Back from the buffet

What would your last meal be if you were on death row? Chocolate cake? Your mum's Sunday dinner? A fry-up? Pizza? Homemade veggie lasagne? Or for the meat eaters - a rump steak? 

I have a brilliant friend who always provokes laughter when she says that her favourite meal in the whole world is "a good buffet".

"Ooooooooh I do love a buffet," she will say wistfully, whenever the subject of food arises. And her love of the buffet is so well-known that other pals have been known to take tupperware to events where there is expected to be "a good spread" and smuggle home the leftovers for her.

But after my experiences in the past week, I have to say that I'm in total agreement on this one. You really can't beat a good buffet.

As you know from the fact that I've not been blogging for the last two weeks, I've been on my holidays - firstly for a long weekend seeing mates in Edinburgh and then for a week lying on the beach with my mum in Mallorca, arriving home yesterday.

But don't worry - I've not been anywhere near the supermarket.

In Edinburgh, thanks to the influence of a lovely Irish friend, I subsisted largely on a diet of Guinness and Bushmills. Mixed with a healthy amount of my old favourite Jack Daniels. The nearest I got to shopping was agonising over whether to spend £40 on a bottle of Jura Superstition from a specialist whisky merchant (willpower won out in the end).

And in Mallorca, we didn't need to shop due to the breathtaking magnificence of the hotel's buffet.

The Hall of Buffet

Now, I'd like to state that I was initially dead against going all-inclusive. I much prefer winging it while on holiday and going out to find cute local restaurants to eat in. But it was mum's choice, so I went along with it. And my god I'm glad I did. The buffet in the hotel had to be seen to be believed. I actually think my buffet-loving pal might have had a stroke if she'd been there to witness it.

The name of the hotel - Grupotel - should have given the game away. This place was populated mainly by Germans, and as we all know, the Germans are nothing if not efficient. They love a bit of the old 'vorsprung durch technik' so clearly any buffet aimed at them was going to be a highly specialised operation.

Breakfast part one

For a start, this was no row of heated trays in one corner of the dining room. This bad boy had an entire hall dedicated to it. The Hall of Buffet. And in this hall was quite literally every foodstuff known to man. At breakfast time there was a choice of a full cooked breakfast with FOUR different kinds of eggs, the continental meat and cheese selection, breads, smoothies, fruits, yogurts, cereals, pastries and jams. Mum and I took breakfast over at least two courses to fully savor it.

And dinner was on another planet. We began each day with a massive salad that peed all over the much-lauded Morrisons salad bar, then a main course which basically involved cramming as many different dishes, from different cuisines and cultures, onto your plate as possible. My theory is that some basic, almost primal human instinct kicks in when you're confronted with a buffet and you simply have to have a bit of EVERYTHING.

This rule also applied to pudding. Why have one pudding when you can have at least half a dozen?

And of course all this stodge does wonders for lining your stomach so you can enjoy the liberal drinks rations doled out by the waiters in the local bars later on.

A typical mash-up dinner

So I'm back home now and heading back to work tomorrow. But I'm looking a little better thanks to the buffet vitamins and the sun.

For a start, my face actually has a touch of colour - the kind of effect I usually apply with a make-up brush. Normally I look a lot like an extra from a zombie movie - all pale cheeks and dark circles under my eyes. Or perhaps someone who has been living underground for a number of years. But this morning there's a slight flush. I look almost rosy.

Just six puddings on that plate

And a week lying in the sun has had a similar effect on my body. I wouldn't call it a tan, but it's also a step away from my usual almost translucent skin tone. Admittedly I managed to burn myself epically on the first day (after confidently stating that I 'never burn') and spent the next two days looking like I'd been in some sort of nuclear accident. I had a diagonal red stripe across my bum which was so vivid that if I'd got creative with a blue biro I could have turned the right cheek into one of those funky new Union flag motifs that Stella McCartney dreamed up for the Olympics. And I've got the typical 'readers' tan' - weird white marks on the insides of my elbows from continuously holding a book.

But now the redness has faded I look almost healthy. When normally I'm the same colour as an uncooked pork and leek sausage.

Let's see how long it lasts before the usual harried journalist pallor returns....