[traveling to China.]

Believe me, you are NOT used to that level of zoo

[traveling to China.]

Hey ratgirlny, in Chongqing I really recommend a visit to the 18 Steps Teahouse near the antique market. It is one of the most charming teahouses I have ever visited...on several levels with lots of nooks and crannies and decorated from top to toe with antiques and curios....there is a small stream on the ground floor and several little balconies with wonderful views across an old part of the city to the skyscrapers.

whatever you do DON'T take the kids to the zoo as it is one of the most disturbing sights I have seen in a while (notwithstanding pandas).i.e. mentally ill animals with running sores in horrible cages... (the funniest zoo I've been to in China was the Dog Zoo in Beijing in the days when dog owning was banned)

there are some fried ice cream booths in a few of the malls, called Fritto, red colour...the kids would love that I'm sure

don't worry about the kids, we took ours anywhere, they are a great icebreaker whether at formal or street food level, anyway 'formal' isn't quite what the west is used to in China I saw the inside of a lot of kitchens cos that was where the kids often were, or else playing cards out back with the staff, normally in clouds of strong Chinese ciggie smoke

[A Feast From Georgia]

Abra, belated thanks for exposing me this cuisine. I had absolutely no idea...wow

It's excellent to have something foodie and new to look into and I know my son has a Georgian friend from school living near here so maybe his family is nearby as well...........hmm....actually come to think of it I believe he had a bodyguard

[Yemen Trip]

Corinna, you read my mind. I travelled quite a bit in Oman in the days when you needed a no objection certificate to get in, i.e. had to know someone there. Would definitely recommend going there Rona, it is quite different from the rest of the Gulf

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Toliver I would have NEVER come to that conclusion

What I love about this game are the infinite paths that lead from A to B. Only once has someone come up with the solution I was thinking of and some beautiful solutions are so convoluted and clever that serious brainpower has been expended

[Celebrities you have cooked for]

and heaps of NZ people that not ONE of you will know.

Try me

(spent 9 yrs in Wellington)

[marijuana food]

I was wondering what the government was doing with post-leper colony Molokai

[Celebrities you have cooked for]

My son is home for a few days and tells me he recently cooked scallops for Matt Damon and Daniel Craig and G/F, and the Michelin man (if he's considered famous )

[Yemen Trip]

I, too, have just noticed this thread.

Have to agree totally with M. Lucia, especially as Yemen has now closed its sea borders with Somalia because of armed Islamists escaping from the present Somalia conflict. A friend was recently there and said the Somali refugee situation is alarming.

Have not been there for several years; in fact I stopped going to dangerous places when I became a mother, however I did find that wearing an abba or similar took a lot of the heat off walking around as I was blonde and stood out like dogs balls and was continually accosted. I could also speak reasonable Arabic then.

Having said that Yemen is an amazing country and I would love to return, just not right now.

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Grand ayatollah al Sistani is the mullah lite (sorry) of Iran

Ayatollah Khomeini was the revolutionary fundamentalist mullah whose actions caused thousands to flee Iran

Included among those who fled was the 15 year old Anousheh Ansari, whose father ran a wine business

In 2006 Iranian American Ansari became the first woman space tourist, being shot into space from Star City

Earlier, in 2004 Chinese American astronaut Leroy Chiao was launched into space from the same Russian Star City site in Kazakhstan

Bizarrely, on his return to earth McDonalds, not a company to miss a marketing opportunity, was there at Star City to present to Chiao his first meal back on earth.....a big mac and fries.

(I was a tad dubious about whether Chiao actually ate the meal but judging by a photo of Leroy I think it's a fairly safe bet )

Michiko Kakutani and kippers

[Funny recipe names]

my daughter thinks that the fact that the french for faggot is gayette is hilarious.....I must have raised her wrong

[Condiments of the world, unite!]

what I miss here about the Thai condiment array is the ubiquitous toilet paper roll in handy plastic dispenser

[Condiments of the world, unite!]

aah, tuyumansi

[Funny recipe names]

I used to always smile at 'battered fish' and 'battery hens'

altho I guess the hens aint smilin

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Andy Roddick is a young, successful American tennis player who has appeared at Wimbledon for several years

now Wimbledon is a strange time of the year for the British who become temporarily injected with unusually large levels of optimism resulting in the mistaken belief that their Tim Henman can actually win a tennis cup

Symptoms of Henmania include: getting confused and saying Hen Tinman or Tin Hatman, shouting come on Tim at totally inappropriate times during November, buying 600 Union Jacks for your extended family, and looking decidedly unenthusiastic when winning a set

inevitably disappointed fans end up retiring to a nearby pub and drowning their sorrows with a pint and a packet of pork scratchings, which is the quaint term reserved for chicharonnes in the UK

Donald Tsang and fish eggs

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

My husb. used to fly to SA all the time and when the kids were small our cupboards were groaning with biltong from every animal imaginable (seriously, if you opened one of the cupboards it hailed biltong)

I did take it for snacks for my daughter when she was playing rugby (unfortunately in Hong Kong and for the FRENCH ) anyway she has sacrificed her nose to the game broken twice and I did get to meet that hottie Thomas Castagnaide

I believe I owe a game

Archimedes and foul mesdames

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Andy Hardy was played by Mickey Rooney when extremely youthful

and then when extremely old became the voice of the evil clown in the movie 'Babe, Pig in the City'

and you know the rest, chitlins being ...shield children's eyes NOW

sadly, I remember watching the original Andy Hardy series when it reached TV

c.f. Wayne Rooney, youthful scouse English footballer with more than a passing resemblance to a pig

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Piet Retief was a leader of the Voortrekkers who set off on the Great Trek eastwards from the British colony at the Cape after a series of reforms that angered many Boers

One of the foodstuffs taken along was boerewors, a mixed meat sausage containing speck or sheeps tail fat or tallow and hung and dried to last on the trek

Pemmican, similarly, is a foodstuff containing a high proportion of fat and dried meat and used as a high energy, long lasting food originally by the native peoples of North America

Robert Burns and poppyseeds

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

Well, chef from clarens, not only do I have a minibus in Maputo but I am a rugby girl of the all black variety so

Francois Pienaar, brilliant Springbok rugby captain is probably most famous for the iconic photograph of him posing with Nelson Mandela after their 1995 World Cup victory over a much better side (they was robbed)

As a young man Nelson Mandela used to eat in an Indian curry restaurant called Kapitan's in Johannesburg, and 5 months before he was to be released from Robben Island Mandela wrote to the restaurant when he heard it was to close expressing his sadness that he would not be able to eat their curry again

ps. haven't missed a HK 7's

Andrew Mehrtens and castle beer

[fish and chip shops]

I was not long ago at my brother's beach house at Culburra beach south of Sydney and the freshly caught fish from the fish and chips shop at Greenwell Point, (small fishing village on the Crookhaven river near Nowra) was the most incredible, fragrant, fresh, succulent fish I have tasted in a blue moon. It had literally crossed the road from the boat to the fryer.

Fish and chips in the UK is a sad sad sad and sorry cardboard caricature of the real thing and I had forgotten what the taste of fresh fish was (unless in a michelin starred resto)

[Larb Laab Larp]

Hey Jen, normally glutinous rice is the one that is used in laab and I must admit I have never toasted any other but I have seen some western sites using normal rice, i.e. jasmine or basmati, but it will not puff up, just toast in a dry pan until it looks slightly golden and smells fragrant and then pound or grind it in a processer

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

once again

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

chef from clarens....I feel reluctant to tackle the Bishop Tutu conundrum; am I being too sensitive?

[The Six Degrees of Separation Game.]

may I say as an aside that Haruki Murakami's books contain superb cooking and food vignettes and are as different a read as you will ever get....if you trust me I recommend them highly, but you need to be a bit weird