We take pride in our unique fruit entrées- sometimes a plated fruit salad, other times a mini portion of Bircher Muesli garnished with apple shards, or a homemade smoothie with carrot, ginger, orange and apple… On the buffet we have an assortment of cereals: homemade muesli, ProNutro, bran flakes, Weetabix as well as yogurt, more fresh fruit and a baked fruit compote, which in season consists of rhubarb or quince from the garden, otherwise stewed prunes, guavas or peaches.
Tag: guest house breakfast
It is grapefruit time
It is grapefruit time again and when my guest told me how much she enjoyed her grapefruit starter (a take on Bircher Muesli served with grapefruit) I remembered how my daughter loved her grapefruit. As she remembers: ‘ When I was a little girl my mother would give me half a grapefruit sprinkled with sugar, each segment delicately cut loose for me to eat it more easily. I still remember that bittersweet deliciousness, it’s such a fond memory, but thinking about it now I realize it was quite unusual for me to be eating, not to mention enjoying grapefruit at that age! Somewhere along the line, probably when I started doing my own shopping and choosing what to fill my fruit bowl with, grapefruit didn’t quite make the cut and many years passed without me giving them much notice.’
Lost in translation – my B&B life
I have a few friends who also run B&B’s and whenever we get together, you can be sure that within minutes we’ll be sharing tips, recipes, a joke or a funny incident. Exactly a year ago my friend Liza encouraged me to write candidly about the joys (and frustrations) of running a guest house, categorized on my blog as “My B&B Life”. This week I want to tackle tricky issues around accents and cultural differences.
An Afrikaans speaking person will ask for breakfast at ‘half sewe’ (6h30), someone from England will talk about ‘half seven’ (7h30) and another person may talk about ‘half-past seven’ – three different meanings to similar-sounding request, fertile ground for misunderstandings! I’m sure fellow B&B owners will sympathize with my frustration (because it’s probably happened to them often!) when a guest who requested breakfast at 6.30 (which requires a wake-up time of 5.30 for the guest house owner) then casually waltzes in at 7.30. The problem is that you’ve been robbed of an hour of sleep with only yourself to blame as, chances are, you were the one who made the mistake with the half-past six / half six story.