Eating my TOES

Food, food, food.....I have been eating "toes" lately. Lots of them. Tomatoes, potatoes as my dinner and lunch.

These seems to be the staple winter diet here. In the smaller supermarkets, tomatoes, potatoes, onions(in all their varieties), make up more than half of the "vegetable section". The rest of the space are taken up for guess what- carrots and all the rest of the "roots", parsips, turnips and beet roots. Yeah, there is also the cabbage family-lettuce, red, savoy and just cabbage taking another 10 percent or so of the vege section? "Siao pai chai", if available, usually takes up a coveted top shelf. Two of these heads sell for 1.29£, yeah, that is more than £5.00/kilo. Hmmm, i wonder if the price search engines like kelkoo or price runner does a price comparison on grocery.

You just cant escape from these two ingredients-potatoes & tomatoes in every meal you have. Oh yes, onions too! I think I must have been eating more onions in the last two weeks than I would normally eat in a year.

Open a recipe book, and you will see onions in all the soups, and stews. Onions go into my ommelette, stews, soups, mashed potatos, salads etc, and yes even my porridge.

If you want to have something filling or even just a snack, you cannot escape from potatoes. Potatoes in stew, soups and pies, mash potatoes, chips, bake potatoes, potato salads etc.....there is no escape from it.

If you are sick of potatoes and want to get some pastas for a change, you will face tomatoes. Tomatoes is also another star ingredient here. Everywhere you turn, you will see tomatoes. Even when ou decide to go unhealthy and head to a fast food centre; tomatoes will appear in your sandwich or burger, and of cource the tomato sauce! (No chili sauce, terrible!!!)

And the best part is when you are sick of all these 'western food'; you can have a flavour of the east in the form of curry. Then all your "toes" and also the onions will go in in a big nice pot. yeah, you just cant escape from it!

Maybe it is just time to learn cooking skills? recipe books or cook shows, it is time to devour these!

Let it snow let it snow

Finally the first snow of the year for London. I would have missed it if not for my SO who rushed back just to tell me that the snow flakes have fallen. Everyone was hoping mad for white Christmas, but the snow only fall on the 27th, a busy day for shoppers as the sales have started!

I went to South Kensington Palace and the gardens to see how it look like in snow. Quite nice actually, but the blanket of snow were a little too thin, and melts quickly. Many people are still on a holiday and families have came out to play, making snowman etc. I took some nice photos of this, and will upload it later. Oh ya, the palace shop has a good public toilet- free- and it comes with a toilet seat sanitizer. (Hmm.. I have a growing obsession about locations of FREE public toilets, what with all the hot coffee going down my system. You have to pay 50p for a pee in for some of them- more than enough for a meal in some countries)

The squirels were out 'playing' in the snow. One actually took me for a tree and climbed up. The claws are scratchy. Those near the palace were extremely poeple frinedly, having been well fed by tourists. If I were to be a squirrel in my next life, let me live in London, not in Asia, where I am considered as food.