Dan loved the ocean and the sound of the crashing waves, so often we stayed at a lovely beach front hotel in Santa Cruz, and Half Moon Bay. He would sit out on the terrace at night in peace, and probably daydream. I think these were the moments that he worried not about a thing. I wish I had taken more photos of these places we frequented, and of us, but it was a work in progress, yet it was coming.
Dan found a place that he really liked in San Francisco. This was probably one of the first pictures we took together.
When Dan and Tina first stayed at my house in England, Dan had been building up his kudos as a bit of specialist consumer of gastronomic oddities....so I had some stuff prepared for him.
First night and down the pub for a few beers and Dan was squiffy...he blamed it on the larger UK pint glasses...ha ha...
We inevitably ended up in the curry house in my town...the good one that did the decent food.
He waded in with the, "I'll have a vindaloo then...". Both Tina (who I think had eaten UK curry before...) and I ( who had tried US curry) warned him of the potential consequences....the Crayford Tandoori also had a heat scale more fierce than usual establishments. Undeterred, he insisted on vindaloo whilst Tina and I enjoyed the milder madras.
Poor old Dan....he struggled and struggled and finally gave up having been well and truly assaulted by his dinner...too damn hot.
We retired not long after with Dan keen to try the full English fried breakfast he had been looking forward too the next morning....along with some other surpises.
Next day, I got up early and made a huge breakfast...fired egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms, black (blood) pudding, toast, beans etc etc...only for Dan to come rushing down stairs in obvious discomfort and head straight for the toilet...where he spent a majority of the day in varying degrees of discomfort to agony due to the previous evening's supper experience...poor boy.
Needless to say, I had 2 breakfasts that day!!!
When he'd recovered, I told him what I had planned for dinner....traditional Scottish haggis....meat and spices all tied up in a sheep's stomach....this sent him back to the toilet for a while and the poor old haggis stayed in the fridge.
We made it back to the pub that night...Dan would always recover enough to fancy a beer...and I brought home some supper....traditional jellied eels.
"No chance"....was his opening gambit on that one....and chose a couple of glasses of Youngs' Double Chocolate stout for his supper instead....pretty much all this would be gastronome had eaten all day!!!
Oh my gosh, Dan really loved his spicy foods! I remember he cooked a really yummy chili one time, and it was so damn hot that I couldnt stop coughing. I tried not to, but it was just too spicy. He told me that he really tried to tone it down, but wasnt even really sure how to. He really loved his spicy foods, including vindaloo which is one of the hottest spices.
