#109 - It's a little bit Korean, a little bit Chinese and a little bit Cajun...

Therapy (but not)

I've heard lots of people self medicate - drinks, shopping, drugs...I find cooking really therapeutic and calming.  Much more productive, I think - and a big change from how stressed out I used to get at the end of class when it was time to present plates and my sauce was not reducing quickly enough.  My parents are getting used to hearing "I had a bad night/day - I'm making dinner tonight".  We don't have far to go to find the silver lining.  There's something meditative about cooking when it's on your own schedule.

(FYI:  although help in the kitchen is always appreciated, it does have to be help.  This means that if you offer to help, get assigned a job (or several) but you disappear and don't do the thing you said you would do, you're not only not helping, you're being a pain in the ass because you're actually holding me up.  Get out of the kitchen because you're messing up my happy mojo!)

Cooking for 6

I was feeling a little bit lazy earlier - not really wanting to cook (yes, really lazy but I had a good excuse - really...). The good thing about promising to cook for friends is that it's a way to keep from giving in to the lazy feeling.

Anyway - I have a recipe in my slow cooker cookbook which calls for sirloin.  Yes, yes - some purists would say you use a crappy cut of meat for the chili since you cook it forever on low heat and you use the sirloin for steak.  Steak is all well and good, but having tried this recipe with sirloin and with chuck steak, all I can say is that the sirloin one is better.  Since I plan on feeding friends with very sensitive French palates and, most likely, my parents - I had to dial the heat factor back a bit.  It's a 9-hour (read:  overnight) cooking time so it should be fine by tomorrow morning.  It will even have tomorrow to sit in the fridge and so the sitting in its juices which makes stews and other things so much better on the second day.

Anyway - dinner to be served with rice, salad and the chili with assorted toppings - cilantro (coriander), green onions (spring onions), sour cream and cheddar cheese if people want it.  Not to mention fresh chili...a friend who happens to be a bit of a foodie / critic is going to give the chili a test run tomorrow - hopefully it will live up to his high standards.

Fusion food...

In the meantime, dinner for tonight - one of the chefs at the Cordon Bleu in London is not a big fan of "fusion cuisine", mainly because so many people seem to be confused about what it actually is.  Keeping his prejudices in mind, my dinner was more like French technique, Cajun seasoning, Mexican pico de gallo and served like a Chinese sang choy bao / Korean ssam (food wrapped in lettuce).  Back when the Atkins diet was such a big deal, I remember thinking it sounded kind of boring (lots of protein, no carbs, etc. etc.) but if they had had food like this, I might have actually tried it.  The one day I thought about not eating carbs, I immediately started to crave pasta and lots of bread / sandwiches - interesting and uncharacteristic, seeing as how I don't really eat sandwiches or much bread.  If you think about it, this is pretty friendly for most dietary restrictions:  gluten free, sugar free, nut free, dairy free...

And now - back to the A-team and looking forward to a day of friends, dancing, food and fun tomorrow.

Until next time, happy weekend!

#99 - More eating...

There was a really cold and wet night when I just wanted mac 'n cheese.  I didn't have any macaroni so noodles instead...this was with cauliflower and some leftover bresaola.  Great comfort food, totally not a diet food.


A quick trip home for a wedding - a rather large wedding.  Just before departure:  Wagyu burger (at the airport lounge - by Neil Perry?  Not sure if this is like the one they have at Rockpool but it tasted a lot like how I remember a Big Mac tasting.)

Then the wedding (I am very jetlagged).  I can't remember if I packed the dress to bring back with me.  I think I forgot it...I also forgot that since it was Hawaii, there was a chance that I would know someone at the wedding.  The Punahou connection was a live and well - somehow that seems to come out but it works pretty well as an ice breaker.


I'm not sure what other people consider large, but I think this one was 500 people (a few  no-shows, apparently).  Maybe it was that we had all spread out over the venue grounds over the course of the evening but it actually didn't feel very crowded.  Of course that could be due to the jetlag which accompanied my attendance.  Having tried it, I wouldn't recommend getting off the plane and going to a wedding just a few hours later.  Unless you don't care what you look like in photos, of course.  I'm vain enough to care.  The wedding was really nice, taking place on the lawn of the Waialae Country Club and facing the ocean.  The day had started out cloudy and wet but cleared in time for a lovely sunset and a warm afternoon.


Anyway - wedding aside, of course there was lots of food when I went home so without further ado:

Right:  Early Sunday morning - still jetlagged.  I had a coffee and read a book on the Popes while the boys went for an early morning...is it paddling if it's in a 1-man canoe?


Surf was up and there was a bit of a dunking.  Apparently the 1-man canoes are tippy.

Below:
Super early on a Monday morning (they practice at 6am).  I just took pictures and congratulated myself on being awake so early.  Left:  boys paddling back hard (either the 1/4 mile or the 1/2 mile, I can't remember).  Center:  where the coach was standing while watching the canoe go down and come back.  Right:  I don't know why I took this (attempt at being artistic or testing out the focus button).

Right:  The little red car belonged to one of the guys in the boat.  Kind of cute that his car matched the canoes and the Outrigger Club colors.


Left:  We also had afternoon tea at the Halekulani Hotel.  I hadn't done a birthday thing for one of my friends because I'd been out of town.  We watched people going to a wedding - it was quite a busy day that afternoon.  Some people watching as well as enjoying the cool breezes.  I took a photo of the chocolate mousse cake - it was pretty good although it felt a little heavy on the gelatine.  One of the guys (I've forgotten which one) didn't like the little crunchy bits in the middle but I liked them - they were kind of like cocoa pops or something - chocolate-y, crunchy round balls.


Grilling on the BBQ - it was that kind of weather and it's an easy way to do dinner.  There was a night of stuffed vegetables - another one which was great in theory but execution was a bit lacking.  The stuffed peppers turned out really well because it was closed but the meat in the stuffed zucchini dried out because it was exposed to the oven while the zucchini cooked.  Note to self:  cover the stuffing next time (Mom's suggestion).


Cheese sauce is a great way to eat the veggies.  Totally unhealthy, at least the way I do it, but if it gets people to eat veggies who cares?  I got lazy and didn't measure for the sauce so I don't know if it's been a little watery because I put in too much liquid or because the veggies released more water when I put the whole thing in the oven.

Below:  Breakfast with my sister using leftovers:  Steak, eggs and bacon bits (because bacon makes everything better).  My plate is the one with white rice (very local) and GY's plate has mixed grains (from Trader Joe's) - my niece prefers my sister's mix.  So do I.

(Another) breakfast at Koa Pancake House.
I wasn't hungry but I had to try their mixed breakfast - kalbi (BBQ Korean shortribs) and eggs with pancakes.  I didn't get a photo before the egg/s(?) disappeared of GY's plate but you can see the remnants.  We didn't get through everything but it was all delicious.  And a much better deal than a brunch that I had in Sydney last September (AUD$20 for coffee, fresh apple juice, 2 pieces of toast and a couple of pieces of smoked salmon).

We had a morning where GY's housemates had leftover lobster from Chinese food so I made lobster omelettes.  A couple of glum faces that day so when we BBQed that night, there was an injunction "don't eat all the lobster" so that my sister could have lobster omelettes the next day.  Lobster is much better with garlic butter than lemon butter.  BBQ of kaffir lime and lemongrass shrimp (requested by my sister), garlic steak and broccoli with cheese sauce.

Birthday breakfast for my sister:  lobster omelettes, garlic Hamakua and oyster mushrooms, bacon and rice -

Birthday dinner:  courtesy of CPK (my slice of cake on the left of the middle photo).

Then it was time to come back to Sydney.  The flight left a bit late - there was a slight delay initially, then another one when one of the passengers failed to board so they had to unload the luggage.  Am horribly jetlagged and sick - trying to figure out whether it was just the usual random post-travel bug or the remnants of a migraine from last week.


There were some unhappy babies on the plane - to be expected when you are travelling at a time which coincides with school holidays.  Dawn photo - a slight crescent over Double Bay - taken after waking up at some unholy hour due to jetlag.

Until next time, happy and safe travelling.

#26 - In which studying has commenced and I have no idea what happened on what day

In which the size (or lack thereof) of British refrigerators is really brought home at last
The last post gave a tentative menu for dinner on Sunday night.  Well - my refrigerator only fits so much in it (it is rather mini) and it is still filled almost to capacity.  I had to give in and the eggs are now residing in my microwave - I expect they will be gone within the next few days.  Patisserie goes through eggs, butter, sugar and flour like nothing else I've ever known.  Of course I know a very teeny tiny bit about law (in Australia only), a teeny tiny bit about bees and...that's about it, so I suppose it's a rather limited statement.

The fridge in this photo contains 30 large eggs (63 - 73 g), 3 medium eggs (50 - 60g), 3 kgs of unsalted French butter, 2.4 kgs chicken, 2 containers of left over ganache, 3 cheeses, 2 containers of cream cheese, smoked salmon, miso paste, salad, green vegetables (not the ones for dinner) and other fridge staples.  Unbelievable - can you believe it's just one person who lives here???
I had to have a rest after I lugged home all the groceries.  I then had a quick visit with Michael and Rufus a couple of doors down.  I can't remember if it was just to say hi, but I suspect I dropped off some food - I can't remember now.  Anyway, I was tired and I needed a hug.  Rufus was kind enough to oblige me with a solution to both mini-dilemmas.  Yes, we are lying on a sidewalk - but actually, I am laying on Rufus (who has had a bath and is consequently better than the sidewalk).

The best laid plans - or perhaps not...
Things did not go according to plan.  For one thing, I never made it to the fishmonger to check out the fish and for another, I didn't use the salad that I bought at the Farmers' Market.  You might quite rightly wonder why, to which I can only say - when space is as limited as it is in my kitchen and you spend as much time as I do wondering "where did I put those blasted shallots?  I just had them a second ago!" the two hours allocated run out quite fast.  Of course if I can do it in a kitchen where I don't have enough pots and pans, my pan doesn't fit in the oven for the braising and I don't have space for mise en place (i.e. putting everything in its place) I can probably get it done in the space and number of pots allotted to each station in the kitchen at LCB.

Not one of my more clever ideas
I had this idea I would be super efficient and do all kinds of things at once and amaze myself.  Well, there was amazement, but not in the good way.  I hadn't realized quite how limited the counter space was until I had butchered my chicken on the space where I normally dry 2 glasses and a pair of chopsticks (or in this picture, where the bowl is drying). 

There was no room for all the washing up or a place to put the dishes/pots once they were washed, especially since my dishwasher chose that day NOT to work.  It is now perpetually not working and the agents, despite promises to get onto it straight away, have done their usual stellar job of...well, nothing, as far as I can tell.  Must remember to give them the benefit of the doubt - they may just have forgotten to tell me that someone is coming to fix the dishwasher.
I have no idea how long each thing took so I can't compare it against the tentative timing set out for each task.  Note that the timing didn't allow for having to wash so many dishes and pots because I was doing two practices at once.  Yes, that's correct, I tried to run through two exams simultaneously.  Luckily the fricassee wasn't too bad (no carrots because I had no room and was trying to wash pots and pans while making the meringue for the tart and chilling the lemon curd which refused to set).  Any defects in the dish are mine and on purpose due to various constraints, I swear.  Except for not having enough salt.

Not ready yet
I know I am not quite ready for either exam because I forgot a couple of crucial steps in my Patisserie run - like leaving the rice on the table instead of putting it into the tart pan when I did the initial baking (blind baking) of the tart lining.  It was in the oven, I looked at the table and then had to think why the rice was sitting there instead of in the tart case which was already in the oven, which explains why the tart kind of fell over but not why I lined it badly.  I can say that it took 4.5 hours to do both dishes though - so dishwasher breakdown notwithstanding, I kind of passed both practicals, assuming I get the lemon tart on the final.  I still have to practice the other two (tomorrow we are taking a run at eclairs in cuisine as part of making easy classical French desserts).

My verdict:  Not horrible, not great.  They all tasted pretty good, taste comprising 20% of the marks for each exam, so I have hopes of at least passing, barring any silly mistakes.  LM and MA liked dinner.

This week...
is not over yet.  It is Friday night/Saturday morning and I have to go to sleep soon.  We finished our class tonight just before 9pm - there was no way to go faster because we had to rest our dough so many times.  It was 28.8C in the Boulangerie - which doesn't sound too bad except the butter didn't like it and consequently, neither did the dough for our petits fours.  Tomorrow we have a double Cuisine Practical - Beef Stroganoff (with more julienned vegetables), a quick lunch / water break then back to the kitchens for the eclairs.  But I am getting ahead of myself here.

Evil sabayons
I forget which day we did the grilled steak.  Tuesday, I think.  Once again I had trouble with my sauce - Bearnaise (i.e. Hollandaise but with added vinegar, peppercorn, tarragon & white wine reduction) - it was too thick and then - it split on my bain marie in less than a second.  We managed to bring it back, or rather Chef J did.  I had been told the theory but this time I got to put it in practice.  Um yeah - I did it on purpose so that I could learn how to fix a split sauce...really.
Fries were "way too small, Chef" and the steak unevenly cooked. Apparently it was medium rare, our target. It still feels squishy and rare to me. I had to cook it more when I got home. LM also thought the steak was rare, so it was perfect for when she had it for dinner whichever night it was. Luckily everything tasted good, according to the tasters. I wouldn't know - I haven't been able to smell anything since Monday. Hopefully the cold will be completely gone by Tuesday - seasoning is going to be difficult if I can't smell / taste.

Lord I don't want to be one of their number
We had one day where we didn't have to cook.  I think it was Wednesday - there was a demo (it must have been the eclairs) and then the ice cream/sorbet tech class for Patisserie in the afternoon.  I had to throttle the urge to ask one of the people if she was hard of hearing - I looked for a hearing aid (or two) and didn't see any.  She is one of several annoying Americans who asks the thing the chef just said 5 seconds ago.

     Chef:  "This is called a Pate a Bombe."
    Annoying person:  "Chef, what is this one called?"

Argh!  It's called "If you had been paying attention, you would have heard its name AND how it's spelled!  And if you were paying attention, why are you making him repeat himself and killing the rest of us with irritation???  So glad your mouth works - you have demonstrated it often over the past few weeks - can you please do us a favor and also demonstrate how well it stays closed?"  Ok - rant over.  Too much?  I have stopped asking questions for others and gone back to my previous policy - ask only if I have a question that I think is or might be relevant, they have laryngitis and I think their question is or might be relevant, or they are paying my firm - in which case I wouldn't have any questions for the chefs anyway.  Am also hoping that particular person is going to stop after basic...

Anyway, have decided it is better to throttle the urge than to throttle the person.  I have a feeling that giving expression to your annoyance in anything beyond loud sighs, groans, eye rolling and banging your head against your desk or the wall would be frowned upon by the school.  Plus it would inconvenience others in class and we're not exactly blessed with lots of wiggle room in the demo rooms.  At the moment I suppose it's a good thing if you happen to be trying to squeeze your way past the cute girl/guy you've been eyeing in class.  I have been told by others that we haven't exactly been blessed in the eye-candy department, but I've been too busy taking notes and watching the chefs to notice one way or the other.  Lack of wiggle room is not a blessing when the person sitting next to you is...um - fragrant and not in the just-got-out-of-the-shower or wearing-clean-laundry way.

Practice, practice, practice...
Some friends and I got together yesterday afternoon to practice our piping for last night's class.  You'd think after all that practice, things would be fine.  Well, it worked for the others, but my chocolate was cold by the time I got around to having to pipe my continuous border and...oh dear.

Mousse phobia (Charlotte au Cassis, Mousse aux Framboises, etc. etc. - aka Sponge cake with raspberry jam, blackcurrant mousse and blackcurrant glaze)

Side view


So this (left) is what happens when your chocolate is too cold.  In addition to my problems with the mousse.  This is the second time I had a problem with my mousse - last week it didn't set.  This time the gelatine hardened and made my mix lumpy - it was going to take too long to fix - luckily the recipe was enough that there was more than enough for each cake.  Three classmates kindly donated their excess mousse so that I could finish the stupid thing and go home.  Anyway - mousse problems led to too much time doing other things and cold chocolate resulting in awful piping.  The side view is from today so the mousse has collapsed a bit, but the stripes are layers of sponge and jam, which are actually quite delicious.  I can't bring myself to eat the mousse and it doesn't help that I keep misspelling it to "mouse".

Bad pastry hands
And this brings us back to tonight and our Petits Fours Secs, so called because they were baked in small ovens.  It was really hot - somehow my dough was ok for the first time, probably because I kept my hands out of it for as long as possible.  Warm hands are not good for what we were doing, so I used my scraper as much as possible and worked on a tray that I had chilled in the refrigerator almost first thing.  Piping decoration was another story altogether but the sable biscuits (like shortbread cookies) turned out not to badly.  I can't call them cookies because Chef NH almost fell over and died in a very French and melodramatic fashion when I called them cookies.  The meringues are the lady fingers and the other little disc shaped things (the little ones stuck together with raspberry jam and the slightly larger ones with almond cream piped in the center).

Chef NH said he hopes I don't make such a mess of my chocolate piping at the final given tonight's performance.  "I think you piped more chocolate on your hand than on the batons marechals.  Show me your hand."  I refused - my hand was covered in chocolate and it was oozing between my fingers - and you lose marks for being unhygienic / not working cleanly.  I blame it on lack of sleep last night.

Sleep may be overrated but I still want it
I haven't had nightmares about food and turning, mainly because sleep has been noticeably in abeyance for the last few nights.  I think I managed a 15 minute nap this afternoon but it doesn't really make up for a mostly sleepless night.  I am more impatient (witness the annoying American above, although more people are getting pissed off at her) and grumpy.  Some of the other people seem to be taking this as a bit of a lark - I don't know what their lives are like outside of school - whether they have other jobs, whether they really want to do this - because we don't see them often.  Maybe they are just really good and nothing ever goes wrong.

I am still waiting for the day when I don't have at least one major hitch in my practicals.  Until then, I don't care about the vacations they are planning when the Chef is explaining what happens if the oven is too hot or why you have to do something a certain way.  Could we please keep the conversations down to one side conversation if you have to talk?  Thanks - that way I can try to tune you out with one ear and listen to the chef with the other.  I run out of ears soon after that...

Indications of true chef-ness starting to emerge?
Have also come to the stage where I can no longer tell you how I got which scar on which hand.  There are too many and sometimes I don't know I have a cut/burn until much later - squeezing lemons is always a surefire way to discover any open cuts.  I notice my knife kit has been getting heavier and heavier - the first indication was when it pulled me over one day before I stood up from my locker and it was over my shoulder.  Anyway, I am guessing that this bruise is from the kit...finally fading...it was quite impressive a couple of days ago.
Ok - must try to get some sleep now.  Stroganoff and then eclairs - maybe I won't need to cook dinner tomorrow night - although I still have to cook the other practice chickens...

So until next time - happy sleeping.  May your days be filled with conversations that you are interested in hearing.  Incidentally - it is too late and I am too brain dead to check grammar and spelling, so apologies for the last few posts and this one.

#2: To Hong Kong (HK Days 0 - 1)

Oh thank goodness - the first time this popped up in Google it was in Chinese and I couldn't find the button to change it back to English.  It may have been there, but who can say?

Departure from Sydney
For those of you who know me and travel, this will come as no surprise to you.  For the rest of you, I assure you that I have only missed a flight once.  The other time I happened to arrive 24 hours earlier than necessary, but that's another story.

Luckily I happened to check my itinerary again for departure to Hong Kong because I didn't trust my math when I calculated departure from Sydney at 11:55pm and arriving in Hong Kong at 5:55pm (local time) with a flight time of just over 8 hours.  Then I called my lovely travel agent because it occurred to me that I had the wrong 11:55.  Sure enough, I had forgotten that Qantas writes its time in 24hour time.  All of a sudden I had 12 hours less than envisioned in which to do everything necessary to get to the airport.

JelLo, I apologize profusely - I needed those 12 hours to wash the sheets and towels and fold and put them all away.  Guest sheet sets are in the same closet as the guest towels, just a shelf up.  Obviously I did not succeed in finishing the laundry, so please tell your dad he can put them somewhere in a corner and forget about them.  I certainly will - I hope.

The flight was on time until 11:10am when we were supposed to board.  There was an announcement a while later that we would be delayed for an hour due to routine something-or-other.  Which confuses me because if it was routine, surely they would have allowed for that when allocating departure times?  Oh, and my big bag was 3kgs over.  So I had to reshuffle my luggage - FYI, if you didn't already know, paper weighs a TON.  It was no use telling the lady at the counter that it's only a teensy weensy bit over.  I make it a policy not to piss off the person who controls where I am going to sit.  Or the security screeners (TSA, what did you think I could possibly hide in my rubber slippers with clear straps?)

Dodger and Jester, sorry about the rush for the airport.  Those truffled scrambled eggs at Zigolini's are really good.  It might be worth having breakfast/brunch there anyway.

Hong Kong
The flight to HK was uneventful once we left Sydney.  They made up almost all of the lost hour (although, Qantas, did you think I wouldn't notice that the lock was gone from my small bag?  Really?  A bit disconcerting really - I will have to wash all of my underwear before I am willing to put them on).  Once we landed, it was another story altogether.  The carts you can use for your hand carry only go so far before there are metal poles sticking up out of the floor to make you leave the carts behind.  I happened to be schlepping one more bag than originally intended because I had to carry my dispute resolution and pilates readings.

Immigration moved really quickly, but it took a few moments to sink in.  This is mainly because you have to find the right line (visitors with some kind of electronic thing, HK residents, etc. etc.) and then there's another set of lines for people who need stamps, I guess.  I didn't know which passport to give them, so I filled out both.  Hopefully the immigration official stamped both passports, which I haven't checked yet.  Otherwise it will take a lot longer to complete my mission to actually fill up an entire passport, especially since they added extra pages to my US one.

So the taxis in HK are color coded.  Luckily my travel packet had something about it and my taxi driver spoke English.  I was confident that I could get around fine and it shouldn't be an issue that I speak no Cantonese or Mandarin.  This lasted until about 8:15 when, after checking in, showering and needing to meet S&J for dinner, I got into another taxi outside my hotel and found out that he couldn't understand me.  Thankfully S had told me her address phonetically - after I repeated it a few times and tried to describe it, he got the idea and I realized that because I don't know the proper accent, I may have said something indescribably rude to him.  It was more interesting after dinner - we went around in circles a bit (we got to the general area).  I have since put the enclosing envelope to my room key in my pocket so that I can show it to the next taxi driver.

By the way, you still have to do the smell test of your room.  My non-smoking room had previously been a smoking room.  I'm not sure when they switched it over but my foot didn't even make it in the door.  I swiped, I opened, got a whiff, then went straight to the satellite hotel desk by my room and requested a switch.  Better a twin room which hasn't had smoke than a queen bed with smoke lingering.

Hong Kong may now be part of China but it doesn't feel like it is.  For one thing, I haven't been grabbed by anyone on the street trying to sell me things.  For another, it's a lot cleaner.  The number of designer shops that I have seen all over the place make it quite clear that if you want to spend all day shopping, this isn't a bad place to do it.  Personally I find the crowds overwhelming and the traffic where I am (Wanchai) sucks.  It seems to be walker friendly, but I haven't tried that yet - definitely on the list for later today.

The grid layout also helps - the hotel's directions to a suggested dim sum place was to walk two blocks up, then turn left and it was halfway down the next block.  It's like getting directions in the grid portion of Manhattan...

Food!
S&J took me to a steak place somewhere between their place (really nice place, but any place where S has had an influence always is) and my hotel.  What's to say except the food was excellent?  Must remember that my idea of medium (steak) and a restaurant's idea is different.  The waiter and I had a slight difference of opinion...their description said pink in the middle.  My steak was red and still bleeding.  J said it was on the more rare side of medium.  The waiter nevertheless took it away and brought it back more cooked.  I'm sure their chef probably thought it was well done.  In either event, the restaurant gets bonus points for waiting to clear appetiser plates until J and I had finished our salads (we got a set menu, S didn't) and for replating my steak when they brought it back instead of putting it back on my half-demolished vegetables.  Dinner was well paced until we got to dessert - mainly because they forgot two of us were having a set menu.  It may have appeared that we were settling in for a long night of catching up but there was no rushing us out the door - very civilized.

Note:  I may fail steak grilling at the Cordon Bleu.  Must practice cooking steaks.  A lot.  S's salad was delicious - main sized Caesar salad where the dressing coated all of the leaves without drowning them and no single ingredient overpowered it.  You know the kind - the garlic or anchovy knock you over and you wonder why they switched your Caesar salad with something that wasn't on the menu, while other dressings are so bland you wonder what happened to the lemon/garlic/anchovy/etc.  This one was more-ish.  For the Americans, this is Australian for "you want more".

We were all impressed to see what must have been the AUD$100 steak go past.  It sounds excessive until you read that this is meant for 2-3 people to share.  Apparently food in HK ranges from stratospherically expensive to cheap (and delicious, at least according to Time Out HK) street food.  I would try the street food if it weren't for the fact that I have to get back on a plane in a few days to continue on to London.  A plane is not a fun place to be sick, as some other friends can attest.

I am sitting in the hotel lobby and trying to drink coffee.  It tastes really burnt, which someone told me means that the water got pushed through the espresso too fast.  I never knew that I would ever be able to tell good coffee from bad.  The pain au chocolat is nondescript.  A bit floury...on the other hand, who goes to HK or China and eats French pastries?  My bad, the hopes are saved for dim sum/yum cha this morning when I meet S & J at 11am at my hotel.  I have to walk down the street and find the place (and see if I can make a booking) - it's unfortunate that I didn't write it down when the airport taxi driver told me its name.

S&J have not yet been able to find HK versions of essential pantry items, so I brought back a small section of Coles with me.  Thank goodness for the requests!  Left to my own devices, I may have packed unncessary items (and still been over the weight limit).  They will still have to leave on the extra "Heavy" tag on my big bag, but I don't expect I'll have to take things out and carry them on the next leg.  Am wondering about girly credentials - having trouble finding all cosmetics in my bags despite having packed most of my bathroom cupboards into the bags.  Think perhaps I should pack makeup bag with essentials for travel, like I do with my shampoo and conditioner.  Well, perhaps not.  No one seems to care here, in complete contrast to Seoul where all the women were dressed up, makeup and hair done, matching bags and shoes...everything that seems to take so much time in the morning when you are trying to get dressed.  I'd rather sleep...

Find the money really confusing.  Now I remember why I had that extra little pouchy thing out, which I left behind in Sydney.  It was for currency which wasn't USD/AUD/GBP.  HKD and GBP resemble each other quite a bit.  Have taken to carrying HKD folded up in my pocket.  Figure if I get pickpocketed from my jeans pocket, there are probably bigger problems than some missing cash.

Wish me luck - I am about to sally forth onto a street whose name I don't know to find a restaurant whose name I can't remember in a city where I don't speak the language.  More later!