My first Super Bowl

If you’d asked me what a Super Bowl was, any time up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d have confidently told you that it was a delicious healthy lunch dish with rice, avocado, kale, quinoa and various other on-trend ingredients. But I now know better. Last week a new display of cakes and biscuits… Continue reading My first Super Bowl

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The Vancouver Foodie Trail

What better way to work up an appetite than to hire a bike and cycle vigorously around Stanley Park, admiring the views and the autumn colours? Then I hopped on the cutest little water bus and chugged across the wonderfully named False Creek to Granville Island, where the public market is a foodie heaven. The… Continue reading The Vancouver Foodie Trail

Just call me Winifred…

Kinsale is the most gorgeous little town in County Cork. It really is picture postcard perfect, with sweetie-coloured houses, a marina with a full complement of yachts and super-yachts, a sandy beach, and plenty of lovely shops, pubs and restaurants. And what’s more, the sun shone for us this week! Of course when you’re in… Continue reading Just call me Winifred…

Wonderful, weird, wacky: wine tasting in South Australia

A trip around the Barossa Valley is the wine lover’s equivalent of a celebrity homes’ tour of Beverley Hills; there are so many famous names jumping out at you. Every couple of minutes you find yourself pointing and saying ‘Look! It’s Penfolds/Jacob’s Creek/Wolf Blass/Yalumba.’ However, being the serious, dedicated wine tasters that we are, we… Continue reading Wonderful, weird, wacky: wine tasting in South Australia

Little Devils in Chinatown

I’ve made the occasional foray into Chinatown in KL before – I distinctly remember a trip to the market here for frog porridge several years ago – but I haven’t ever explored it properly, so I decided to sign up for a guided tour. Chinatown is famous for its market, which specialises in fake designer… Continue reading Little Devils in Chinatown

No hanky-panky

For my trip to KL this time, I wanted to try a few new things rather than just revisiting the old. Firstly, I decided that I’d like to try a blind massage as it’s a social enterprise that’s well worth supporting. There are quite a few blind massage parlours, so I looked online for some… Continue reading No hanky-panky

Limapulo, Kuala Lumpur

It’s not often that I get invited to a restaurant owned by a former male model, but on Friday evening my friend Ken, an expert in Peranakan cuisine, invited me to try a new restaurant, Limapulo, which belongs to his friend Alan Yun. Limapulo specialises in a unique mix of Malay and Chinese cooking called… Continue reading Limapulo, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Fusion

It’s been almost four years since I left Malaysia, and it’s lovely to be back. One thing I’d forgotten about, and which I find myself appreciating all over again, is that this is a country of contrasts and amalgams – old/new, east/west, Indian/Chinese/Malay. Everything is embraced and somehow it all seems to work. On Thursday… Continue reading Malaysian Fusion

My First $300 Bottle of Wine

Robert Mondavi helped to put California wines on the map in the mid-twentieth century, and it’s good to see that his descendants aren’t just resting on their laurels (or their grape vines) and counting the cash they raked in when the winery was taken over. Instead they’ve set up a new winery in the Napa… Continue reading My First $300 Bottle of Wine

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The Dangers of Drinking Wine

I wholeheartedly recommend holidaying in the company of a wine expert. Good wineries are researched, appointments are made, and all I have to do is turn up and taste the wine. Ridge Winery makes an award-winning red called Monte Bello which was one of the wines chosen for the famous blind tasting in 1976, known… Continue reading The Dangers of Drinking Wine

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When is a semi not a semi?

Answer: When it’s a journey through time and space. Last week I visited a house that the Times described as ‘Britain’s most extraordinary home’. Talliston House is a three-bedroomed semi-detached house in Great Dunmow, Essex, which has so many histories attached to it, that it’s practically a GCSE subject in its own right. I didn’t… Continue reading When is a semi not a semi?

A surprise in Andalucia

The Moors and I have at least one thing in common – we do love a citrus tree. For me this manifests itself in an inability to walk past an orange or lemon tree without stopping to photograph it. For the Moors, slightly more amibitious in the citrus arena, it meant planting an abundance of… Continue reading A surprise in Andalucia

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