Tag: Food glorious food

  • Notes From Hanoi: Post-Tet Bling, Wise Men and Orion Pies For the Gods

    Notes From Hanoi: Post-Tet Bling, Wise Men and Orion Pies For the Gods

    I’m surprisingly comfortable with having no clue what’s going on around me. I’ve spent most of my adult life in countries where I’m not only far from fluent in the language but am also illiterate and still learning the cultural ropes. Vietnam- and specifically here in Hanoi because I can’t really speak for the rest…

  • Leicester is For Food Nerds: A Tangentially Culinary Introduction to an Unlikely Place

    Leicester is For Food Nerds: A Tangentially Culinary Introduction to an Unlikely Place

    Leicester (lɛstər/ les-tər) isn’t exactly on the global culinary map. It’s barely on any map at all, except perhaps one detailing manufacturers of, say, sturdy meat pies or Indian sweets.     Rumour has it that people have traveled vast distances to get a big box of Burfi from one of the sweet shops in…

  • Feed Me, Leicester: Eating Everything Before We Go, the Kayal Edition

    Feed Me, Leicester: Eating Everything Before We Go, the Kayal Edition

    One of the lesser-known perks of having an overtly personal blog that occasionally masquerades as something useful is that you sometimes get some rather unexpected offers out of left field. Like last week, after I finished up my rather haphazard month of attempting happiness, I randomly got an email from the guys at Momondo, a travel…

  • Day 4: The Happiness Project

    Day 4: The Happiness Project

        One of the things that I hadn’t entirely realized before having Thwacky was how much arm-time babies (or at least this one) require. Not a difficult or unpleasant time, but a lot of it nevertheless. My parents arrived when he was a month old, at a time when he was nursing pretty much constantly…

  • Day 2: The Happiness Project

    Day 2: The Happiness Project

      It’s Day 2 of my attempt to find something that makes me happy for 100 consecutive days. Today was a bit easier than yesterday to find something suitably happifying. The sun was shining and the tree blossoms were perfumed and billowy rather than sodden and thudding to the ground in sad clumps. We went…

  • Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England

    Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England

    People, I have moved to England.     The seemingly interminable spouse visa application process suddenly terminated and within a week of getting our surprise approval we were safely ensconced in a ridiculously genteel, chocolate-box village just outside of Leicester. That’s the one pronounced Lester. The standard phonemic alphabet doesn’t necessarily apply here. There’s a…

  • Big Dumplings in Little China

    Big Dumplings in Little China

    It’s hard to write about your homeland.   I’ve spent decades honing my skills at describing places from the perspective of an outsider looking in. It helps to not fully understand what’s going on, or if I actually do know what’s going on, to be just observing from the sidelines and playing dumb. It allows…

  • I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai

    I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai

        This is going to be a major food porn post. I just realized that after over four years in this city, I’ve really never delved into all things foodie on this blog. Mops, cats, pollution, water monsters, bad maps– sure. Food, not so much. Or if I did write about it, it was…

  • I’ll See Myself Out: Attempting Shanghai Nightlife (for Burnt Out Recluses)

    I’ll See Myself Out: Attempting Shanghai Nightlife (for Burnt Out Recluses)

    So I’m leaving Shanghai. Sometime in June, I’ll be handing in my Foreign Expert’s Certificate (actually a booklet, just to muddle matters) and sorting through my accumulated detritus to ship things home or to redistribute them amongst the neighbourhood rag-and-bone dudes. [Random note: Modern day tricycle-riding rag-n-bone pickers in Shanghai mainly seem to deal in…

  • Managing Your Plague in China: Brief Notes on my Stupid Cold

    Managing Your Plague in China: Brief Notes on my Stupid Cold

    So I finally made it in to work today, after two days spent under cover, barking my lungs out at home, destroying entire forests with my nasal detritus. I packed a little baggie with 2 boiled eggs and 2 small oranges (plus a massive coffee) to meet my most basic nutritional needs and dulled appetite.…

  • A Totally Impractical Guide to 6 Underachieving Nights in Hong Kong and Macau

    A Totally Impractical Guide to 6 Underachieving Nights in Hong Kong and Macau

    This is one of those times when I have, in theory, at least 4 blog posts worth of things to write about but haven’t the wherewithal to even try to shove it all into one, much less 4. Bear with me then, as I attempt to guide you through a fabulously exciting week in Hong…

  • Making You Jealous in Tangier, Morocco

    Making You Jealous in Tangier, Morocco

    So, Tangier. We came here because Doug was sick as a doug dog in Chefchaouen and we needed to go somewhere less strenuous than our previous intended destination, which was the freaking southern desert area. Camels and Bedouin and all. Not good when you’re ill. Especially not good when it’s both summer and Ramadan. Because,…