As I've got older my stomach and arse have started to protest against strong stuff. My late Linda used to love eating and making flaming hot curries, which I graduated to. She used to love Phal and Tindaloo (hotter than Vindaloo) and, over time, I got used to, and really enjoyed, eating them. But as I've aged I've had to moderate my taste and Madras is now the hottest I eat.
Linda used to always include a hot curry on the menu of our place in Spain which came with a prominent warning. Mind you, any fool can make a hot curry by chucking in a load of chillies. The challenge is to keep the curry smooth and full of flavour and hers were top notch: so much so that our place gained a great reputation and people travelled for miles to eat one. I honestly have lost count of the number of times that diners asked her to come from the kitchen to thank her. Holidaymakers used to turn up purely from word of mouth recommendations from friends and family who had eaten at our place - not only from the UK but from some countries in Europe.
As for tea, I now drink Typhoo QT instant tea which doesn't give me heartburn as it's smooth and I don't have to fanny around sloshing tea bags in a mug. Max loves strong black coffee with no sugar (ugh!!) but I drink Cafe Classic cappuccino that I buy from Home bargains. It's 79p for a box of 12 sachets and is lovely and creamy. Gasping for a coffee whilst shopping a few months back I bought a Costa cappuccino from a dispenser in a Tesco filling station. I paid £2.49 for a medium cup and it didn't taste as nice as the stuff I drink at home, which is less than 7p a cup.
Should have known better. I'm not a brand donkey and can never understand why people slavishly queue up at a Starbucks or Costa to pay extortionate prices for what to my taste is no more than a reasonable cup of coffee. In our restaurant we had a Gaggia coffee machine and that produced the best coffee I've ever drunk in my life. But then it was bespoke in that we used our choice of beans, ground them and frothed the drink to perfection. Happy days in the midst of the backbreaking work involved in running a restaurant on the Del Sol.