I did something quintessentially English this week - afternoon tea at the Park Lane Hotel on Picadilly. It was a birthday present last year from the very generous Diva and Nags (thank you again!).

My friend and I arrived a little early, so we took a short walk through Green park to Buckingham Palace. The sky was moody and inky-grey, although it wasn't cold - again, very British!
We were seated in the Palm Court in the centre of the hotel - a beautiful room in Art Deco style. Since the atmosphere was very composed and civilised, I didn't feel right getting my camera out, but luckily there are some very good photos on t'internet!There was a harpist playing sweet melodies, which was lovely and relaxing. We chose our tea from a large selection - difficult! I had Flowering Osmanthus, described as a "Sweet and gentle flowering green tea hand-tied around an explosive orange Osmanthus flower". It comes as a bud that opens up when the hot water is poured in. My friend chose Whole Rose Buds, which was so perfumed and delicate, it was like drinking crushed roses. Ooh, look, I've found a menu.
We were served some cute little finger sandwiches, each with a different type of bread - crab and cucumber, smoked salmon, coronation chicken, egg and cress, and beef and rocket. In my delight, I forgot to take a pic before I started, sorry!

Then came little fluffy scones - white and wholemeal - with cherry jam, orange curd, mandarin and pineapple preserve and, of course, clotted cream. They were heaven! I could eat these every day! The cherries in the jam packed a punch, as they were marinated in rum - yum! Having always been a very clumsy girl, I managed to drop a massive dollop of the blood red jam on the white white tablecloth and spent the next half hour trying to conceal the stain in order not to look like a ham-fisted idiot who shouldn't be allowed out in civilised society!

All in all, it was a fabulous day, and a very memorable experience. We went for a spot of shopping in nearby Oxford Street afterwards. It's days like this that I love London :)

Yes, tis me! I hope you didn't think I'd deserted you; after all, so many people have left blogging recently, but fear not, I'm not one of them! I do owe you guys an explanation though - as you know, I was in Hong Kong in the first week of April, and ever since I've been back, I've been ill with vile respiratory tract infections. It's been a horrid two weeks, and probably the most ill I've been in years, but am starting to come out of the daze of painkillers and antibiotics. I can breathe, talk, laugh without coughing, and eat again (hurray!), and the dizziness has abated enough for me to see the words I'm typing - woohoo!

Hong Kong was fun - it seems so long ago that I hardly remember it now. Actually, the weirdest thing was seeing my lab partner from uni when I landed at HK airport, getting on the same bus as me, and again at the airport on my way back - she was on the flight after mine. Small world, huh..? Anyway, I ate loads, and put on a few pounds, as I usually do when I go over there. I actually wanted to talk about weight - I just finished watching the Channel 4 documentary, SuperSkinny Me: The Race to Size Double Zero. It focused on two journalists trying to slim down from a UK size 12 to a size 2 (US size 00) in just five weeks. I watched with horror but not without fascination, as I'm sure most women watching did. Because, lets face it, who doesn't think that they could stand to lose a few lbs or an inch off the spare tyre?

During the program, I found, worryingly, that I shared a lot of the feelings and symptoms the women had during the experiment. You see, before I went to Hong Kong, I had been trying to lose some weight. I'd put on a few lbs, and it was becoming noticeable. I've pretty much been the same weight since I was 17 (aside from losing and regaining 10lbs when I was ill in 2002), but since I've had ME/CFS, I've been a lot less active, and although it didn't really show hugely on the scales, it's started to show on my body shape. As I'm not really able to do any cardiac exercise because of CFS 'flare-ups', the only thing I can control is what I eat. Just by eating slightly smaller portions and cutting out unhealthy snacks, I lost half a stone in 3 weeks (which shows you how much I snacked!), but strangely, I don't look any skinnier at all! Anyway, the women in the experiment reported constantly thinking about and becoming obsessed with food, which is exactly how I felt during weeks two and three of my 'diet'. Week one was fine - I didn't change what I ate, just chewed slowly and savoured flavours and textures, stopping when my stomach started to become full. I was thinking, 'Gosh, this isn't so hard'. But after mid week 2, every day just got harder and harder. I craved EVERYTHING, and was constantly talking and thinking about food pretty much every moment I wasn't eating, as well as evaluating how full/empty my stomach felt every other second. Food was my every thought. It wasn't very nice for me or the people around me, just as in the experiment.

Of course, being ill these two weeks and not being able to eat, I lost the holiday weight from HK and a little bit more. In the words of Emily from The Devil Wears Prada, 'I'm one stomach flu away from my goal weight' Just kidding :) Now that I've regained my appetite, I'm finding that I'm constantly starving to the point of dizziness, and consequently eating like a heifer. I have a feeling that all my suffering will have come to nothing if I carry on like this!

The difference between me and the women in the experiment was that with me, the weight needed to be lost - I had a BMI of 26 (overweight) and now have a more respectable BMI of 25 and don't feel as bloated as before. Watching the documentary though, and seeing what the two women went through to achieve a skinny body shape, I can tell you that I would never ever go to those lengths to lose weight or look good. For one, I love eating too much; two, I don't like getting sweaty; and three, who finds a bag of bones attractive anyway? I think I'll just eat normally but a little more healthier from now on, I'm not cut out for this dieting lark! :)

I hope you've all been well, and I shall definitely spend a few hours catching up on blogs tomorrow. Be good!

Love Panda xx

These lobsters were brought back from the fish market last night. Aren't they beautiful? They were flailing like crazy, very much alive when we took them out. It seems like such a shame to eat them - not that I usually think twice when eating meat or seafood, but it's a different story when you've got to kill them. They've both female - both carrying eggs on the underside of the tail, as you can see in the picture. Isn't it fascinating? They're supposed to be a delicacy in parts of the world, it will be interesting to try.


There is much debate on the most humane way to kill lobsters, which mostly involve boiling. The Chinese, however, don't trouble themselves thinking about these things, and they're drained of urine (I won't tell you how), then chopped before frying or steaming. These two will be shallow-fried/steamed with ginger and spring onion. Mmm, I can taste the sweet, delicate flavours already..Does anyone know what to do with lobster roe? Should it be cooked separately or just left to cook with the rest of the lobster?


I suspect the wonderful Nikki might be able to answer this one!

The other night, I was talking to my friend and her sister, who are both vegetarian. They were interested by the 'weird' food I've eaten. Being Chinese, I guess we eat a lot of stuff that other people might think strange. Then coincidentally, I was over at Chez Pim's site (she's a food blogger) and was interested to see this article.

So let's test our weird parameters - what are the 'weirdest' things you've eaten, and what on my list do you consider weird? Let's see, I have tried:

• Grilled frog (my cousin's wife apparently caught and grilled them herself in Thailand)
  
• Chicken tendons and feet (pretty standard in dim sum)
  
• Duck tongue and beak (pictured)
  
• Pigs ear (crunchy, tendonous and yummy)
  
• Snake (lots of little bones)
  
• Eel and Conger eel (again, so many bones!)
  
• The offal of various animals (inc. liver, heart, kidney, intestine, stomach)
• Sea snails
  
• Squid, cuttlefish, octopus (mmm..)
  
• Abalone and all sorts of shell fish
• Rabbit (in a paella)
  
• Ostrich soup
• Chicken bum skewers (bizarrely on xmas day in Taiwan)
• Chicken blood (like black pudding)
• Sheeps head (in Dubai)
  
• Fish eyes
• Sucked the (cooked) marrow from a bone of pork with a straw
  

Some of these things are pretty standard in Chinese culture. You see, the Chinese waste nothing, we eat pretty much all of the animal. You might be surprised to know that most things on the list were very enjoyable, except for the frog (my cousin had pond-breath, it was that fishy).

I'd quite like to try crocodile, I hear its texture is like that of a steak. I wouldn't mind trying kangaroo either. I would probably try pretty much anything, but I stop short at raw meat and fish, and insects. In China, I have seen street vendors selling buckets of large, dead cockroaches - yes, people actually enjoy eating them. I also hear that in South Africa, people relish eating Mopani worms - big fat squidgy grubs that live in dead tree trunks. And *gasp* in Korea and some parts of China, people still eat dogs. I know I will incur the wrath of all animal lovers (and don't get me wrong, I love dogs too), but I'm curious as to what it's like! I'm told that it's a strong tasting, tough textured meat that needs a lot of broiling (so my grandma says).

Even though I was born in London, I don't understand the reluctance of Westerners when it comes to eating anything other than the main cuts of chicken, pork, beef and lamb. Why the hesitance, and sometimes even disgust, of eating the rest of the animal? We honour the sacrifice of the animal by eating it all. Would you believe that before the 60's, eating spare ribs and duck was unheard of? It's pretty much the norm now. I wonder how our eating habits will change in years to come.

Your turn!