beloved bel

The other day our canteen at work had warm tuna nicoise salad on their menu but I had a prior lunch appointment.  For some reason I kept thinking about it and so decided to recreate it at home for brunch last Saturday. A whole bed of veg as the bed Season with salt and pepper Grill tuna Make a soft boiled egg and… Warm tuna nicoise salad Weather wise it is still cold, proper winter temperatures in fact.  It's been such a delayed winter if you remember how warm it was over Christmas.  Sadly, still no snow. Saturday I met up with Janine for brunch at Victoria.  Janine and I used to hang out in the old Australian-South African group of friends in Canada Water although she lived far away in Buckinghamshire, she would make an effort to join in for dinners or girly outings.  Now that she is married, she lives near Brighton with her husband Louis.  It was quite an effort for her to travel in and she had arranged a string of...

As commercialised as this day was, we did a low key celebration by going into Central London for a nice meal on Saturday night.  It was a rainy Saturday which wasn't great but hey, nothing's gonna stop us from our meal which K booked weeks in advance.  It was said that he tried looking for a "very good deal" online, which was this restaurant and club in the heart of Soho.  The menu was a fusion of east meets west, so there were Japanese items as well as western food such as rump steak and salads. Having mango and passion fruit cheese cake for dessert The menu we booked was a four course and a cocktail so it was pretty easy choosing what we wanted. I have to say that because most of the diners were there having a pre clubbing dinner; most of the ladies were dressed to impress - high heels, skimpy dresses and (very) thick make up.  Are they not cold?  I wondered.. I soon got more self conscious as the night progressed.  I was covered from head to toe -...

Happy Lunar New Year everyone! It was a whirlwind weekend filled with lots of food no less.  K and I took Monday off too (woohoo!), and we took a trip down to Chinatown that day for a simple but nice lunch in a Malaysian restaurant before walking around a bit, finishing the afternoon with a bit of shopping, and then hosting  初 一  dinner at home. The celebrations started for us on Saturday night, where we were kindly invited by the Kim's for a nice meal of Chinese steamboat dinner.  When we arrived we saw Rachel with two plates of shredded vegetables, and she was lovingly preparing  鱼生 .   We were so happy to be able to toss some salad that evening to usher in the year of the monkey! Soon all the guests arrived and we commenced with  鱼生  saying blessings over one another and tossing the food, followed by a very sumptuous steamboat dinner where we all ate so much that night.  King prawns!  Beef slices!  Fishballs!  Scallop...