I’ve been in England for about three months accumulatively and only just had my first party night out on Saturday.

That’s partly because I’ve developed an aversion to hangovers, but mostly because it’s been too cold in England to be out gallivanting in little party dresses in the middle of the night.

Even during the dead of winter, girls walk about the streets in tiny black dresses, high heels and little handbags. No coats, no scarves, no gloves. And the temperature would be about 0°C.

They would hang around in the cold, outside clubs and pubs, waiting for friends or just being seen, I don’t know.

I would see them while walking home with Piers after a late night movie. I would be bundled up in 5 layers of clothes, face hidden in a hood and scarf, and freezing, and think that the party girls must all be robots or vampires or crazy.

Seeing as it would be uncool to go to a club looking like an Eskimo, but there was no way I was going to subject myself to hypothermia otherwise, I never said yes to a night out.

Until last Saturday, that is.

Piers’ best friend’s sister’s best friend was having a farewell party because she’s going off and getting married in Scotland.

So we went out and had a party in her name but the darnedest thing was that, the entire night, I only saw her once for like half a minute because Piers doesn’t really know her that well.

It was about 10°C that night but warm indoors. I brought a coat to put on during the times we had to walk about, like getting from Club A to Club B. It was cold even then.

We had originally planned to eat out and then go to the party but Piers had a craving for dumplings when we went to a Korean supermarket in the evening.

We ended up getting a huge bag of groceries because he said, “Get anything you want cos we might not come back here again for some time.”

So I got tofu and and luncheon meat and rice. Yes, NORMAL rice. Fortunately, they have small bags of Thai jasmine rice in the store. We also got kimchi and raspberry wine and the dumplings.

On the way home, I said, “Where shall we go for dinner, then?”

And he said, “I don’t know. All I feel like eating now are those dumplings.”

So we went home and cooked.

We didn’t go to the party until almost 10 pm.

It was great. I got to meet more of Piers’ friends.

And I discovered the people who had been making fun of Piers in my blog comments. Piers had suspected it was his friends but they had vehemently denied their mischief until recently.

I find it all quite funny, though. We had suspected it was someone he knew, very likely his close friends, because it was just the kind of thing they would say to each other in real life. I think slagging your friends off for fun is a great British past-time.

So, this is them, the naughty people.

(From left: Rich, me, Sarah, Piers, Jamie, Stan)

They were really nice and friendly to me but I wasn’t surprised because I’m sure Piers wouldn’t hang out with nasty people.

Yeah, but now their secret is out, they can’t make fun of Piers anonymously anymore.

The night life here is very much like in Singapore. Just a lot of drinking and dancing and yelling in each others’ ears.

Piers and I also spent half the night getting drinks because the bar was neverendingly busy and you had to wait ages to be served. We were drinking cocktails all night so finished them fast and had to keep going back for more.

It was a nice night out. But I would probably be happier partying during the summer when I don’t have to worry about hypothermia.

Maybe one day I will get used to the weather and be able to walk out into the cold practically naked like one of them robot vampire party girls.

Hard to imagine that ever happening because I so hate extreme cold, but who knows?

I ate the strangest tasting rice last night. I never knew rice could taste so weird.

I know some of you are going to say, rice is rice, it all tastes the same. (It doesn’t, actually.)

But this ang moh rice I had last night was Really. Weird.

We bought it at the supermarket and cooked it in the rice cooker.

The grains are twice as big as the ones I’m used to. The taste is a bit smoky-bitter, a bit malty, with a funny aftertaste that reminds me of barley.

Maybe we should buy rice from the Asian supermarket next time, or maybe I should bring some from Singapore.

I had to densely populate my rice with crispy pork floss (which I’d brought from Singapore) to mask the funny taste.

So we essentially had pork floss rice for dinner. I also made a garlic omelete and that was not too bad.

In the bigger scheme of things, though, it makes me worry how ang mohs are buying weird-tasting fake Asian food at supermarkets and cooking them and eating them and maybe thinking that Asian food is funny.

There’s this Indian curry meal that Piers really likes, from the supermarket. It’s pre-cooked, so you just heat it up and make your own rice to go with it.

I think I should give that a try one day to check whether he’s been eating AND liking rubbish Asian food.

But I guess he’s okay. I’ve been to the Asian restaurants that he likes and they serve quite good food.

And I’m quite proud of him because his spicy tolerance is about as high as mine!

Anyway, the funny thing about Asian restaurants in England is that they are all confused.

You see signs outside restaurants making such proclamations:

Thai restaurant: We serve the best authentic Thai cuisine!

Chinese restaurant: We serve the best authentic Chinese cuisine!

Vietnamese restaurant: We serve the best authentic Vietnamese cuisine!

Etc.

Then…

You walk into a Thai restaurant and you see on the menu… vegetable tempura.

You walk into a Chinese restaurant and you see… tom yam soup.

You walk into a Vietnamese restaurant and you see… chicken satay with peanut sauce.

It’s all mixed up.

You could walk into one restaurant and see four different cuisines on the menu.

Not that it’s a bad thing. Quite nice having a buffet of different Asian cuisines. I just think it’s very misleading.

It’s false advertising and they confuse the ang mohs. Like, for example, many think that plum sauce and hoisin sauce are one and the same.

And what in the world is with Singapore noodles?

You see Singapore noodles in every country in the world EXCEPT Singapore.

How is it we know nothing about what is supposedly our noodles?

The first time I tried Singapore noodles was in Australia. It was disgusting and like nothing I’d ever eaten.

I brought from Singapore some of my favourite instant noodles. I think they’re better. :P

Oh, sorry, I’m talking about food again.

I mean to stop blogging about food so much but can’t seem to help it because food is such a major part of our lives.

I’ll try and do something else next.

For today, I will sign off with this delicious New York cheesecake because I just ate it and it’s so good.

Hmm, I wonder if they eat this cheesecake in New York.

We all know that being in love (or being married, or living with our partners) makes us fat.

Piles of research and scores of articles have been done on it.

But it’s a really obvious phenomenon; we don’t need articles to tell us the hows and whys of it. Eating with a loved one is such an enjoyable activity that you center your life around it. You squeeze in as many meals and snack times as you can humanly endure and you often end up overeating.

So maybe having a long-distance relationship is a good thing.

Piers and I plan to see each other about six months a year (because that’s how long visitors are allowed to be in the UK) plus a bit more when he visits me in Singapore (which will be limited because of his work commitments).

It gives me time to diet when we’re apart.

I try to eat sensibly when I’m here with him but it’s an exercise in futility. We both enjoy food too much. We try to eat wholesome food as much as possible, but after, say, we’ve had a bowl of shredded wheat for breakfast, we feel like we need to reward ourselves with a bacon and egg bagel.

It gets to the point where we’re constantly counting down the minutes till we’re somewhat hungry (or not full anymore) and can eat or snack again.

It’s okay when the weather is cold and I can hide excess bulge under layers of clothes. But summer is approaching and I want to wear cute, sexy outfits without looking pregnant.

Piers is of the annoying species of primates who can stuff whole horses down their throats and not gain an ounce of weight. After some major binges during the first two months I was in England, he ended up just the same as when I’d first met him.

Me, I had to quit wearing a couple of my pants because they were squeezing the life out of me.

But it’s impractical for me to get a gym membership when I’m in each country only six months a year, alternate months. I would like to be rich. Then I wouldn’t have stupid concerns like that. I would have a gym membership in every major city in the world.

I don’t know who the idiot was who said money can’t buy happiness. It so can. With a regular income, I’ve been a lot happier in the last two years than I was five years ago when I was so broke that I had, like, a shopping budget of $100 a year.

But we’re talking about food. Food is very hard to resist. Especially when you can afford it. Especially when you’re in love.

Maybe some couples fall out of love after helping each other gain weight because they’re not attracted to each other anymore, which is quite tragic.

So, I’m eating a lot of marinated olives now. I just discovered I love them, and they’re readily available here and a plate of them are infinitely healthier than, say, a Big Mac.

No. I’m not eating them as meals. Just for starters. But maybe they will balance up the Big Macs a bit.

Okay, I don’t really know what I’m going on and on about. I only know that I just won a two-hour battle with my will over a chocolate bar and now I am waiting for Piers to come home and take me out to dinner.

We’ve decided to eat out at a nice place tonight because, for lunch, we ate two-days-old leftover Thai food. I heated them on the stove and he drove home from work to eat them.

I don’t know what we’re going to do about this getting fat business. Or, rather, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Piers doesn’t need to do anything. He has a metabolic rate equaling that of the speed of a fighter jet.

Speaking of which, I realised early on that he is a human radiator (probably because of his metabolism). I mean that literally. Hugging him is like hugging a radiator except softer.

It’s very good for winter. Maybe not so good during the summer. I wish he’d turn into a human air-conditioner during the summer. But he’d hate bearing any similarities to Edward Cullen.

On the bright side of things, he bought me a fan!

Don’t laugh.

This is a very big deal.

English people have never heard of electric fans.

When it gets warm, they remove their clothes and open the windows.

So, I was very touched when he bought that tower fan just before I arrived because it was getting quite warm here and he knows Singaporeans likes their interiors cool, if not arctic.

Oh, I’m sorry. I digressed when I actually meant to end this entry.

Here’s a bigass photo of me to distract you.

Is it working?

Anyway, Piers is almost home and I need to get ready for dinner now.

Don’t think my food posts are going to stop any time soon. =P

Dining in Paris is so expensive.

Having a bottle of wine in a Paris restaurant is as expensive as doing it in Singapore! Which is really crazy because I always thought we had the most ridiculous alcohol prices.

But what’s even more crazy is that, in Paris, a bottle at the supermarket costs €2 (S$3.50) while a bottle in a restaurant costs €25 (S$45) (stating the average lowest price in each case).

In our five days there, our food expenditure came up to about €400 (S$714) for two people. We ate two meals a day with snacking in between.

We did drink a lot of wine because you can’t go to Paris and not have wine, as ridiculous as the prices are.

Oh, and remember that you have to pay 15% tips everywhere. The prices I have listed in this post are before tips (unless otherwise stated).

Here’s a look at some of the stuff we ate.

Croque Monsieur / Croque Madame

For our very first meal, we had a traditional French snack of grilled ham and cheese sandwich because it was near dinnertime and we wanted to have space for a proper dinner.

It was really good. I’m sure you can imagine what it tastes like. Nothing very unique in the recipe. A Croque Madame is a Croque Monsieur with an egg, so I would recommend to always order the Madame, cos eggs make everything taste so much better!

Montmarte

Just a few minutes’ walk northeast of the Moulin Rouge is a nice area with many nice restaurants and cafes. I think it’s around the Rue de Abbesses in Montmarte. We went there for our first dinner and picked this restaurant nestled in its own little building.

It was a good choice because the food was quite tasty and they had a 3-course set meal for €23 (S$41) per person (drinks not included), with 6-8 options for each course. Quite cheap by Parisian restaurant standards.

With wine (and we only ordered a half bottle), our total bill came up to over €70 (S$124), including tips.

Something went wrong while I was downloading the photos into my Mac so I only have photos of the starters. Everything else was destroyed, urgh!

Cherry tomatoes and mozzarella

Sardine pate with baguette

Burgers

Many Parisian restaurants are small and don’t have big menus, so they’d have, like, one item for each kind of meat. They’d have beef, definitely, especially Steak Tartare Frites (raw beef and fries, eew!) and chicken and fish and lamb and veal and so on.

A very common item on the menu is a cheeseburger. It’s very funny to me. I saw it in so many restaurants. You’d have a whole list of different kinds of meat main courses and in the middle of the mix would always be a little cheeseburger, as if it belonged to the wining and dining family.

It’s very funny (and strange) because it’s always a cheeseburger and not any other burger.

Icanhascheezburger much?

I never tried any of them because I don’t really want to eat cheeseburgers in a French restaurant.

But Piers and I love burgers, so we had burgers at McDonalds (BAD IDEA) and also in a Mexican restaurant called Buffalo Grill. It wasn’t the wisest choice in the world but we were seduced by the juicy looking beef burger in a promotional poster.

Hehe, narrow-eyed sulky face.

20 rue Bellechasse

One thing you have to know about restaurants and cafes in Paris is that the tables and chairs are packed so close you can hear every word of your neighbouring diners’ conversations without them having to raise their voices. I think it’s very disconcerting for tourists but I suppose you get used to it after a while.

Luckily, the French don’t talk very loudly.

But 20 rue Bellechasse really takes the cake. That’s the address of the restaurant junkie recommended me. It’s really called Le Vin de Bellechasse but he likes to call it 20 rue Bellechasse.

Anyway, it’s apparently a local favourite and one website said it’s an excellent choice for a visitor’s first evening in Paris. Junkie says eat steak tartare frites there but eew no thanks for me!

I was put off from the start cos when we walked in, we saw a long row of tables arranged tightly by a wall, canteen style.

When the waiter showed us to our table, he pulled one of the tables right out of the arrangement so that I could scoot inside and sit on the long sofa shared by the rest of the 10 tables. Once I was in, he pushed the table back into its slot and then replaced the outside chair.

So unglam! When I had to go to the toilet, Piers had to get up, put away his chair and pull out the table, then put everything back while I went off. Then when I came back, he had to do it all over again. Doh.

And I didn’t enjoy my dinner because I ordered medium lamb chops but they came almost rare so I almost gagged a few times. Piers had a tuna steak coated with sesame seeds which was quite tasty at first but grossed me out on my third taste. Cos the tuna is seared on the outside and rare on the inside.

I suppose if you like eating raw food, this is the place to go to!

Another random restaurant

I suppose you can eat at affordable prices in Paris if you walk around more and compare restaurant prices. And don’t drink too much wine. I think a third of our food expenditure went to wine cos we always ordered whole or 2/3 bottles.

We did try to find cheaper places to eat at, so there was this one we came upon after visiting the Eiffel Tower one night. We were just walking randomly so I can’t remember where it was, sorry.

For €15 (S$23) you can have a two-course meal, choosing either a starter and main, or a main and dessert. The food wasn’t fantastic but it was satisfying enough.

But then, food always tastes better when you have good company, so always choose your dining companions wisely!

Rue Mouffetard

This is a very nice area for restaurants and cafes, recommended by my reader Stephan. I’m not sure why but every other restaurant in this area serves cheese fondue. So strange, cos cheese fondue is Swiss, right?

Anyway, we liked the area very much, so we had wine at a cafe first, then later went for dinner at a random cosy-looking restaurant. It was hard to choose because there are so many nice-looking restaurants there.

But we made a very good choice! La Grange (I think 72 Rue Mouffetard) has significantly cheaper prices and the food is tasty!

We ordered so much! We each had a three-course dinner and, on top of that, shared a cheese fondue and a bottle of wine. We finished it all, miraculously!

Haha! Caught being anti-social!

French onion soup. I don’t like cheese in my soups!

Foie gras. I was disappointed it was a pate instead of a proper slice, but it was still tasty.

Three-cheese fondue. Nice!

Bleu cheese steak. A bit overpowering the sauce.

Pepper steak. Nice!

Baguettes

In France, one must, of course, eat baguettes. That’s a given! I would have liked to have eaten more, but there are only so many meals in a day!

I had a ham baguette sandwich at a baguette fast food outlet. So expensive! Just a small baguette (about six inches) with a few ham slices and a bit of butter, and it was €3.50 (S$6.20).

Cheaper than eating at a restaurant, though. No need to tip at fast-food outlets. =P

Berthillon

Berthillon is a French luxury brand for ice cream and sorbet (lol, luxury ice cream). Recommended again by reader Stephan.

If you go to Île Saint-Louis, the little island in the River Seine, you’ll see loads of cafes selling Berthillon in cups or cones, AND THEY ALL HAVE LONG QUEUES. It’s really nuts!! Like Koi queues in Singapore!

Piers and I first went on a Sunday and decided not to brave the queues. Then we went again on Monday and the queues were shorter but still there. But I really wanted to try it so we found a takeaway place with the shortest queue.

I’m not very sure if we should have tried the main store or not, but if it’s the same brand, it should be alright anywhere, right?

I had a peach sorbet and vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, of course, but I’m not really sure how much better it is than any other luxury ice cream to warrant the queues.

€4 (S$7) for two tiny scoops in a waffle cone.

I really like the peach sorbet, and the ice cream is really smooth and creamy. Well, okay, it’s good ice cream. I just wonder about the queues.

Okay, enough food for the day.

SO HUNGRY NOW.

I really hate writing food posts. -_-”

So Piers was really telling the truth when he said that Parisians are always seen carrying French bread in the streets.

Sometimes the baguettes are not even wrapped up or put in a bag. People just hold them in their hands.

Yesterday, when we headed out for lunch, Piers thought we should go into a bakery, get a baguette and eat it as we walk towards our lunch destination (we were thinking McDonald’s).

When I thought about eating baguettes in Paris, I was kind of thinking either having it at home with butter, or having it at a cafe with proper sandwich fillings. I didn’t think of eating it plain in the streets.

Crazy ang mohs think of the craziest things to do.

We started eating the baguette as we walked and it was so tasty we finished the whole thing even before we reached McDonald’s (about five minutes’ walk).

It was really fun, though. You should try it if you ever come to Paris for a visit. Enjoy the sights in the streets as you munch on delicious French bread.

Bread really does taste better here, somehow.

We’re going to do it again today!

We did have McDonald’s after our baguette but it was very disappointing. So… McDonald’s Paris, not recommended.

I had a Big Mac. Didn’t taste good at all.

Piers had a Royal Bacon. It looked like this:

LOL.

Oh well, but McDonald’s has free wifi, so I still love McDonald’s.

Very nice day out today, sunny and blue skies, so I’m gonna run off now to get the most of the sun. (Woke up at noon today, omg.)

Catch ya later!