hello Dave, you popped in while I was typing.
Oh what a lovely way to celebrate the harvest festival.
I don't get that doctrine. Harvest by it's very nature, suggests fresh from the ground. Packets of rice? Tinned soup? Really?
The wine tasting sounded like an amazing evening.
Your project of taking the vegetables around to people seems a lovely idea. We really don't have anything similar to that. Does the harvesting of the last veg. make you feel sad? It does me.
Well, I understand that the reasoning is that, if the produce is given to elderly people, easy to use food is more practical for them. It also keeps longer. I suppose all food was harvested, in one sense or another, whatever form it's given in.
I usually have some vegetables in the garden through the winter, Marion, although not this year. Yes it does, except that I look forward to the next season's vegetables too. Tonight, we had runner beans and brussels sprouts, mixing summer and winter veg!
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