Fun Foodie Day Out

Today I asked my trendy cool friend Macrina to take me around town doing what she does which seems to be hunt down all the cool places to eat and try locally produced delicacies from small businesses. Loved it!!!! I use my having been away as an excuse for not being in the know on the Vancouver scene but the truth is even when I lived here I stuck quite close to home and just always went to my fav restaurants. I definitely wanted to stop missing out and try some new things.

Vancouver is becoming a real foodie's paradise , with food trucks popping up all over the place and tons of cool and funky restaurants all around.

But our first food encounter was both interesting and free ! Macrina had seen on facebook that down the street the 3rd annual grilled cheese giveaway was happening today. What is this you say? Well it is pretty much what it says on the tin. Despite GIVEAWAY being in the title of the event, my brain stuck to the old cliche "there is no free lunch" and kept expecting to have to pay a few bucks. But no, it really was a giveaway! I don't know who organises it but some individuals (not any business!) just decided it would be nice to have a mini street party and just hand out grilled cheese sandwiches. There was music blasting and even a mini mattress/picnic blanket on the side shaped like a grilled cheese sandwich (see pics). Maybe i am too much of a capitalist but I just could not understand why anyone would want to give me a sandwich without wanting anything from me - they didn't want cash, they didn't want to brainwash me to to like some corporate organisation with sponsorship, they didn't want 15 mins of my time to do a quick survey to benefit some company. I kept looking around waiting for the penny to drop,but it never did. Eat the free sarnie, chat with some people all hanging out if u like, or not, whatever!!

Awesome signs directing u to event:

Giant cheese sandwich mattress and more signs leading up to yummy grilled cheese:

Macrina being a cool person as I have already mentioned, even bumped into other cool people like herself who had come to check out the event. So we stayed a little while chatting then we headed off to our next food destination.

This time it was macaroons. Check out all the awesome bright colours and flavours! I stopped listening when she said earl gray (the cream colour one with the purple flecks in the back) but I think there were pistachio, lemon, lychee... I can't remember what the bright green and bright blue ones are...

Yum . I definitely like earl gray in anything, macaroon no exception .

Lastly, we went to Red Wagon which Macrina explained to me served diner cuisine, but with quite a lot of smoked meat featuring on the menu. Between three of us we shared a Reuben sandwich:

And also something pretty cool, the pulled pork pancakes:

And yes I'm talking about north American pancakes, thick and fluffy with some yummy maple syrup. Sandwiched between the 3 pancakes was some delicious pulled pork!! When I read this on the menu I thought oh no that is weird that must taste strange but surprisingly it goes reeeally well together and I am def taking Keith when he gets here!

Fun day out! Can't wait to do it more! Thanks Macrae!

Chinese Food, I'm Over You

I love food but I have never been a big fan of Chinese food. There are particular things that I like a lot, like rice, but that is because I've never met a carb I didn't want to devour. Me and carbs are best buds.

My parents are very traditional in terms of their food tastes. VERY traditional. Like I've been in Zurich with them for a weekend and they insisted on having Panda Express. Whoa vomit. They love cruising and I think they've never been on one for more than 7 days purely because they cannot last that long without some choi sum (I can't believe there is a wikipedia page for choi sum). I think my dad is getting better since he travels so much for work now and I don't think they serve him choi sum in Africa on safari. But my mom and my aunt, uh uh. No way.

So for all of my childhood and most of my young adult life my exposure to Western food (which I like to unpolitically correctly call White People Food) consisted mainly of McDonalds. I'm not complaining, I love McDonalds. Sometimes I get the flyers through the door and I hide them in my handbag safe out of Keith's reach (he will bin them if he sees them) hoping for an opportunity when he's going out that I can sneak a good ol' filet o'fish and french fries. But it meant that I did not regularly eat a lot of foods until I was in my late teens. Dairy products are not popular in Chinese cuisine - the cow is for plowing rice fields, not for the pampering and milking! For example, cheese was something which I never had as a kid - really only had kraft slices (at home and on top of afore-mentioned Maccy D's) and maybe a few cubes of mozza and cheddar on snack plates at parties. Can't remember when I first tried brie but mmm I sure was missing out. To this day, I'm still scared of the really stinky blue cheeses. And I don't think I actually ever tried yogurt until I moved to the UK (at the age of 24) and on a whim decided that yogurt might be a nice snack to have in my fridge.

But I did realize my love for mashed potatoes early on (see? carb!), and bless her, my grandma did try to make me some for dinner quite regularly, but butter and milk are not commonly used in chinese cooking, so she would just boil the potatoes and mash them with water as the sole liquid in the recipe. I always wondered why we could never make it without the lumps at home - little did I understand the power of cream and butter.

Pretty soon I realized that I much prefer White People Food, and when I moved to the UK I knew food would not be a concern at all. If you ask me what I want for dinner I will always say pasta (carb). I truly believe that if you told me I could only have one meal for the rest of my life, I would be happy eating spaghetti and meatballs. But seven years does take its toll, and I started to crave some particular dishes from home that I never have in the UK. Since I've been back I've therefore been indulging in Chinese food but now, after two big celebratory meals (Viv's wedding and my sister's birthday tonight), I've realized that two months and I've already had enough again and can take it or leave it. Which is actually quite handy since I'm still on that diet.

But one thing that I'm still looooving is Chinese baked goods. I take the skytrain and then the bus home (if someone isn't kind enough to swing by and pick me up from the skytrain station) and right at the bus stop is a Chinese bakery. It's literally right outside the bus stop as you can see here (blue bus stop sign and people queueing on the right):

So I'll often go in and drool at these. And then buy 6 because if you buy 6 or more there's no sales tax:

My favourite is the pineapple bun (top row), which has no pineapple on it, and is thus named because the crust they make on the top has bumps and ridges like a pineapple. This crust is made purely of sugar and lard. i.e. YUM. Too bad they are 340 calories a pop. worse than a donut, worse than a bagel, so I often buy them, dream of one day having enough calories leftover in my day to have HALF, never make it, and let other people in my household gobble em up (so I'm just fattening up my parents and grandma, really).

And tonight for my sister's bday there were traditional birthday buns, made with rice flour with a lotus seed paste filling (fav!). I think they are meant to look like peaches which have some significance in Chinese culture in terms of celebration and luck (too lazy to look it up) but I always giggle at them because to me they look like a pimply butt, complete with ass crack:

Pimples and asscrack or not, they are ohhhhhh so delicious.

Sunday Treat Rejected

7th day at work in a row - with 5 more to go... hmm... usually need less weekend days for a Sky year-end.

Here is the latest temptation sitting next to me in the kitchen.

Cream-filled donuts rolled in sugar! They are supposed to be more "light" but I don't see how if they are full of cream. I am no donut snob and good ol' Timmy Horton's is good enough for the common man and it's good enough for me. So thankfully I am not really tempted at all. Is it gross though that I picked one up and sniffed it?? (I PICKED IT UP WITH THE TONGS!!!)

It's brilliantly sunny outside and going to get up to the mid 20's today in Vancouver!! You would think that would depress me since I'm at work but actually since I'm not very outdoorsy but appreciate sunshine through the window, it is actually putting me in a good mood.

Back to the sub-consolidation that won't sub-consolidate. Bleh.

Food Coma, and Life Possessions on the Sea

Holy moley.

I've only been eating healthy (really only just healthier, it's all relative) for about 3 weeks, but I guess your body gets used to your changes pretty quickly because today was a BAD lunch day, and i'm paying the price. Badly.

It was sandwiches from Hubbub, and it was oh-so-delicious but much too heavy for lunch. I had a pulled pork sandiwch and I didn't even finish it, but I also had more than half a chocolate chip cookie (mmm gooey and delicious) but now I'm really feeling the effects on my energy, which is at level zero if not negative. It's only 1pm and I'm feeling so sluggish 5:00 feels like it's three days away.

Another nice thing about these free lunches at work is that they often order in from various eateries that are close by downtown and are frequented by adventurous lunchers. I intend to introduce Keith to quite a few of these once he gets here. Our Real Life, when will you start? I despair.

Besides Hubbub, the free office lunch has introduced me to Steamrollers, which are burritos which are allegedly healthier because they are steam cooked, American Cheesesteak Co, which also has a hilarious little webpage here, as well as a myriad of Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican, and Chinese (although I rejected the Chinese food, it was lemon chicken. Lemon chicken is not, I repeat, is NOT, Chinese food) eateries. I can't name those because the intranet lunch menu did not deign them worthy of shout-out.

I don't know who decides the menu but I may suggest they order one day from Holy Perogy, which is a food truck serving perogies that, despite one effort made so far (whereby I forced Stef to walk with me down to their truck spot only to find they weren't there that day), I have not yet tried.

In other news, all our material posessions have now made it out of a warehouse in London and onto the seas! 6 weeks or so before the arrive and I get to worry about dealing with bloody [shipping company name withheld, due to excessive anger and no desire to be sued] to get the goods released and make sure nothing's broken! Oh and then deal with Canadian Border Customs Agency to clear all the goods from any taxation... wait the dread that comes with the prospect has just cancelled all my glee of seeing the 20+ pairs of shoes that I'm waiting to wear again.

Whoa Vomit Indeed

Is it gross that I kinda want to eat these meat swiss rolls that these guys made and put on youtube?

seriously...  i really want to eat that. ok the last 30 seconds of so of this video where these guys/animals hoover them down is disgusting, but otherwise... i'm thinking YUM.

I think I must be really hungry from my diet which so far has lasted 3 days. 3 whole days and I'm watching meat rolls on the internet. whoa...

This Week's Lunch and More Fish Out of Water Stories

Well, let's start with the fish out of water story first. Fish out of water is my new euphemism for whenever I act like a caveman and don't follow societal norms that all grown fully functioning adults are meant to know and understand, purely because I have forgottem them in the last 7 years.

....... Today the bus drive had to teach me how to get off the bus.

I still remembered how to pull the string for the bell to indicate next stop. Pretty proud of myself there. And I was still playing Scramble as it pulled up to the curb. Then I stood there at the door. We were at the stop, but the door hadn't opened. I looked up at the driver, then thought, em, maybe he hasn't pulled up to his sweet spot yet. And then he shouted down the length of the bus "push on the door handle!" So I did. And the doors then opened. I stepped out, embarassed, only just remembering to shout back "THANK YOU!" at the bus driver, which people will often do here even when they haven't had to have special needs instructions to GET OFF THE BUS.

What a dufis.

Let's have a look at this week's lunch menu, and how I'm doing on avoiding all the nice food and eating only the salad!

Week of June 11

Monday
 ·         Greek Grilled Chicken
·         Braised Lentils
·         Lemon Potatoes
·         Greek Salad
·         Spinach Salad w White Beans
·         Pita & Tzsasikki

May's self-score: 7.5/10. Had a bit of tzatziki and the pita was a carb and a little greasy and there was feta on the salad. Didn't eat any potatoes tho! (p.s. those are my own celery and carrots, yes, from 3 weeks ago when I bought them with my cute Grandma! They were pretty dry)

Tuesday

 Steamrollers

May's self-score: 0/10. The steamroller is a burrito. and it was big. There were no side salads. I ate it all and I LOVED IT. Also, had a coke. When I am bad, I go all bad.


Wednesday

·         Indian Butter Chicken
·         Channa Dahl with Chickpeas and Coconut Milk
·         Coconut Roasted Cauliflower
·         Steamed Scented Basmati Rice
·         Raita
·          Garden Salad
·         Grilled Naan

 May's self-score: 8/10. Only had one piece of the butter chicken and 10 chick peas. There were mozza balls in the salad though. And that's a Tim Horton's french vanilla cappucino you see up in the corner of my monitor. Ate a banana for fruit, that's good right?

Thursday

  tba
   
Friday

Sandwiches and Salad

TBA for Thursday! I can't deal with that kind of unknown! Friday I'll be good - even going to peel the bread off the sandwiches and just eat turkey on top of the salads.

However, what isn't helping is the breakfasts I'm having and the dinners. Tonight was poutine at La Belle Patate, check out their menu! I got tired of reading by the second board and Clara and I got one traditional and one  La Belle, with smoked meat and beef :

Mmmm poutine. For all you ignants, that's fries*, gravy, and cheese curds. Nothing says mmm mmm good like the word curd. it's reminiscent of curdle, which is horrible, but I guess that's what cheese is.

Have downloaded the Calorie King on my ipod to make me feel bad about the poutine and control my DIET.

*If I'm explaining poutine to you, you must be English, and therefore I should have said chips. But I'm converting back, guys. I'm converting back. They are FRIES.

Richmond Night Market Round 2

More culinary delights! This time I had a hurricane potato hot dog again, but then had a "car wheel" cake, which comes in the 4 flavours you see displayed behind me:

It was $5 for 6 of 'em and there were 5 of us, so we played a ferocious round of Rock Paper Scissors to determine who got the extra. Yours truly won! Victory! So I got a custard flavour and a red bean flavour. They are yummy and basically taste like pancakes with filling.

Jos had a "chunky dog" which was another hot dog wrapped in carb, this time sweet potato, and she covered it with japanese mayo and seaweed:

And of course we topped it off with a bubble tea, we didn't end up getting it from this particular stall but they do have the best name and sign, don't you think?

That cartoon character is from a Japanese comic strip and he's always mooning. Just what you want to think of as you gulp down a drink on a hot summer day.

Back to Real Life, the old 9-5 (in this case 8:30-5)

Well after a month away from work, reality is cruel. How quickly one gets used to waking at 10am, and how jarring it is to then reset your body clock to 7. So confused is my poor internal clock that I have jolted awake an hour before my alarm every morning. I think Keith’s morning paranoia has, by osmosis, seeped into my subconscious as well, because I think it is largely to do with not trusting that my alarm clock will ring, because it is a new alarm clock. It hasn’t earned my trust yet. I am wiped out after a 4 day work week!

Some highlights so far:

free lunch! the grateful ones out of us would say, what a nice company. the jaded ones would say, what a way to keep you working at your desk throughout your lunch hour. To you jaded ones, I say, it did not stop me from walking to the mall to exchange a top at H&M today after I devoured my chicken wrap.

After 3 years of enduring the Sky canteen, which got pricier and pricier as time went by, which started turning microwavable pasties and sausage rolls into meal options, and served up watermelon and feta as a "prepared salad" choice, this is a wonder. Let's compare my previous paid food options to this week's free lunch menu

At Sky
- above described canteen
- The Coach and Horses, a 10-15 minute walk to the closest pub serving food, which someone saw a mouse in once
- Cafe Society, which cannot even be bothered to melt some cheese on a jacket potato. How can you eat your jacket potato with solid cheese? quel the f***?

This week's menu:

Monday

·         Jerked Spiced Chicken w Apple Chutney

·         Grilled Vegetable Stacks w balsamic glaze &fresh basil

·         Roasted Potato Medallions w Caramelized Onions

·         Broccoli Crunch Salad w walnuts and Orange Creamsicle dressing

·         Southwest Cesar Salad with Chipotle Dressing

Tuesday 
 

Sandwiches and Salad

Wednesday 

Vietnamese Subs

Thursday

·         Miso Soup

·         Build Your Own Chicken Tiger Bowl w Tangy Cabbage &Spicy Yogurt

·         Teriyaki Tofu Bowl

·         Basmati Rice

·         Soba Noodle Salad w Sautéed Mushrooms & Bean Sprouts

·         Pickled Cucumber Onion Salad

Friday 

Pita Wrap Cafe

Well there goes the diet. I am going to try to be good and get lots of salad and just a bite of the nice mains. Works for the days that there are salads (i.e. this week, not Weds, and not Friday). Did pretty well on Thursday:

 I will of course only ever put up pictures when i do well.

Richmond Night Market

Went to the night market tonight! Haven't been in at least 3 years - it's an annual market that gets set up over the summer months and opens on weekend evenings. Originally just one row of stalls in an empty parking lot selling mostly junk (I think I bought 2 mechanical pencils from there in its first year), it has evolved to become more of a food market with all sorts of street food, mostly of the Asian (and by Asian I mean South-East Asia/Oriental) variety.

Stef wanted to go tonight so we braved the crowds by going early-ish and being very methodical in our food search - first we went up and down the 3 aisles to fully peruse the offerings before choosing what to use our precious stomach space on. In the end we settled on the following:

Some Chinese dimsum - curry fishballs for Stef (not pictured), pork siu mai for me:

We then moved on to a new experience for me - the Hurricane Potato. Apparently this was introduced last year and this year multiple stalls were copying it. Rightly so, it is genius. The Hurricane Potato is a whole potato sliced thinly into a corkscrew, slid onto a skewer, and then deep-fried. Can't picure it? Not to worry! I have a video, complete with Hurricane Potato man chanting about the merits of his potato throughout:

 It is then dipped into ketchup or mayo or a variety of flavoured powders. They took it to a whole other level this year by sticking a hot dog in the middle of the potato, so of course we had to try that. Stef kept hers simple with ketchup topping and I ordered sour cream and onion flavoured topping on mine (in hindsight, a slight mistake, because it just made the potato taste a bit too much like chips/crisps). This is a winner - I will definitely have it again:

Last but not least, I wanted to try a okonomiyaki (japanese octopus pancake) - potato, cabbage, and octopus pan fried and topped with shaved dried onions, mayo and a special sauce - a thicker and sweeter worcestershire sauce.

All to be washed down with a nice mango drink - mine was mango with tapioca and coconut milk. We queued at least 25 minutes for these bad boys, all the while commenting on the stall's production process and lamenting that we could do it faster and better:

But don't forget, the original intent of the night market was to sell junk products. So of course I had to pay $2 for a comedy eye mask. Look! I have pretty anime eyes!

p.s. did you notice the girl behind hurricane potato man had a fake hurricane potato skewer in her hair? if not go back and look again. also comedy.

My Cute Grandma and My Weird Lunch

I left London 9 days ago and have eaten out for every single meal since. That has got to be a record for eating out when not on holiday!! Was really starting to feel icky so today started my self-imposed diet. Thie involved me saying to my Grandma that I needed to buy spinach, carrots, and mushrooms, which were going to be my base vegetables for daily salads for lunch. Was then going to top that off with grilled chicken and find some balsamic vinegar to toss over all of it. I just wanted dear Grandma to tell me which of the supermarkets were the best so I wouldn't get ripped off due to my lack of local supermarket knowledge (compounded by the fact that I never cooked therefore rarely grocery shopped in Vancouver even when I lived here).

So this afternoon Grandma trotted me over to the independent produce shop over the road. Chinese run of course. I bought spinach (unwashed and all still attached in a bunch) a giant carrot, vine tomatoes, and celery. The celery was initially in a whole bunch but my grandma made the grocers halve it for me - then she tried to take the piss and ask if we could rip off just a few sticks, but I stepped in, thanked them for halving it in the first place, and said half was fine. No chicken in the shop and grandma refused to let me go to the Marketplace IGA to buy some, so we bought some frozen sea bass, (which again my grandma tried to make them halve, but they were four pieces in a vacuum sealed bag so I had to shush her again).

Back home, grandma started washing the spinach (and yes I did say I would do it myself) but then Keith messages me on skype so I told grandma I was just having a quick chat and would be back in to cut up all the vegetables for my salad. Halfway through the conversation I ws summoned away from the computer to the kitchen where I found my her blanching ALL of the spinach. I was like "what are you doing silly, I was going to eat just some of that and also put it raw into my salad!" but of course that was too weird a concept for her, so cook it she would and don't you try to stop her. So in the end my lunch looked like this:

Strange but surprisingly quite tasty. Thanks Grandma!!!

gvb.B.

Chill Bachelorette

The trip to the Bay area and Napa Valley has been a success!

We started off the weekend with Vivian's birthday on Saturday, which involved a lot of her driving me and Gina (one of her bridesmaids) around the Bay area. The first thing she said to me when I woke up and came downstairs in the morning was "WAIT. you cannot wear that. Let me give you a t-shirt to change into." Now despite my lack of wardrobe (due to a variety of reasons: ruthless closet purge in the UK before moving back, resulting in the Trinity Hospice charity shop on Northcote Road selling most of my tattiest clothes second-hand, some clothes being shipped via sea, and some clothes being mule-d over by Heidi in June), this was not a comment on my poor dress sense (I hope). It was a precaution against the epic lunch that was to come, which came with epic fumes that stay on your clothes and in your hair for a LONG time. We had Korean BBQ, which involves getting lots of marinated meat and grilling it yourself right at your table. The flame grill is great fun and makes delicious meals, but it also causes lots of smoke which gets in your hair and clothes and make you feel a bit like you've been barbecued yourself. Making this particular Korean BBQ even better was the fact that it was all-you-can-eat buffet style. Weekend food coma #1.

Some (sadly unsuccessful) shoe shopping, a Jamba Juice break, and some wild and crazy office supply shopping rounded out the day, and we feted the birthday girl with 3 rousing rounds of Bananagrams at her home in the evening, and went to sleep in anticipation of Vivi's Bachelorette Weekend (which also involved a lot of her chauffeuring us around).

Saturday dawned and we set off bright and early for the Napa Valley. How exciting. I'd never been. Plus, I hadn't had a drop of alcohol since leaving the UK (ye gads! the horrors! a whole week off the booze!) and was well looking forward to some nice vino. We started off the day with some, guess what, that's right, binge eating at an amazing brunch buffet place. I resisted the urge to order a mimosa or peach bellini at 11am in the morning, wanting to make a reasonable impression on Vivian's California friends, whom I've never met. I'm sure I did well by rolling my mini egg benny off my plate and onto the table before i even sat down. Do not take me to classy joints. The best bits of the buffet were the oysters and the tri-tip steak. Weekend food coma #2.

During the brunch, Vivi was forced to wear her bachelorette tiara - a subdued and subtle accessory made personally by her other bridesmaid Stefanie, but the attention-shy Vivi had to be convinced it wasn't too outrageous. She was constantly reminded that we could have gotten her a penis necklace instead, but that didn't seem to help. She was so cute she insisted on being accompanied to the buffet queue for her food, because she was so self-conscious about her tiara. I obliged on one occasion, presumably so that were anyone to approach her and enquire, i could shout "BACK OFF! GET YOUR OWN SANDWICH!" at them (non-North Americans will have to youtube this late 90's advert to understand the reference)

We then headed off for some wine tasting, visiting the Rombauer winery first. Despite a solid 6 years of drinking wine at least two nights a week, I still don't know what the hell I'm doing. Fine stuff is wasted on me. It all tasted good. Got a pretty wine glass out of the tasting though - a good souvenir. Then it was off to a tasting room in Yountville, where our hotel/spa was located. The area was super picturesque (when I upload my pics onto my computer I will append this post with some pics) and I would definitely go back to the Napa Valley just for the views.

We rounded out the evening with a 5-course tasting menu at Redd restaurant, which serves what Stef likes to describe as West Coast Fancy Fusion. Tuna tartare with crispy rice and foie gras were some highlights. Weekend food coma #3.

The two bridesmaids and I then stayed over with Vivi at the Bardessono spa hotel overnight, where they had left no relaxation detail unattended. The TVs in the bedroom played a loop of relaxing images such as fluffy clouds floating across the sky, some beautiful waterfalls in Hawaii, and some dude flyfishing in a river.  This morning Stef Vivi and I went for spa treatments, where I was pummeled with hot stones for a good 90 minutes, followed by a dip in the outdoor pool, which was surrounded by shaded cabana beds that were more comfy that the bed I sleep on at home. Two thumbs up for the Bardessono - highly recommend and I hope to be back.

Overall, a lovely time, even despite the fireman stripper failing to show on Sat night. Jokes - she didn't even want to wear the tiara.

It has been confirmed on this trip that I snore loudly enough to wake people up in the middle of the night. Sorry!!!

Also, I am becoming increasingly aware that my blog is mostly about the food that I eat. Is that all I do?

The Perfect London

London is amazing if you have no job but yet have access to unlimited funds (i.e. you are stinkin' rich, and mostly because Mommy and Daddy left you a payload, so you're still young and not had to endure some kinda high stress banker job for 20 years to accumulate said riches before retiring. Being a young goldigger would also fit the bill.). Not having a job means you can go and explore and appreciate the quaint venues which are oversubscribed and therefore a nightmare to navigate on the weekends. Having loads of money means that you can actually afford to enjoy these quaint venues, since not a lot is free in rip-off Britain, afterall (although before you Londoners protest, yes I realise that the museums are mostly free and that is indeed awesome - London gets 5 points for that).

If one did indeed have said lifestyle, I imagine what this is what life would be like:

Moseying up the full length of Portobello Road in Notting Hill on a Tuesday, to find a "London's best" brunch spot per Time Out, Lowry and Baker:

Even on a Tuesday afternoon this place was packed. Granted, it was one of those tiny cute brunch places, with maybe about room for 15 to sit-down, but every single table was taken up and when people did get up to leave more immediately arrived to take their table. I looked around me in disbelief, as I always do in London on a rare weekday that I'm not working, and thought - who ARE these people? Surely they aren't all Canadian ex-pats weary of  the London life who have quit their jobs and are experiencing their final week in London before they move home to Canada, like I?* There were some usual suspects - a few yummy mummies, a couple of middle-aged ladies, but also inexplicably there was a group of 5 women in their late 20's milling around enjoying the trendiest meal of the day.

You would never find me on at Portobello Road on a weekend otherwise, crowds jostling, elbowing past a little old lady to score that last red velvet cupcake at Hummingbird Bakery (do not worry! they stock them aplenty!), so this is something that I can only enjoy under these rare weekday circumstances.

Then on Wednesday lunchtime, meeting up with Keith and Babs near their office at Waterloo, for a nice pub lunch at Anchor and Hope, where Babs and I devoured this steak pie for two, complete with a piece of bone in the middle of the pie to hold up the pastry, which Keith and Babs tells me is usually an egg cup. I forgot to take a pic beforehand, so forced Keith to do a thumbs up in this pic of an empty dish pie to make it more interesting:

The Anchor and Hope is a yummy gastropub, but one of those that are too cool to have a website. Now, normally, I am against all such nonsense. If you are a restaurant, I demand that you have a website. Better yet, have an electronic table booking system on said website, so that I don't have to interact with mere humans when trying to get myself there for a meal (with the added convenience of being able to book a restaurant at work without advertising loudly on the phone that I'm not actually doing work - it's just a 2 minute conversation, RELAX!).Also, I demand that you put your menu on the website so I can choose my courses before I even step into the establishment (also done at work when I need a break from the ol' spreadsheets). But no. The Anchor and Hope is not this kind of user-friendly establishment, it doesn't need to advertise via a website, because idiots like me are queueing out the door for the privilege to dine there even without it. Keith and I only know of it because his friend Ryo took us to its sister restaurant, 32 Great Queen Street (another restaurant too cool to have a website! In fact, too cool to even have a name, since its name is just its address!), and it was only because the food was delicious there that I was bothering to try to eat at Anchor and Hope. Unfortunately, the only other time I managed to arrange to go to it was when Heidi and I were meeting for dinner one Thursday evening, and when we arrived at 8pm, were told that there was a 90 minute wait for a table for two. Uhhhh no thanks - and we would have known that IF YOU HAD A BOOKING SYSTEM!!! Anyhow, again, without work to go to, another experience to enjoy if you are foot-loose and fancy-free but can afford to pay £16 at lunch time for steak pie.


*Is this sentence gramatically correct or am I being a total douche? I cannot rest until I know the answer!

Finance vs Food and Man vs Food

Everyone loves a food challenge.No matter what your background and what your interests are, almost everyone has heard of that Japanese guy who used to win all the hot dog eating contests, despite being tiny. He is held in esteem and awe by all. So I would like to share some thoughts and experiences on two of my favourite food challenges.

First up: Finance vs Food (a Sky company "tradition")

The final Friday of the News Corp month-end calendar was always a dull day at work. Sure there would the mild weekend plan chat at lunch whilst munching on a chicken pesto wrap, and the weekly joke and fact, whose responsibility was a rotating number of first year graduates, which would cause a mild smile at best. It was clear there was a void, something missing, no-one could put their finger on it, no-one quite knew how this filling would manifest itself. Then 3 visionaries put their minds together, and combined two forms which people said could never be done, and together became the founding members of the Finance v Food committee.

It may not shock you to find that this opening paragraph was written by one of the "visionaries" themselves. If it had been up to me, I would replace "visionary" with "dufis" and I also question how much you can say that a void has been filled given there has been a total of two challenges organised. Does it fill every dull month-end Friday with joy? I think not, given that it has only happened on one month-end Friday and one random one, then dissolved into chaos.

Nevertheless, it can be said that when the said committee has managed to pull themselves together to organize an event, it has resulted in much mirth and merryment. It all started when a group of the guys at work discussed the Ferrero Rocher challenge, which involved eating as many Ferroro Rochers in a minute as you can. The world record, apparently, stands at 8. The organisers were particular about the rules - you could not cram more than one Ferrero Rocher into your mouth at one time, but you could unwrap them in advance if you wished.  Fueled by testosterone, each claimed that this world record was doomed to fall. And so, this serious challenge escalated into this:

Yes, a meeting room booked especially in the formal system for this very special inaugural challenge. The first contestant awaits his opponents, with his careful row of Ferroro Rochers waiting to be inhaled.

In the end, the winners ate only 5, a far cry from the world record of 8, but a large crowd gathered to watch this event, including 3 Directors of Finance, who were either so impressed they noted the names down for reference or to submit to HR for pink slips.

Unfortunately only one more challenge has ensued since this epic one, whereby another winner managed to eat 3 cream crackers with no water in one minute. An Easter one was planned, but abandoned due to unwieldy room booking logistics.


Man vs Food

The other tidbit of information that inspired me to muse about food challenges is that whenever we can't find anything to watch on television, we often turn to one of the food challenges and watch Adam Richman eat bucketloads (sometimes literally!) of food all over the U.S. I secretly would eat most of the crap that he goes around eating - not in his challenge proportions, but I wouldn't mind tasting it. Even the challenges that contain what the cheese snobs around me sniff as "fake" cheese. No matter who I watch it with, however, we always wonder how it is possible that this guy hasn't already dropped dead from a heart attack, and how long it can actually carry on. So I went to trusty old Wikipedia to read up on him, and lo and behold - Adam announced in January 2012 that he was no longer continuing with the show or engaging in any food challenges! So Man vs Food is no more!!!!

"I'm gonna have a beef baby!"

Apologies again for the absence. I have realised that I'm either not doing anything interesting so there is nothing to write about, or I'm doing lots of interesting things so I'm too busy to sit down and write about it! This post will therefore be just one of a couple that I'll write today to share some of the fun things that I've been doing this weekend! (Warning: on reflection, after I've written the full thing, I've also realised I've written more of an essay than a blog post. Go and get a cup of tea before continuing to read.)

It all started with my impending departure from London. Nothing gets you to plan and book things you want to do like a big old deadline of a one-way flight.  My friend Heidi and I had been discussing, over the course of 2011, two events that we wanted to get into our diaries:

1) Go to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour in London (technically just outside of London in Leavesden, but I'll try not to be pedantic)
2) Eat the 7-course Beef Tasting Menu at Hawksmoor Guidhall, a steak restaurant in the City

Like many things we were enthuastic about these ideas but hadn't really committed to them, the former because it required booking quite well in advance, the latter because it meant booking quite well in advance AND £700 per table (with 10 people, it was £70 a head, before wine).

However once 2012 rolled around and the clock started ticking on my time in London, I decided to get my butt in gear and nag Heidi into getting out her calendar and finding a time for these things. We booked the Harry Potter for Saturday 28th of April back in January, and once we rounded out our group of 10 with friends and family who were interested, booked the Hawksmoor in March for Friday 27th of April.

Then everyone at work started nagging me about organising a karaoke session before I left, and somehow Thursday 26th of April was the best date that worked for everyone. So my social calendar for the week ended up looking like this:

Thursday 26th - karaoke (booze up)
Friday 27th - Beef Tasting (wine up)
Saturday 28th - Harry Potter

You're probably thinking oh well that's ok, at least the Harry Potter isn't a booze up! You'd be correct except that after the Harry Potter I then went to Babs' birthday drinks (booze up!)

Back to the Hawksmoor. The reason why it was important to mention karaoke is because English people cannot do karaoke sober. Unlike how it is for Chinese people, karaoke with the English is not an arena for solo power ballads, but for manic screaming of songs accompanied by Spice Girl dance moves. This, for a culture that is mostly fairly reserved but thankfully also fairly alchoholic, requires a fair amount of pre-requisite alcohol. So by the end of Thursday evening, I'd had a pretty big night out (and shush to you all who say, but May, you are Chinese, so doesn't that mean you could have refrained from alcohol and just gone along to the karaoke sober with your full arsenal of Shania Twain songs at the ready? Shush to you. When other people drink, I drink. And I get drunk faster than all of them so I'm the first one drunk). And with the memory of my hangover from a couple of weeks ago, I started Friday fully prepared to fight the battle of the hangover. This meant a bowl of cheerios at home, followed by a cream cheese bagel at work, greasy chips and pasta bake at lunch, and three pints of water throughout the day. Hurrah! I left work at 5:30 that day feeling mostly still fresh as a daisy, if a little bit sleepy on the train ride into the City. But with the amount of food consumed it also meant I wasn't half -starved like I should have been, to prepare for the gluttony that awaited me. Still, I responded to the emails from Heidi (proclaiming "Ladies! It's Cow Day!!!!") and the more poignant response from Jamie (simply "MOOOOOOOOO") during the day with appropriate enthusiasm. 

I fully acknowledge this lack of planning was a massive schoolboy error on my part. But I also know that I can eat like a horse (often eating bigger portions that Keith, who is almost a foot taller than I am), so I still thought I could handle it. So I was still wildly excited when at 7:30pm we sat down in our cushy leather booth and perused the following menu:

• Beef Tea
• Tongue & Tail Salad
• Turbot & Shortrib
• Steak Tartare: Beef vs Veal
• Beef shin macaroni
• Bone-in Prime Rib, Porterhouse, Hawksmoor Sausages, Beef Dripping Chips and Salads
• Suet Sticky Toffee Pudding with Clotted Cream

Seven courses with some part of cow in all of them! I was in HEAVEN. I thought of course with a seven course menu the portions would be tiny, but they weren't. They were full sized, and they were DELICIOUS. The beef tea, which was best described as either a thick broth or a thin gravy, served from a teapot into blue and white delicate china cups, was interesting. The tongue and tail salad were flavourful. The turbot (a white fish) and shortrib was presented on a dollop of the creamiest mashed potatoes I have ever eaten. By the time I got to the steak tartares, I knew better than to smear it all over the thick slices of yummy sourdough toast that they'd laid out in baskets - carbs were going to take up too much room. But by the time I got to the beef shin macaroni (the one course which had stuck in my head ever since we'd looked at the menu online) I knew I was going to be defeated. Thankfully, or disappointingly, depends how you want to look at it, the beef shin macaroni (which arrived in a VAT, I kid you not) was fairly lacklustre, the macaroni slightly greasy and the beef shin a hunk of tough meat at the bottom of the VAT which took two men to hack to pieces. I didn't finish all of the portion ladled out to me. By the time the prime rib, porterhouse steaks, and hawksmoor sausages made its way to our table, I could only have two bites of porterhouse steak and half a chip and couldn't manage any more. At this point in the meal I think I had my head in my hands and just let everyone else chatter away around me. And although I was first to start wanting to lie down, fairly soon all 10 of us were trying in the most polite manner to sneak in a nap in the middle of dinner. That still didn't stop me from having 3 bites of my sticky tofee pudding at the end - the clotted cream was just too delicious to forgo.

3 hours of gorging ourselves, and we were all rubbing our bellies like we were about to explode. When I looked down it really felt like I was carrying another human (baby cow?) inside me, and I was not the only one who proclaimed that it felt like I was carrying a "beef baby".

It was delicious, it was spectacular, it was something I'd highly recommend doing once and never again, unless you're a big fan of the meat sweats.