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Lifestyle
Crossword Competition
Once again many thanks to our loyal competitors Trevor and Linda Sanders and Sue Lindsay for keeping the faith with our crossword competition. And this month we are pleased to welcome Derek Pearce to the fray. Full marks all round. This means that Trevor and Linda are now on 20 points, Sue is on 15 points and Derek is on 5 points. Our crossword competition goes as follows: Submit your entries to us by the copy deadline and each month we will publish a running tally of top five scorers. At the end of the year, the top scoring contestant(s) will win a meal for two at a restaurant in Rethymnon courtesy of the Bugle. And there are loads of runner up prizes to be won, too! And, just in case you were wondering, you don’t have to complete the crossword to enter the competition. All entries are welcome!
Recipe: Not The Eurovision Buffet!
 This is one of those things that seemed like a really good idea at the time and ended up being far less of a good idea later on. This is the problem with those brain storming sessions that take place over long lunches. Here’s how the conversation about our Euro gourmet evening started out: ‘Pizza slices from Italy. That’s easy’. Yeah, right, except for the fact that Italy hasn’t entered Eurovision since 1997. ‘Vol au vents with different fillings to represent France’. Fine, but finding ready-made vol au vent cases here is sometimes a bit of a challenge. And so it went on. Then we were presented with the added dilemma of which countries should be represented at the ‘themed buffet’ - which you are going to host on the Finals night. There are five countries who automatically qualify for the final no matter how dire their songs are. These are France - no vol au vents, but crudités (celery sticks and carrot slices), plus a chi chi dip will do; Germany - potato salad, - we’ve been through all that some years ago, including the problem of Cretan potatoes and how your potato salad might suddenly have to end up being Skordalia (garlic potato sauce); Spain (aioli, clearly, but much though I love my readers, you are never ever going to get that secret recipe out of me); the UK (mini Yorkshire puddings and things on sticks) and the host country, this year Norway. Smorgasbord - or as we have now discovered ‘Koltdbord’ - is actually not a bad option on the night….
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But you still have the semi finals to get through, too. This involves making predictions about the songs that might or might not make it and is going to have a huge influence on your menu options for the grand soirée. On the basis of previous experience we have been spectacularly bad at forecasting the winning songs, but here for what it is worth is the Bugle Music Team’s ‘Top Picks’: This year there are an awful lot of power ballads in the line up (and when we use the word ‘awful’, we use it advisedly). In our view, two countries stand out in the ‘If you’re going to do a power ballad, at least give it your all’ stakes. Those countries are Azerbaijan and Ireland (of course!!!!). Lithuania has a novelty item (as does the Netherlands, but we’re not sure the Netherlands thinks their song is a novelty item). Finland and Slovenia do interesting things with folk. Moldova, Slovakia and Albania have got boppy poppy songs in the true spirit of Eurovision, and Greece and Turkey are going to cheer us all up with their bouncy mixes of East and West. Get creative, get cooking! Unfortunately the core members of the Bugle editorial committee were less than impressed with the entries from their home countries. From the UK we’ve got ‘Sounds good to me’ which just didn’t sound good to either of us. And Belgium’s entry ‘Me and my guitar’ made us wish that he would take his guitar and go very, very far away. Enough of the irreverence. If at all possible, have a great international evening, and thanks once again to Kate and Tony Clayton Hathway and Elizabeth Creed for their input! |
Cocktail of the Month: OPA!
Here we bring you our all new specially created Eurovision cocktail to celebrate Greece’s winning entry this year (not being partisan at all, here). Though it has to be said that there are some people out there (including some key figures involved with the IMF perhaps?) who might not think it would be so wonderful if Greece actually did win this year. There will be a certain amount of cost involved in being the host country for the 2011 contest, after all. Anyway, leaving that aside, here is our cocktail recipe.
Ingredients: Orange Juice, Peach Schnapps and any one of your favourite flavours from the Absolut vodka range (but we’ll forgive you if you use good old Stolichnaya instead). OPA! Mix together the required amount of spirits and shake over ice. Pour into a long glass, top up with more ice and some orange juice. If you want a bit more of a zing, add some soda. We were going to suggest that you dribble some blue curaçao over the top to give a Greek Flag effect, but we’re not sure the combination of blue curaçao and orange juice is going to give you the appropriate aesthetic result. But hey, why not give it a go and see what happens?
Music to drink this by: Apart from the absolutely flaming obvious, the next number that springs to mind is ‘The Final Countdown’ by ‘Europe’….
