Brewers Fayre take 2, delicious chocolate pud, and yet another dress.

So, to update everyone on the food stuff we've consumed recently (as always!), here is the pictorial account! ;)

We went to Brewers Fayre the other night to treat ourselves (I don't know what we've done to deserve it other than I wanted the dessert - gorgeous, melty chocolate fudge dessert with ice cream and profiteroles on top). But here's what we actually had!

Combo sharer. Garlic bread, potato wedges, onion rings, scampi, chicken goujons and nachos with three dips (barbecue, salsa and sour cream).

Lamb shank with mash potato and vegetables.

Smothered chicken. Basically chicken breast and bacon smothered with barbecue sauce and melted cheese.

And yep, no dessert. We ended up being too full for dessert, sadly. :( Shouldn't have had the starter. If we're going to have two courses, I much prefer desserts!

But Boy owes me another trip there for the dessert now. :P Even though getting the starter was my decision. Um... yeah. Don't know how that works either.

For those who had read my Facebook status yesterday night about that chocolate pudding, here's a photo!

Mmmmm. The moment I put the spoon through, the melted chocolate just flowed out, seemingly endless. Heaven! It wasn't too sweet or too bitter either, and rich and moist enough to be just right.

Anyway, with the food talk out of the way, I got another dress. *shamefaced* This time a calf-length Almost Famous dress, nude colour, silk and rayon mix (I love how it feels to the touch!).

Boy thinks I should wear this one rather than the cerise one from Ghost to my brother's wedding. Both are equally as annoying to get on and I needed help to get the side zipper past my waist, just like I needed help with the buttons at the back. But once on, I admit that I like this nude-coloured one better, the flowy skirt doesn't emphasis on my bulges as much.

Silver accessories, do you think?

London, again.

Phew, back at home and able to rest my feet. At least no delayed trains this time around!

I don't like travelling without Boy. I miss him. I sound pathetic, but I do. I'm so used to his presence now, even him being at work and me being at home sometimes still feel really weird to me. He's still at work at the moment, so I haven't seen him for 27 hours so far since I left. Not that I'm counting. :P

But one thing I do like about travelling to these random (sometimes useless) conferences is the freebies. The hotel is paid for. The travel is paid for. The food is paid for. Yummers, free food! And the hotel they tend to book us into is not the usual cheap Travelodge or Premier Inn. They do like to book us into minimum 3* hotels, because it's all about image in the corporate world, and we're "professionals". So we get the lush lobbies and hotel restaurants too.

This time around, I was booked into Corus Hotel Hyde Park. I got there at around 8ish after suffering in the London Underground (it was so hot, I don't know how people kept their coats on and not die!), went up to my room, phoned Boy to let him know I've arrived safely, and took some pictures of the room.

The tiniest corridor in the world leading to my room. And another room next to mine.

And this is the tiniest room I've slept in. Even my room in student halls were bigger. I'm convinced it is originally a big room, and they just decided to make a thin separation wall and make it two rooms. I could hear every word that was spoken in the room next door. :S

The toilet and shower with a creepy green light.

The desk/work area. This is the nicest part of the room and very well thought-out. It actually has a magnifying mirror too!

View out of the window. Not much, and not quite Hyde Park.

The room itself leaves much to be desired. But I suppose it's London, space is expensive, so they just make do with small rooms. At least everything is clean and well-looked after. Just not very impressed though - the other hotel I stayed in London had bigger rooms, but the furnishing and bathtub were in poor condition. Can't have everything, eh?

Afterwards, I went downstairs again for some more food (I ate before I got on the train to London, hah).

Usually when I'm travelling and I know other people attending the conference, I tend to eat out with them because you get so much more for your money when you eat out, and we get an allowance of something like £28 per night for dinner (including food and drink). Hotel food are expensive and most of the time not worth the money spent because the portions are tiny. But I didn't care that much about portion sizes yesterday night since I've technically eaten an early dinner, I was just there for the dining experience.

I sat down at the table and was given the menu. Flipped it open and there it was in front of me:

"Tastes of Malaysia"

Roffle. They had stuff like satay and rendang and kway teow goreng! What a revelation. On the other page was "Seasonal British". I ended up going for the British version because I was afraid that ordering Malaysian food in London may not meet my high expectations and I may be left disappointed.

Table for one. :( The wine was pretty good company though... and yes, I've gotten a taste for reds now.

Starter - Confit pork with glazed baby carrots and green beans and honey mustard sauce. Very succulent, but way too salty.

Main - Braised pork belly and roasted monk fish with sauteed kale, apple and mango salsa and apple mash potato. It was okay. Nothing to shout about. I enjoyed the starter more than the main, and for some reason my starter looked bigger than the main course!

Dessert - Trio of fruit crumbles. I enjoyed this the most. It was so yummy. The first is apple and blackberry crumble with vanilla ice cream, the second is rhubard crumble (I think, I've never had rhubarb before, but it looks like pieces of rhubarb!) with caramel ice cream, and the third is banana crumble with banana ice cream. Was very weird having banana crumble, but it wasn't bad!

Overall, not too impressed by the food anyway. Maybe I should've gone for the Malaysian dishes - it did smell really appetising. Hindsight 20/20 and all that.

Camwhoring, as I do in hotels when I'm alone and bored.

I think my colleagues may be right - I look better without makeup on, softer and less fierce, albeit looking a bit tired because my puffy eyes and dark circles are not concealed. But my skin isn't really as clear as it turns out on photos, so it must just mean I'm unskilled at applying makeup because it's supposed to make you look better, not worse! :(

Woke up in the morning, went to attend the conference (which I thought was 10.30am and realised at 9.20am whilst I was having a leisurely breakfast that it was actually a 10am start!), suffered some more in the London heat, did a lot of random interactive things that are supposed to make us better leaders, and we finished early.

Ugh. Which meant I had 2 hours to kill before my scheduled train!

So what did I do, a girl stuck in London and was conveniently situated in Oxford Street? I went shopping!

Not for much, mind. I got myself a pair of 6" heels that I'm sure I'll kill myself wearing one day, got unagi from the Japanese food store because I'm in love with unagi and you can't get Japanese food in Lincoln, and was queueing up at Jane Norman to buy a black satin with diamante clutch when I noticed that I had to go back and collect my bag before the receptionist left for the day. So I abandoned the clutch for today (which was sad, because it was pretty and elegant-looking).

Went to King's Cross and spent another hour reading the book I brought along: Season of the Witch. One of those books that I started reading last year and never managed to finish it. I think I bought it from the airport when I went to Prague!

I know, I'm terrible. I'll go finish it now before Boy comes back and we can start thinking about food. Again. ^^

Food post - Full English Breakfast and Welsh Cawl Cennin

Speaking of eating, this was what Boy and I got up to today morning.

Full English Breakfast

In England, this is apparently what you have for breakfast. And Boy thinks Malaysians eat too much - that plate is twice the size of a normal plate of food in Malaysia!

It was so yummy. But not yummier than a McD's brekkie however!

And if any of you remembered my stint at cooking the Welsh cawl cennin (lamb and leek stew), this is the resulting photo of hours of chopping, boiling and simmering:

Cawl served with crusty roll.

It actually tasted quite amazing with the crusty roll. Better than just having the stew itself. Yummy! Definitely a winter food though, perfect for cold nights.

But of course, there was enough left over to feed ten others because the recipe I was following (from a Welsh tourism site) did not specify how many servings, so I ended up using three large leeks, a leg of lamb, and more. :x Might want to make a little bit less next time, methinks!

Anyway, time for dinner (KFC!) and we're going to be watching Don't Tell the Bride. :P

More on dresses.

I'm a terrible, terrible person with clothes. Extremely fickle, never able to make up my mind, etc. Also because I don't think clothes fit all that well on me, so I usually end up looking at a lot and never buying anything.

After the two dresses previously that I couldn't imagine spending £150 on, I prowled on eBay for better deals and this is my latest find:

BNWT, currently at £41 and reserve not met yet. I <3 how it drapes at the bottom in waterfall layers.

But regardless of that dress (which bidding ends for tomorrow at around 10ish in the morning whilst I'm at work! I will surely be </3!), I did receive a Ghost dress in the mail two days ago. I ordered it around 2-3 weeks ago before I tried on any of the other dresses because it was only £50 from a designer brand sale. It looked red in the pictures on the site, but to my horror it was more like pink.

Ew.

But it's not bubblegum pink, thankfully, more like cerise or a deep rosy pink, so it's tolerable. It's got a lot of buttons at the back, which makes putting it on by myself impossible, so I had to enlist Boy's help to get it buttoned up. Why do people put buttons at the back where you cannot reach? We're not all practicing yoga, you know.

After we managed to get all the fiddly little things buttoned up, I went to put my highest heels on (my 4" suede black boots, in this case).

I'm too short for it.

Even with my highest heel, the skirt still drag at the bottom. I'll need another inch or two, but where the hell do I find something like that? Platform shoes? Actually, if I decide not to walk around much, I could just stand on a stool and no one would notice, the dress is so long.

Ugh. I need to hit the gym more, I think. My belly fat is showing. Either that, or invest in a really good pair of control knickers and decide not the eat or breathe the whole night of my brother's wedding.

Dresses for a wedding.

Been looking at a lot of dresses lately as Brother #2's wedding is in November and I wanted to wear something suitable. I have a lot of black dresses, but I'm not keen on turning up in a black dress for my brother's wedding. I found a lot that I liked, but none that I can reasonably afford to spend that much on. I mean, it's a dress. One that I probably won't ever wear again. How can I possibly spend more than £100 on it? Such a big waste of money.

But there are just a couple of dresses that are so pretty though. :( These two are examples:

Long silk maxi-dresses. I've actually tried on the first dress, and as plain as it is, it looked great and felt wonderful on (I'm in love with silk now, I think). Blue-green one is £150. Purple one is £225.

*sigh* Why am I not rich?

On the sidenote, this looks gorgeous but I could never wear it unless I drop 4 dress sizes and go to the gym everyday to attain the perfect body:

Hrm, on second thought, maybe a bit too sexy? My parents may have words if I turn up in that. Roffle.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

So I read Twilight. It was a gift from Brother #3 last Christmas (along with the two other books), and I admit that I have been pretty lax with my reading habit because I've been so tired all the time from work and everything else. I used to read four books a week - that has dwindled to maybe two to three books in a year. In fact, I've started on around six books since last year and I haven't finished any of them. Which is quite sad, really.

Now, about Twilight. I didn't watch the movie because it seems so overhyped and everyone thought the main actor was so handsome and swoon-worthy when I thought he wasn't that much of a looker. I hate his eyes; he always look half-asleep. And so I didn't get around watching it since it's not as important to me as other movies were at that time.

And the book. I struggled to read past the first couple of chapters because I get really annoyed with the protagonist, Bella. God, she's such a whiny brat, I can really strangle her. But I suppose I'm judging her too harshly - she is, after all, a teenager and most teenagers have such problems. I probably was quite a whinger at her age (seventeen). But that doesn't make me like her any more, and not relating to the protagonist makes it difficult to read the whole book because you know you're not going to get any relief from herfor the next 400+ pages. There's no other point of view.

Once I got past the whole being-annoyed-at-the-protagonist stage, the book itself was pretty readable. I liked the plot even if it is terribly unoriginal (but most chick lit are pretty unoriginal anyway), it's decent brainless stuff to read if you like those kind of things. Just don't expect anything to surprise you or any new revelations or mystery or anything that will make you think. I still don't like Bella, and I cannot immerse myself into the book as I normally would due to my dislike for her, so reading it just feels like... reading it. I'm outside of the book, watching. I'm not feeling the book. I'm not lost it in, unable to put it down.

And I think that's disappointing.

It's a book for pre-teens and teens and it is written in that manner. Read it if you have nothing else more interesting to do, but honestly, I think there are other books out there that are more memorable, more interesting, more fun, more worthy of your time. I mean, Harry Potter series was originally written for children, and I think that's more engaging than Twilight.

Conclusion? Borrow it.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.

I'm convinced that I've ruined Boy.

Before he met me, he ate food sparingly. Survived on junk food a lot. Was a fairly thin bloke (underweight for his height, if I recall correctly). Very picky and not too adventurous with his food, doesn't do spicy food or vegetables and the only pizza he liked was margarita pizza (cheese, tomatoes, herbs). And after getting together with me, being the Malaysian that I am, food is practically a hobby and eating is a form of socialising. I ate a lot and made him eat with me.

So here we are, two and a half years later, tending to eat too much for our own good and we actually do have at least two meals a day. He is actually in the healthy weight range now. Boy cooks various dishes, and some of them are spicy. He likes rendang and peri-peri chicken and black pepper beef and can tolerate curry. He no longer complains when I accidentally overpepper the dishes I cook. He loves eating out and does a pretty good job finishing the large portions that comes with eating out. His favourite pizza has changed from margarita to meat feast with extra spicy beef. He survived 10 days of eating various stuff in Malaysia, most, if not all, are completely foreign to him. In fact, now he has surpassed me in the adventurous bit - he likes trying out new places to eat more often than I do.

Today, we played Texas Hold'em poker against each other to decide what/where to eat. We ended up at Brewers Fayre, a chain of restaurant pubs in England. Took quite a bit of hunting before we found the place though!

This is what we had:

Minted Lamb Loin with Mashed Potatoes and Fresh Vegetables

Smothered Chicken with Garlic Ciabatta, Chips and Coleslaw

Garlic Ciabatta, Onion Rings and Garlic Mushrooms

Ultimate Sharing Dessert: Chocolate fudge cake with crunchy chocolate and honeycomb pieces, topped with profiteroles, five scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce and topped generously with whipped cream.

I loved my main, the lamb. It was cooked to a medium rare, which was so melt-in-your-mouth tender and delectable, and the gravy complemented it nicely. The dessert nearly killed us. But it was so good. When we got to the profiteroles, I thought those were good. The chocolate fudge cake was even better, so I couldn't stop.

It's 6 hours later, and I still feel full and a little bit sick. :x

Oh, and since this is a food-related post (like most of my posts are nowadays), here's a random photo of a sausage, mash and onion gravy dish I made a while ago:

Sausage and Mash

If you've never tried it before, pork and bramley apple sausages are to die for. :) I've also experimented recently with baked chicken breast stuffed with sage and onion stuffing wrapped in bacon, which was pretty tasty but I have no photo of it, so I may make it again and try to remember to take a photo of it!