Sausages

Our second meal on return from holiday was sausages. That is to say 'Top Table' sausages from Tesco's, their version, I think, of 'Taste the Difference' from Sainsbury's, mashed potatoes and lightly boiled crinkly cabbage, this last being a summer version of the ever popular Savoy cabbage, good stuff but easy to over cook. And a very good meal it was too.

While when away from home, for example in the dining area of a public house on the Isle of Wight, if one wants sausages and mash, one is unlikely to be offered cabbage at all, but one will get lashings of a dark brown gravy poured all over, maybe a quarter of a pint or more of the stuff. A gravy which seems to involve some kind of red fruit, some brown sugar and some E-numbers. If one remembered, I dare say the better places could give you the gravy in the jug - but with the downside that you would then find out that the mashed potatoes were not very good. They might even be persuaded to omit the drizzles of the other brown goo all over the margins of the plate, a brown goo which I think might be balsamic vinegar.

A further reminder of the difficulty that public eating houses have in matching the quality to be found in the better private ones.

But all that said, sausages and mash are a fairly safe bet when out; one knows what one is likely to get. So I must work on remembering to ask for the gravy in a jug.