insomniac

hahahahahaha do NOT mentally scar your children or they will wait until you are in a home and scar you

the kitchen floor is covered in quinces and I'm about to start on the membrillo, thanks, PG, P the E and Abra for other great quince stuff as I have a quince mountain here ps. do you know that if you put a quince in your clothes cupboard it makes everything smell lovely (just don't forget to take it out before it starts to rot )

oh bollocks, I thought mishmish meant apricot, no wonder I had 'em rolling in the aisles in Egypt with my 'very funny Gulf accent', and yes, have to agree, Egyptians are a very amiable people....(my bro used to live in Maadi, could never pronounce that either ) great blog!

don't worry too much Ce'nedra, I'm betting I'm one of many on this forum who have eaten street food for years without any noticeable ill effect ....and the 'goat curry ' I had in Sumatra (99% sure it was cat) was tasty.....as long as the food is fresh and turnover seems to indicate so, don't use too much imagination, just enjoy.... (I'm remembering being asked as I was munching on a dried BBQ camel meat skewer if I didn't worry about the TB, and being told that the 'prawns' I was loving were, you know, those things you find in the hedge, i.e. bugs.....)

I have some lying around and wanted to use it. I'm more of a savory person than a sweet person and thought that the mascarpone would add a nice smoothness to the sauce. ← hey lucky (you must be with 3 8's after yr name)...I use mascarpone in bechamels etc, eg. for lasagne, and find it gives a great result, also use it in some risottos at the very end, so I would definitely try it in mac and cheese altho I've never made that particuar dish (it's not expensive here )

my son would be running fast but in the opposite direction, would hate to see his cholesterol reading right now (love mid-Autumn festival.....and durians)

I'll come and get it

maybe next time you could try venison chops with chicken mousse and tarragon wrapped in the caul and sealed in a pan then into the oven for a few minutes a la Jean-Christophe Novelli's signature lamb chop dish??

bingo

I think they are tong yod?? phonetically speaking it's been a while

well, our kids were also happy to eat most Thai dishes toned down at first (I cunningly added Thai herbs to their homemade pureed babyfood when they were very small ) most of the starters are fine,fish/prawn cakes, gai pad bai toey (chicken in pandanus leaf) satay etc etc, tom kha gai(chicken cocnut soup), gaeng jued (clear broth with veg. and bean thread noodles), any pad priew wan (sweet and sour), any pao (grilled fish etc), gai yang (bbqed chicken) moo wan or moo knob (crsipy or glazed pork)mee krob (crsipy noodles) guay tiew (rice noodles) anything tom gaathi (boiled in coconut milk), the veggie dishes....actually I could go on and on....just ask for a dish or 2 to be 'mai pet' (not hot) or 'pet nitnoy' slightly spicy'....my daughter is 21 now and has just dumped a boyfriend for not liking spicy food

as far as I recall when dragging the kids to be 'educated and enriched' (i.e. it was raining) the Powerhouse only has a bog standard cafe

when my Filipino foster son arrived in the UK he ate soooo much that he ended up looking like a little chipmunk, piling his plate high and often not being able to finish the food; now he realises that the food is not going to disappear and it won't be his last good meal and has slowed down and slimmed down...perhaps a similar thought process is taking place in the minds of the Chinese immigrants, not being able to believe their eyes at the foodie abundance??(altho I must admit I used to sit open-mouthed in wonder at some of the towering plates at buffets in HK )

From my own equally extremely limited hotel experience, I would agree. ← ditto, certainly so at the Marriott Bristol with its Michael Caines resto

I LOVE that oatmeal (and its tin ) - that's one of my favourites, too! ← my oatmeal too, once tried you will never return to the quick stuff

if you have the time drive up the mountain for lunch a few miles past Mont d'Arbois to the altiport which has a lovely outside dining area with a stunning alpine vista and very good local food...you can also watch the small planes negotiating the tight turn against the 2000ft col to land on the airfield.....we enjoyed Flocons de Sel for dinner, can recommend

the only place I've been asked not to take pix of the food was Pierre Gagnaire.....I think that is his restaurant's policy. On a very recent trip to Lyon/Haute Savoie I actually took photos of a lot of the meals we ate because I was absolutely blown away by the standard of cuisine(we had flown down from England in our small plane) and we were eating lunch at airfields we had landed at....very small airfields, some above 5000 feet in the mountains and very remote and short.....we couldn't believe there was a small resto at every field! We were served uniformly fantastic plates, normally of local specialities. We were staggered because the equivalent in the UK is the boringly predictable greasy fast food followed by crappy coffee (if indeed there is somewhere to eat)....and the wine was wonderful.......................only joking

My son has worked for Aggie for the past 2 years and from what he has told me the man is both a perfectionist who takes no prisoners when it comes to maintaining the standard he insists upon in his kitchen, and a culinary genius. I look forward my birithday lunch there

I ate at Under Bridge Spicy Crab last month with some friends.....it's not exactly waterfront in Wanchai but a pretty memorable meal and brought back memories of taking the kids to eat in the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter long ago from floating kitchen 'restaurants'; just beware of seafood due to recent health scares, ask locals to fill you in, but please don't let that snippet of info put you off, HK is still foodie heaven to me

it's not the hitting on per se but it always seems that the other women at their table don't take too kindly to the chat

the thought of such stellar bread is but a dream where we live at the moment, beers a tad more accessible, however I will, as usual, be eating my fingernails, hmmm, I'm from Oz, husband Kiwi, kids went to French school in HK and daughter played rugby for the school at the HK 7's, lived in Fiji for 4 yrs, now in England,....who to back????? actually reset position seems to be allez les bleus (with a bit of all black ) ps. we are eating lamb tonight

What flavor quark did you buy? Up, down, top, bottom, strange or charmed? Seriously: I haven't heard of this outside particle physics before. It looks like a dairy product -- what is it exactly? ← Oddly enough, there is a dairy product connection to the use of the word "quark" in physics. From Wikipedia: The word was originally coined by Murray Gell-Mann as a nonsense word rhyming with "pork". Later, he found the same word in James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake, where seabirds give "three quarks", akin to three cheers (probably onomatopoeically imitating a seabird call, like "quack" for ducks, as well as making a pun on the relationship between Munster and its provincial capital, Cork) in the passage "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he has not got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." Note: This is in reference to the City of Munster, where Munster Cheese originated, which is completely different than the American Muenster Cheese. SB (who say physicists have no sense of humor ) ← you have just eductated me, thanks and I always thought quark rhymed with shark (the physics sort I mean) maybe it's an American accent

Attitude? no I personally don't think so(and I have travelled the globe, often alone, sometimes working, for nearly 40 years)....I believe it all boils down to sex (I refuse to use the word gender, properly reserved for grammatical useage).... I prefer to eat with someone else, to exchange views on the food, wine etc, to share the pleasure of the moment....however I have no problem dining alone. I would never read a book, I like to people watch.... however there is no doubt that when I was young I was hit on pretty well every time I ate alone unless upmarket and I am afraid to add usually in the States..... not comfortable. Now I dine in peace but was reminded of times past when in Madrid recently with my daughter...same old same old (but with a lot more subtlety)...actually we had a great laugh, esp. as one of the places had 2 Mich. stars. ps. if alone I would still not seek out the bar to have a drink before dinner altho can be enlightening, eg. Chicago airport, missed last flight, had interesting conversation with the other lady at the bar....until a chap walked in,.....eeek

Thanks for the recipe Peter, will definitely give it a go (if I can get my mits on coconut water) Would the contents of a ma plao (young coconut) be a permissible substitute? BTW gung share nampla is one of my favourite dishes; when my friend first made it for me she called it gung ten or 'dancing prawns' as she used live prawns rather mercilessly to create her recipe, but then again I am not a member of the RSPP..... ps. edited to add, your recipe sounds like a take on kokoda, one of the national dishes of Fiji

I actually got so agitated watching the pre and opening night that I changed channels for 5 minutes to calm down but I guess that makes good TV...does anyone know how the 'contestants' were chosen??