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A Taste of Cofis in the Orlando Sentinel!
(America's 'Most Wanted' Couple!)
The Orlando Sentiel is the largest newspaper serving Central Orlando and Florida's No 1 Newspaper.
An article appeared in last weekend's Orlando Sentinel which spoke highly of a Caernarfon couple who show the world what Cofi home life and hospitality is all about. Dafydd and Dilys Jones have lived in Cae Mur for years and have over the past three years, welcomed over three hundred Americans to their home to sample some fine cuisine served up by Dilys.
Dafydd (known as Dafydd Esso to his friends) is a keen historian and has extensive knowledge on Aircraft's and the World War. Dilys has a big interest in local characters and has photos of most of the town's past well known 'celebs'.
They told Caernarfon Online "We love entertaining the Americans and over the years we have had a cousin of President Eisenhower a Major General, a millionaire and a rocket scientist to name but a few. They are all wonderful people with fascinating tales to tell. We have received many gifts from them following their visits and many keep in regular touch with us. We are very pleased to her that we have been read about in the Orlando Sentinel."
This is what the article said:
The Orlando Sentinel
A genuine taste of Wales
Congenial locals and travelers are forging firm friendships over home-hosted
dinners.
by Mary Ellen Botter March 30, 2008
CAERNARFON, Wales - The smiling couple striding toward our van didn't know us.
But that didn't stop Dilys and Dafydd Jones. Their welcome was warm and
genuine.
And before we had crossed the sidewalk and the Joneses'
meticulously tended front garden rioting with a mild September's many-colored
flowers, we were immersed in amiable conversation.
Strangers no longer.
One of the frustrations of travel is that you see a
nation's sights, but its people remain out of reach on the other side of a car,
train or bus window. You meet locals in shops and markets, smile at them on the
street and observe them across a restaurant, but seldom are you invited into
their homes and given the opportunity to see how they live.
Programs offering home-hosted dinners in North and South Wales open those doors
for travelers. For a fee about equal to the cost of a restaurant meal, visitors
can arrange to dine in a home on traditional Welsh fare.
Hosts are
carefully chosen for "their warm, friendly personalities and their passion for
Wales," says Donna Goodman, coordinator in Caernarfon.
Guests choose
themselves.
Everyday people
"We're just ordinary people,"
Dilys tells me as I follow her into her roomy kitchen, past the dining table set
with cloud-white linen, gleaming crystal and her treasured Royal Albert
china.
Now retired, she previously worked as a secretary at a hospital.
He's a retired truck and bookmobile driver, a town historian and an avid reader
about aviation, especially World War II-era planes and pilots. For fun, they
answer casting calls for movie extras. Even Gelert, their aged dog, gets
parts.
Their home is half of a duplex in what once was "council housing,"
government-subsidized rentals for families who couldn't afford to buy property.
Thirty years ago, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decreed that longtime
tenants could buy their units at a reasonable cost, and the Joneses
did.
Their pride in ownership is obvious in the splendid front and rear
gardens, the small but pristine rooms cleaned to within an inch of their lives,
and the well-chosen and sturdy furnishings.
In this space about the size
of a modest condo, they raised a son and two daughters and now welcome three
grandchildren. Dilys had baby-sat her 12- and 4-year-old granddaughters all day
before our visit and still had energy to host Idwal, our guide; Travis, my
husband; and me. Amazing.
Or, maybe not.
The Joneses are veteran
hosts. Offering hospitality on Wednesdays and Fridays between March and October,
they've welcomed more than 300 Americans to their table since 2006.
"I've
really enjoyed every single one," Dilys says. "We've had rocket scientists here,
Vietnam pilots, teachers, psychologists, psychiatrist, an architect . . . " She
stops and apologizes.
"You must excuse my English. We only speak Welsh
unless we are with English speakers."
I find her accent charming, her
vocabulary broad, her ideas well-expressed. No apology is needed.
She
stirs a pot of potato and leek soup and sets out bowls. In the background, I
hear the men deep in conversation about wartime aircraft. They pass around a
bent and weathered piece of a Mosquito fighter plane that crashed in adjacent
Snowdonia National Park.
Dilys serves small glasses of Irish cream
liqueur. (Idwal's driving; he sips water.) Our appetites sharpened, we're then
called to the table. Dilys places before us mint-colored soup with an ivory
swirl of cream, and we begin a feast.
I help her clear the bowls. (It isn't required, but it's a grand way to have a
chance to talk.) As the wide-ranging conversation rolls on in the dining room,
Dilys in the kitchen gradually fills the dinner plates with generous slices of
tender Welsh rib of beef, "dirty" (organic) carrots, red cabbage she has poached
in pineapple juice, roasted potatoes, a pouf of Yorkshire pudding and mushy
peas, which she pronounces "MOOSH-ie."
Americans love the big green version of peas with their creamy sauce, she says.
For the Welsh, this was the heart of many Sunday dinners, mixed with bits of "a
cheap piece of shank" (pork).
The plates fill. And fill. Until the bounty
threatens to spill over the roses-and-gold rim of each dish.
"I've got a
regular routine, you see. This is how I do for my own family," Dilys says. When
she entertains, she adds, she saves a meal for the 87-year-old man up the road
who has "nobody in the world" and very little money.
After-dinner entertainment
Out comes the couple's album containing photos
of each group they've entertained. They speak fondly of the folks behind the
faces as each page is turned.
"They're lovely people, every one," Dilys
says of the Americans. "It's as if they've been cloned. They're all lovely . . .
so natural, and so gracious and thankful."
She seems filled with wonder:
"They thank me very much for coming into my humble home . . . and I'm sure they
have massive big houses and loads and loads of money."
Dilys sets goblets
of trifle before us. "This is what we used to get on a Sunday with
tea."
The dessert is layers of custard, sponge cake and juicy
strawberries and peaches. "With a drop of sherry, of course," Dafydd
says.
Coffee and sconelike Welsh cakes are the epilogue to the epic meal.
The men go up the narrow staircase to Dafydd's office to see online photos from
the space shuttle, and Dilys and I chat. She tells me about losing her mother
when she and her sister were young, and being adopted by an aunt, poor but
loving.
In time, the good woman came to visit the Joneses at Christmas --
and stayed 35 years. Not to worry. "Dafydd loved the bones of her," Dilys says
fondly.
She has put a Rod Stewart jazz
CD on the player, and the melodies are irresistible.
We laugh and begin
to dance in the living room. Idwal descends and cuts in, gently whirling Dilys
through a song.
The Joneses stand at the curb waving as we drive away,
our thank-yous echoing in the twilight.
Re-produced with kind permission. See the full article here
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