Not that diary

A belated post on Oki, the new Korean restaurant in London which continues to delight us locals in SW19.  A few weeks ago, my   friends and I   decided to both test and taste the menu by working down our way through it slowly. After the slurp-yummy Dolsot Bibimbap,  our latest discoveries include the big bowls of soupy-noodles (with veggies, tofu or seafood) and semi-spicy stir fries with rice on the side. One Friday going by the sated look on my companion’s face it was obvious that the bento box was apt for meeting strong hunger pangs. Especially for someone who has just finished a swimming session and feels ‘ready to eat a horse’! Another recent memorable evening was one where a couple of us decided to go for carrot and orange juice to accompany our main meals. We started with one glass per person which soon became several glasses through the evening. Well, some of us were more thirsty than others :D As a friend mentioned, i t’s a mercy they didn’t ru...

While on the subject of tea and my adopted country, as elaborated in my last post ,  I feel like I must write a mini-post to share my confoundedness on meeting folk with a taste for a hot beverage which has turned into a cool drink. Over a decade of meetings in London, some held in glossy glass buildings, some in transport depots and others in no nonsense office blocks, one thing has been consistent. There is almost always a British person, more than one sometimes, who will pour a cup of tea, with or without sugar and milk, take a few sips and then place it on the saucer. Twenty minutes into the meeting, by which time the air-conditioning has frozen that cup of tea into a drink cold enough to be worthy of a native of the Sahara desert, the gentleman (and it is too often the men) will loftily raise the cup again and continue to enjoy the remainder of the cup's contents. To this day I cannot quite fathom why people here do that. Apart from the obvious health disbenefits of cold ...

Among other interesting things on my recent visit to St Alban's, a historical town just north of London,  I caught sight of this cool cycle stand.

Have re-discovered jelly again. This time in the form of 'exotic fruit' jelly with real fruit pieces. And that is just how I like my one of five-a-day (I mean fruit and veg of course). Rewinding back, my earliest 'jelly' memories are of birthday parties when I was 8 or 9 years old. There was usually jelly and custard on my sister's birthday or mine. We always bought the pink-coloured 'REX' jelly mix which mum would prepare a day before the birthday using the grey (aluminium? steel?) jelly mould. Anyhow, I didn't plan on going jelly-free for so long. It just kind of happened in the way these things do. More recently, I've seen a lot of vegetarian jelly being sold and that has reminded me of the 'animal gelatin' issue which had become a concern at some point in the past. I've also discovered numerous ways of eating jelly and this is not accounting for all the Masterchef finalists who put together some crazy stuff. Among all kinds o...