monochrome

 

we're lucky to have a particular family friend who gifts us with books! might stem from how my folks didn't believe in toys and for the birthdays they did celebrate (there weren't many!) they'd insist on books. having spent most of my formal education reading under the desk, i'm not complaining. in retrospect, such behaviour seems almost like a chicken-egg question ;) so you can imagine my joy when said family friend very kindly passed me not one but three eggcellent reads just before we left for phuket :) and i promptly spent the next few days sprawled out on a deck chair reading to my heart's content. such a nerd, i know. such a bibliophile i even attempted to dress according to the book covers.

petersham nursery

a lovely sydneysider we met in ecuador told us about petersham nursery. she's a horticulturalist and was going to be in london for the chelsea flower show. embarrassing as it was, we'd to admit that despite living in london (she was jetting back from sydney!) the show wasn't on our to-do list. we did meet up over l'atelier when she was in town, and heard even more good things about petersham nursery. so my ever-organised husband booked us in for the one weekend (!!!) this summer when we didn't have guests in town. 

apart from being next-to-impossible to find (poor directions, obscure signage) it was worth the hike. and as if to soothe our bruised egos, the affable waiter conspiratorially shared that getting lost is a rite of passage. there was a long table set up next to us for a wedding and the gorgeous settings made me want to have a wedding lunch too! maybe for our next anniversary...

after lunch we moseyed around the nursery and miraculously left laden with a sweetpea, basil and chilli plant. now to just keep them alive! and i'm half sure that even if they were to shrivel and die in my absence, the mister will replace 'em without my knowledge.

 

richmond is a beautiful area and i can't believe it took us  a year to finally venture out of london. we try to spend every weekend in a different park to make the most of summer and it was surprisingly empty for a saturday evening. doesn't it look almost like the serengeti in this photo? then again, i've never been and wouldn't know!

hutong

while i often lament that the london dining scene is too faddy for its own good, once in a while i succumb (more often that not, when there are friends in town!) and make an exception. our ever-resourceful friend M booked hutong way in advance for when S was in town and despite my initial reservations about it being overrated and overhyped, i was pleasantly surprised by how authentic the food was. and the view? beats duck*waffle and their consistently abysmal service hands down. easily my new go-to for when we've guests in london :) didn't hurt that i was a little ignorant at the beginning and only later realised that we know the owner! who was so kind as to share an insider's tip (and photo teaser) below. careful as we try to be with our spending (the less we spend in london, the more we can spend on holidays!) meeting up with my london-based cousin, and S my visiting cousin was a special occasion indeed. i've three first cousins who are wonderfully dear to me, but with so few first cousins, we grew up close to our extended family. JW is a second cousin (our grannies are sisters) and we're third cousins with S (her granny is JW & my grannies' first cousins). have i lost you yet? uninteresting family tree aside, i did try to explain all this to poor JM who had the misfortune of being our house guest that night. and he very gamely bought an entire outfit (shirt, belt, trousers, dress shoes!) for the occasion. guess i'd forgotten that someone cycling through europe for three months would not be toting around fancy clothes... views are breath-taking, food excellent and company even better. so grateful for family and friends, and for people to enjoy treats like this with :)

according to the mister (although photo credits to JM), this is the world's most scenic little boys' room. despite having never been to one, i have to agree.

and here are my gorgeous cousins!

D's insider tip, as promised: The best view is from 9.30pm so don't go too early or if you have an early dinner then stay around for desserts and cocktails in aqua shard on level 31 and watch the night view suddenly materialize.  It is quite breathtaking.  We operate aqua shard as well.   Here is a little taster of things to come:

sound of music

one of my happiest childhood memories is of watching the sound of music repeatedly. you could even track technology's development through the means with which i watched it. from video cassettes (gosh! does anyone else remember those?!) to laser disks (sigh, now i'm giving away my age) to VCD and then DVD. the only constant was my choice of musical, which should probably have clued my indulgent parents in on my OCD. actually, they thought i'd aspergers and i'm adamant that everyone no matter how normal on the surface, does fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. hah. lengthy preamble aside, you cannot imagine how absolutely psyched i was to watch the sound of music in the open air theatre at regents park. quite embarrassingly, i can almost recite the lines of the movie verbatim, and it took every ounce of self-restraint not to do just that during the performance. wish i could have said the same for husband dearest. who was bopping along and singing under his breath :) cute like anything but goodness me i don't think the fabulous couple next to him were too amused.

and because theatre times always conflict with dinner time, the mister has been with me long enough to know how hangry (hungry-angry) i get. so he made sure i was well fed and watered at brgr&co before we took a slow walk to the park.

here's our incredibly good value tea. three sliders (lobster, chicken, beef!), the yummiest fries, a dessert selection with milkshake, brownie, apple crumble and trifle, a glass of bubbly and home made iced tea! my tummy was singing before the hills were alive with the sound of music ;)

scenic route home

i should've known that the mister would want to maximise every minute of our very brief weekend trip to bruges. he'd booked the very last eurotunnel passage back to ol' blighty and that gave us a good few hours to mosey around the north of france. thankfully got a late check out from our cute little hotel and took the scenic, coastal road back to and through france. we passed the sweetest little towns like wissant, audinghen, audresselles and ambleteuse. we even did the touristy thing and stopped at cap blanco to see where the germans had place their cannons during WWII, because captain husband is a closet military history buff. admiring german guns aside, we took a long walk along the beach and stumbled upon a quaint little seafood shack. the boss lady's husband takes their tiny fishing boat out every morning, and they sell what he catches the rest of the day. she didn't speak a word of english, so thank goodness for the month of french i took before going to stockholm (yeah, that doesn't make sense to me either...) and voila! dinner was served :)

 

oh and a photo of the M4(?) at dusk, for good measure and to show our ancient set of third hand wheels were roadworthy. phew!

exploring bruges

now the mister took one look at the breakfast spread before we went to bed (bless him, always two meals ahead of me!) and decided it was not worth EUR25. we're also not morning people, and good grief, was it hard to tear ourselves away from the window the next morning.

in fact, it was as if we'd grown roots to the window sill and i'd a whale of a time watching the canal boats go by. easily pleased, i am. better yet was being able to eavesdrop on the canal boat commentary and after a morning of vicarious touring, i was almost able to recite the spiel and rehearsed jokes.  awesome windows though so once they were closed and the air-conditioning switched on, you forget you're truly at the heart of this picturesque town. 

and here's the hotel from the canal! how's that for a change of perspective? we stayed in the three-windowed room on the top right, with the sloping roof. thank you mr. manager sir for the complimentary upgrade. my inner el cheapo was well pleased :)

bruges is a very historic, UNESCO heritage town and what i liked was the accessibility of all these cultural events. on our first night, there was a huge concert in the square and on the second day there was this full orchestra casually performing in the sunshine.

what was nice was no longer being a student (ok, so i still am!) in belgium. when we were last there five years ago, EUR5 for a pizza/pasta and drink was a splurge. we ate in most days, and i credit the summer in the mister's tiny student flat as the trigger of my culinary aspirations. hey, he was in the thick of exams and after i tired of twiddling my thumbs, i do remember cooking for him. little did we know then how that division of labour would foretell our roles after marriage ;) and speaking of the mister's flat, it was an incomplete walk down memory lane because it's since been condemned and demolished. about time, if you ask me! we were reminiscing about how some things change (he no longer balks at paying more than EUR2 for beer) while others remain the same (we're still not at the level where we'd eat a poor value hotel breakfast). and it's nice that half a decade on, he's still the only person i travel with. i'm so antisocial, if i wasn't going to be with the mister, i rather be on my own. grateful he gets that, grateful how i don't need 'space' when i'm with him.

oh and we'd dinner at den huzaar, a sweet little belgian restaurant with flaming desserts (just missing the lambo...) and we didn't mind being stranded by the rain because we'd all the time in the world.

roadtrip to bruges

the mister doesn't ask for much, and when i suggested visiting bruges over the summer bank holiday,  he wasn't the most interested. "why waste a good day off", he reasoned but was game to visit over a weekend. and boy was he right! now belgium holds a special place in our hearts. the mister spent a year in leuven (home of stella artois) on exchange, and during that year he traveled all over europe. i'm surprised he even managed to explore belgium, seeing how he was using it merely as a base. actually, i'm more surprised he won best speaker at the european round of the space moot. but that's another story for another time. and the mister, he hates when i brag about him so i really shouldn't. but i am so proud of him (even a couple of years on) and it was particularly poignant because on the very same day he won, i was miles away in singers receiving a D (not distinction but A, B, C, D... also an achievement!) for constitutional law. yay me. undergrad throwback aside, was fortunate to visit the mister in leuven during winter and summer holidays and the small university town grew on me. 

so you can imagine how excited i was to return to belgium after five years. and to finally visit bruges because we didn't get round to when he was on exchange. little did i know that in the years passed, bruges has gained infamy as the boring town from the colin farrell movie! and being the total ignoramus i am, i booked us into the same hotel as in the movie. took me a couple of days to realise why there was a constant stream of tourists on our otherwise quiet side street, and why they taking photo after photo of that darn bridge! 

and because the mister isn't a big fan of birthdays, i'm not really allowed to say that we went to bruges for his birthday (it fell mid-week and we were away over the weekend). to which he's quick to point out that if we were to celebrate his birthday, i didn't do a very good job because he ended up driving us to bruges, around bruges, and back. but the hotel was lovely and they very kindly gave us a free upgrade to a canal suite, which was superlative. in fact, it was just so darn beautes that leaving the room felt like a waste. and to me, that's the essence of a destination hotel. 

but a little more about the drive before i leave you with some photos. now we've driven all over europe (iceland, corsica, south of france, tuscany, mykonos, santorini, crete) and it's always been a rental car. now i've nothing against rental cars, but luxury isn't a priority and we usually get the cheapest manual car available. so to be able to drive our car (nevermind it is ancient and third-hand, it's ours!) over to europe was a real treat. the euro tunnel has got to be the most amazing engineering feat ever and it's so organised! absolutely seamless, pain-free commute. after this i'm not sure if i can take the eurostar any more. it's quite unreal how in the span of an hour, we'd gone from folkestone, UK to calais, france before driving to bruges, belgium. and the check-in onto the train was a breeze, the crossing took all of 25 minutes and before we knew it, hellooo continent!

easy peasy drive, minus the mister having to switch his mind around. he's driven right-hand car in right-hand drive (singers, UK, australia), left-hand car in left-hand drive (europe, US) but never right-hand car in left-hand drive. we pulled up at the hotel around 11 and the lovely night manager poured us beers and nibbles on the terrace.

(view from our room!)

cheeky deli wales

bright and early the morning after our japanese home-cooking dinner party, the mister had to be in wales for a meeting. now i really should've planned this better because being the novice housewife that i am, cleaning takes forever. add cleaning deep-fryer to the agenda and it's an all-night job. now to be fair, our wonderful guests taught me how to use the dishwasher (lived here for a year, not used the dishwasher once!) and did most of clearing up. so why i was scrubbing till 3am is beyond me. then again, no one said the flat needed a deep clean... so to leave at 5am for wales was a bit of a stretch. ever the supportive wife, i insisted on going along to keep the mister company during the 4+ hour drive. but then it was quite counter-productive because he alleges i fell asleep the moment we left our garage, and only woke in wales. thus defeating the purpose of keeping him awake during the drive. oops. he was going to a tiny town and after some last minute scrambling, i found another tiny town to be dropped off at. managed to wander into their only tea room, plopped myself down for postcards and tea. read a few issues of goodhousekeeping and before i knew it, it was time to head home. 

cue another four hour drive that i apparently slept through again. the mister was unamused.

sunday in dover

to risk sounding like a total ingrate, the weather has been unbearably warm of late and we've spent the last few sundays at one park or another. from hyde park to primrose hill, it started to get a little same-y after a while and wanderlust got the better of us. as we were going to roadtrip to belgium the next weekend, the mister suggested we  recce the channel tunnel route and swing by dover. now we've been going out for six years and i really should've known better than to take him on face value when he said we could visit the dover high street and tea rooms. sold on the idea, despite the 2h drive each way (and an early dinner with friends back in london!) we set off. until we reached dover and i saw the gps had been programmed for the white cliffs. that the mister was determined to climb. with me in tow! never mind i was dressed for a fancy dinner (black silk dress, cropped jacket, pearls, LKbennys...) so looking like the best dressed walkers / clowns, we took the scenic route and soaked in the views of the white cliffs. 

it's times like this that i'm glad we leave the picnic blanket in the car, and a pair of flats for me! what also made all the difference (and stopped me from shoving the mister off the cliff) were the freshest, sweetest fruit we picked up from a roadside cart.  

fear of missing out (i.e. FOMO) had us shifting picnic spots every so often. and at the last spot we settled for before heading back to the capital, we saw this little boat doing infinity signs. and that's when we remembered it was exactly a year since our singapore wedding celebration. "to infinity and beyond" was our wedding tagline and seeing it so randomly a year on was sort of like a wink from the universe ;)

japanese home-cooking

after one too many japanese supper clubs, i'm convinced that i too can muster up sufficient proficiency to cook an elaborate japanese meal. needless to say, that wasn't quite how it turned out. it was a somewhat belated celebration. our dear friend K graduated the MBBS with merit (!!!), R the neurosurgeon was officially welcomed to cool surgeons' club (there's a fancier name but i forget) and A may have just found himself a ladyfriend. all milestones defo worth celebrating and seeing how we've known them since forever it's wonderful they're based in londontown too :) having last had them over around easter, when they were absolute dream guests, it was high time for our next dinner party. plus it's the mister's birthday soon and i thought it'd be nice for him to have a boys night in - where they can eat all the fried food they want and wash it down with good sake.

went a little overboard and attempted a ten course meal. didn't help that i couldn't count and inadvertently scaled up to cook for 9 instead of 5. math fail :(

appetisers 

tori kariage (bite-sized pieces of fried chicken) 

pork gyoza

green beans with sesame dressing

steamed course

chawanmushi

tempura course

prawn tempura

vegetable tempura 

simmered course

beef steaks in home-made terriyaki sauce

soup course

salmon miso hot pot

rice course

garlic fried rice

dessert 

chocolate pound cake with summer berries

genmaicha

 

monkey see, monkey do! 

super thankful it turned out mostly o-k, and for the help along the way. gimme dinner guests who are good around the kitchen any day! although i did feel quite bad making them cook part of their supper. only managed to take a photo of the beans with sesame before it descended into mayhem. what did help was the sparkling sake we began with, before moving on to bubbles. the genmaicha (green tea with roasted rice) at the end was a relief and i love how R described it as "popcorn tea". who cares if it's "peasant tea" in japan - it's the perfect end to a full meal.

(photo credits to R & A, sans the one of beans i managed to take before they arrived)

happy saturday

so it was one of those mornings when the stars aligned for an absolutely perfect day. allow me to warn you that this post might reek of self-indulgent self-satisfaction and smugness, so if you're reading on an empty stomach, please feel free to visit another time. or not at all ;)

one of my favourite things on earth is sleeping without setting the alarm. and it's happened for a good part of my summer break thus far. but to have the mister sleeping without the alarm too - now that's a rarity that only happens on the weekend. okok, so it happens every weekend because we're usually too lazy to make morning weekend plans. but still! 

we must've woken past noon (oh the luxury!) and promptly migrated to the living room. the mister watched man vs food and then very politely requested an american-size omelette. ever the obliging wife (oh he can dream) i figured an omelette was well-within my limited repertoire. popped out to the store to stock up and sneakily bought more veggie than i care to admit to. see, the mister, he doesn't like his greens. goodness knows how i'm fast running out of scheming ways to hide veggie in his food. and there's only so many times i can disguise it as lasagne mince! now while this might put me in good stead for future parenthood (picky eater? been there, dealt with that!) it's proving to be a daily challenge. in fact, i'm even going so far as to host a japanese dinner party next week to experiment with new ways to hide the mister's vegetables (veggie tempura, anyone? and a salmon veggie miso hotpot!) thank goodness the mister hadn't asked for anything more exotic - because a deep pan omelette with mushrooms, spinach, onion, tomato, bacon and cheese is a meal in itself.

and lest you think we are complete slobs, we actually had party plans! hermetic as i enjoy being, very occasionally we do get invited out. it's embarrassing how little we socialise. hey, i'm all for meeting new people and presenting my best self to complete strangers but there's a time and place for every thing. anyhoos our friends just bought and completely renovated a house in angel and we were psyched to visit them in their new digs. nevermind it entailed us trekking across londontown. fuel-ed up by the huge omelette, we took a slow drive by the river.

our friends had done an amazing job and it felt so wonderfully grown up to be in a proper house. it had three storeys and a yard and plenty of space for animals and kids! i got major home envy and here's hoping our starter flat grows up into a respectable home one day :) and being pseudo-social creatures, we got to know a few of their other friends.

we did eventually excuse ourselves to explore the rest of angel and had a lovely evening wandering around the little lanes, stopping for a drink or three at frederick's. had to make it to the japan centre to buy ingredients for our japanese home-cooking but after that, we continued on foot to polpo, after lusting over the flank steak from insta. 

i guess more than the spread and company at D's, the indie shops in angel, the cool cocktails at frederick's, the fun of groceries and yummy-ness of polpo, saturday was perfect because i got to spend it with the mister :)

attempts at domesticity

the novelty of cooking for the mister has yet to wear off and i hope it never will :) work is a concept i'm still trying to get my mind around but for the moment, i'm happy as a clam to cook, clean and domestic it up. in fact, household things are immeasurably easier than a full-time job and there's something incredibly therapeutic about the mundane. and with seasonal ingredients this fresh - i'm all for finding new ways to get the mister to eat his greens. a little slow on the home made pesto bandwagon because it's so accessible at farmers' markets but then my inner control freak took over and i wanted to make pesto exactly to taste (what an oxymoron!)

easy peasy lemon squeezy with a pestle and mortar. a bowl of spinach leaves, a bowl of basil leaves, as much garlic as i want because that's the beauty of marriage and unconditional love, truffle oil, olive oil infused with garlic, celery salt and parmesan. 

and because i'd leftover basil and cheese, guess what went swimming in my tomato soup. also from scratch (on a roll!) with cherry tomatoes, red pepper, onion and apples!

primrose hill

i married a man who turns everything into an adventure, in the best possible way. on a whim, we ventured away from soho and into kingston (!!!) one friday night just because he was determined to find the best korean food. and while convenient-ish (soho, not kingston!) rubbish service and snakey queues do not a good friday night make. a little sleuthing led him to k-town in kingston (just south of london) and before i had time to contemplate the cost of petrol, he'd whizzed us onto the M-road south. when i was done protesting ("whyyy kingston?!") and gotten round to the idea of traveling further but not longer (just try driving through central london on a friday night...) we had reached the famed street. sorry, not being annoying here but i genuinely have no memory for street names. if you're similarly inclined to head out of london for korean please email and i'll get the deets. dinner did not disappoint and the prices were way more pocket-friendly, the restaurant was miraculously not stinky (i hate the smokey smell, don't you?) despite not having any visible table extractors and the lady boss a delight to meet. 

oh but this post was about primrose hill. minus the lengthy pre-amble about the mister and how he's always onto something fun, we'd been putting primrose hill off the past few weekends. we claim we've been busy but really, it's only because the good stuff is sold out by 2pm and we're hardly up before noon :) also, having seen the new year in from the top of primrose hill, taking in the fireworks as they exploded all over the london skyline, it was kinda nice to head back halfway into the year for some contemplation and consolidation. better yet when it's fueled by bubbles :)

little italian

on july 13th last month, we celebrated our first year in our little london flat. it was one of those moments where we chose location over square footage and it's a decision that's paid off in dining options. who cares if we live in a one-bedder that occasionally needs to house two whole families when they visit? all that matters is we've amazing restaurants a'plenty the moment we step out :) we try not to do repeats, and to slowly eat our way right and then left. and seeing how we're on an austerity drive and i've been cooking more than normal, our neighbourhood restaurant trail had grown cold. but to celebrate our flat-a-versary (now we've a wedding anniversary i've really gone to town with the whole anniversary thing!) we ventured back into the cultural melting pot that is london and tried this cosy little italian. we started with drinks by the window, after picking from their very serious wine list that didn't take itself too seriously (see first photo!) in fact we'd this amazing red (podere basedo rosso delle venezie)  that to my deprived nose was almost margaux. can't find it anywhere else (oh believe me i've tried!) so we might need to head back to stock up before our next party! the most authentic italian we've had in a while and can't wait for our next visit, despite my vehemently not liking to do repeats :)

constantly reminded of how blessed we are to be in london, with each other for company. this being newlywed thing is working out all right, and i'm so grateful for a spouse and a house.

summer afternoons

sorry to bang on and on about summer in london. just that with the coldest winter in decades, this bit of sunshine has been some time coming. and this from a girl who rather darkness and rain any day. we've a sadly predictable summer weekend schedule. with or without guests, we find out way to a different patch of grass and plonk ourselves down on the mat. some times the mister contemplates playing tennis (above) but most times we fall asleep and only wake when it gets cold. also, because it's been too hot in london, the mister has so kindly organised a couple of weekend jaunts. was in dover a couple of weekends ago, wales in the week, took our ancient car for a spin to bruges last weekend and back to paris this weekend. so much for spending summer weekends in london!

shopping for the littles

we're fortunate to have highly fertile cousins popping out babies left, right and centre. while this takes some heat off us to procreate (hello porpor, just pointing you've enough great-grandchildren without our contribution!) it does mean we're constantly buying baby clothes. in fact, my cousin has been sending her mothercare parcels to us for me to mule home and our doorman is starting to suspect that i'm the preggers person. 

most times, i spare the mister the agony because "if (he) wanted to spend saturday at le petit bateau, (he'd) have his own bloomin' baby!" which is very similar to what i snarl on planes ("if i wanted to be kept awake by a screaming baby, i'd have my own bloomin' baby!"). as you might've guessed, we haven't been child-proofed yet. nevertheless, with one little "cousin once removed" (he's not our nephew) turning one, and another just born, LPB presents were in order and the mister was coaxed into the boutique where he stalked off to a corner to reply "important work emails" i.e. be an insta voyeur :)

on the upside, i do think we'd be thick-skinned and ask for hand-me-downs from said fertile cousins eventually. to which the mister mused that, "considering what we paid, even if it's a girl she'll be wearing those bermudas!" methinks it's time to start saving for their therapy...

pop up in hyde park

we like bocca and like the ice cream even more but while the restaurant is atmospheric, i sometimes feel they get a little same-y after a while. this is where my ever-resourceful and ever-indulgent husband comes in. goodness knows how he consistently manages to suss out a good deal and when he learnt that bocca was doing a hyde park pop up, he scored us a mid-week table for two. now this may or may not have been precipitated by my latest housework blitz and i think at one point i told him in no uncertain terms that i was 1. on strike 2. not cooking. but the mister, he's got the patience of a saint and eats like a sinner ;) methinks he was secretly pleased not to have to eat my cooking. heck, i was openly pleased not to eat my own cooking!

 

dinner was in this beyoootiful white tent strung with fairy lights (i'm such a sucker for fairy lights). speaking of white tents, another day, another white tent! little did we know that the very next day we'd be in a white tent for the british red cross' 150th anniversary garden party at westminster abbey. now i've never been into westminster abbey so my inner perpetual tourist was thrilled at the prospect. but more important than my shallow elation was how we even managed to squeeze onto the guest list. it was a small party and a relatively modest one (i like that, don't you? if they'd free flow DP, they didn't, do think i'd have second thoughts about about contributing!) appreciate the staff are stewards of donated funds and we had such a lovely time learning about the ins and outs from our hosts. in fact, our host had been with the organisation for 15 years and this was the first time he'd been invited to the annual garden party. made me feel a little embarrassed that we were there when there are probably so many more deserving parties. not to take away from the mister and his awesomeness for spearheading a brand new thingum that's win-win and everyone seems pleased by. i'm so proud of him, my heart swells every time i think about his strong sense of social responsibility, about how he's all about giving back and making things happen despite the red tape. and as a medic, the british red cross is a cause close to heart and home and i'm so happy the mister feels the same.

oh but i was talking about the pop-up before this rare moment of altruism got the better of me ;)

the menu was admittedly limited but given their, well, limitations - it IS smack in the middle of hyde park- it was pretty well executed. charming waiter, good vino and before we knew it we were there for three hours. 

and on our way out, it might've been the wine talking but the mister convinced me this little critter was a dog. sigh. the mister, how he takes the mickey out of me :(