cooking your own food to eat is the way to go in the long term

london 11.47am 8.5C cloudy saturday 2024

woke

i woke this morning at about 9.30am. a cloudy day with an overcast sky. i went into the weather website and noticed it says a lot of rain fell and seem to be still falling. but i look out of the window and the ground was wet, but not waterlogged, and there was no rain. it seemed it rained very heavily at about 3am. but we two slept right through it. i heard nothing, which is quite usual here. the walls of the flat seem to dampen any noise from outside… but not when people are talking . talking noise seem to come through loud and clear.

i was reminded that in malaysia, perhaps i lived in a house, whenever it rains, we can hear it loud and clear, hitting the roof and making a racket. so we are always well aware if there is rain. and rain in malaysia can be very fierce, as it  usually comes round during monsoon season, and monsoon rain  comes down like it is solid water. but here in london in my flat, we are very cocooned from the weather.

i read this bit of the news about a man who went to live in thailand in ’98, retired in 2011 on his £75 a week state pension. now he is saying it has been frozen and it is not enough . well, everyone who left uk to live in thailand knows that will happen. thailand is one country where the state pension dont get raised like in uk. he has really lost out, but he knows that when he left the uk. i think even if is able to get the inflation increases has  it still wont be enough to live in thailand with the wife and kid. he has badly miscalculated. his wife should have worked but i guess he thought he got enough to support a family… 

 

i have a friend who did the same thing as him, but he also have private pensions, which made his income when added onto his state pension, quite far above the average and he is able to cope even in these days. so he has planned well for his retirement in thailand.

everyone who goes to live there always say the cost of living is cheap in thailand…but that is because they are converting their £ to baht, and that is a mistake. so eating out seems to be cheap because the £ is pulling in a lot of bahts then.  but prices will rise over time, and the £ will depreciate. and you can always depand on it, that it will be costly sooner or later.

then , there is your health. here in uk we got the nhs. but in thailand you have to pay , like he is having to do now, pay for his heart medicine. not to mention his doctor’s bill. 

recently i had been thinking about the attractions of eating out and the cost of it. i was prompted to think about it by mama li offering a week of half priced foods of roast meats cantonese style like they do in hongkong.

i went there yesterday finally going there , but there was such a huge crowd still waiting to be served, and this was at 3pm, that i just turned tail and came back.

so many people craving for it. people must really miss eating out and when this chance came that make it affordable, they just leap at it and be willing to queue for ages . i mean anyone can see why the attraction… just compare paying £12 the normal price to £6 the price at halfpriced. 

though when u think of it, even £6 is hefty, if u are doing it everyday… i think everyone will be glad when the offer ends, so they dont feel compelled to buy it everyday…

later that day i cooked pork for my dinner. it was delicious, i get the taste of pork which is what everyone likes when they eat pork, and i discovered that it matters not if it is in the form of roast pork, or char siew pork. mine was just steamed pork in the rice cooker on top of rice. so quick and easy to cook and delicious . makes me realise it is not that crucial how you cook it. that is why i have lost that craving for buying eating out food. mine is not salty either, unlike food cooked outside in eating shops. 

so i hope people realise ,  can see why bringing your own cooked lunch saves you so much money.  it makes me realise that if u migrate to another country just because it’s prices for eating out are low, in £s and on holiday, does not mean it will remain low when u live there full time. the cost mounts up.

and i think eventually it will dawn on you that eating out is just not a viable long term thing. sooner or later, u will have to eat in, buy the raw foods and cook it . no matter where u live, long term, you will need to learn to cook it yourself. and i bet you will notice that you will tire of the eating out foods,(too salty, too fatty,) and prefer eating your own cooking. 

 

pork and chicken to buy

london 12.44pm 12.6C cloudy but bright saturday 2024

i have been watching utube of skillful butchers dismantling a pig. this is in thailand. very fascinating too. and seeing another utube of sellers in a rural area in china i think,  cutting up pigs and selling the parts to customers. the pigs are very fatty though, and the customers dont have much choice about how much fat they have to buy on their cut .  and there is another utube, this one showing sellers selling off  the pigs which are less fatty .

it makes me realise the pork i get from the supermarkets , specifically sainsburys, is very good value for money, because a lot of fat has been removed and what we get is quite meaty. i usually buy shoulder pork . and recently got it for £2.45/kg, which is reduced from the usual £3.70/kg. so if u wait a bit, the supermarkets will reduce to get rid of produce that is coming to their expiry date, that is when u can buy and freeze .

chicken is also a good meat to buy. i get chicken legs for £1.76/kg… reduced from the usual £2.19/kg because of sainsburys nectar price reductions.

and chicken in uk are very plump, and got lot of meat on them. unlike asian chickens that are very scrawny. i have seen utube of them, being sold in the local asian markets and they are  very skinny.

fortunately my gout dont seem to be made worse by chicken and pork. it is only red meat, like beef whcih sets it off. so i am glad i can still eat chicken and pork. otherwise life would be bleak indeed. 

some seemingly un hygienic habits

london 12.28pm 10.8C cloudy thursday 2024

i saw this news article about fresh bread in the bakery section of supermarkets and how everyone touches it with their bare hands, before they buy, and how no one objects to this freely touching . how unhygienic it is with people touching them with their bare fingers. it does make me wonder too why we seem to accept this. in an age when everything is wrapped in plastic, it does seem an anomaly . i myself did not think twice about it when i buy fresh loaves. in fact i expect it, that the bread is open and people are allowed to touch them and pick them up with their bare hands. not even use any tongs . it would be difficult to handle loaves of bread with tongs anyway. but no one had died of contaminated fresh bread, so is this concern about unpackaged fresh bread not important? as someone had commented, we all have immune systems, that will protect us.

and reading the comments there was one by a chap in japan who said there they go the opposite way, wrapping everything not once but twice or three times with plastic. and i have noticed that too whilst watching a filipino live webcam, where i see every seller will wrap everything they sell in a plastic bag, and then put that into another plastic bag to carry. there is so many plastic bags being used. whilst here in uk , they are reducing the use of it, by charging every one for each bag used. and selling products without plastic packaging… and asking everyone to use their own bags. and it brings to mind how many times i have seen clogged waterways in the third world countries full of plastic wastes and they dont bother to clear them away. and their streets full of plastic waste whcih they never seem to sweep away. 

this reminds me of how everyone in the live webcam whcih i watch in a filipino street scene, showing fresh meats being sold by the road side , have all the customers touching the meats with their bare hands… and i was thinking this looks so unhygienic. nevermind that none of the meats are kept cold, they are out in the open with flies and dust flying about. that is common in all of these third world countries. and it seems letting customers touch the meats with bare hands is also common. no one as far as we know had died from eating those meats, so i supposed it is not a danger in reality, as opposed to theoretically. maybe that is why no one seems bothered about it in all the third world countries that we see it happen. we in the west are constantly scolded for being wasteful and floodingthe country with plastic , but it is really the third world countries that are the biggest users of plastic . 

i was thinking it is like all those western advise about being careful with cooked rice… which says there is a spore that can produce toxins if cooked rice is not stored properly , but it is a theoretical danger , because i dont know anyone who had died  from eating left over rice. i myself have eaten left over rice, which i have not bothered to keep in the fridge but let it sit in the rice cooker, so i can attest to it being very safe to eat. 

gout

london 12.05pm cloudy 7.7C monday 2024

i am recovering from the gout. i have avoided red meat, and thought i have limited my  seafood intake,  but if i had thought that strategy would not give me gout again, i am mistaken because here we are …gout again…whatever i have been eating too much of has given me this gout now.

when i dug up my old bottle of colchicine, i noticed it was issued mar 2022, when i used it to treat the gout i had at that time. i had another attack of gout in june 2023, and now feb 2024, i have my third attack. and the supply of 28 tablets that i got has finally run out. i used the last of the pills last night. this time i only used 6tablets because that is how many i got. 

i took 6 tablets for this latest course and it seems to have done the trick, in that my symptoms are going down and hopefully continue to get better even though i dont have any more tablets.

it seems i get a bout of gout once every year, at about this time. so i wonder if it is due to a slow accummulation of uric acid that takes a year to build up in my body to start giving symptoms. i might have to change my strategy and not eat so much seafood because that is the most of the foodstuffs that cause gout which i eat. the seafood is salmon and prawns. the other two main foods like red meat, offal i have long ago cut out of my diet. 

now my foot is getting much less painful and easier to walk on i can begin to enjoy life again and start getting more interested in things that happen around me. 

plots for novels

london 8.31am 8C rain tuesday 2020

its lovely when i woke up this morning to a rainy day. a lovely change from the sunny blue sky days we had recently. and i am not being sarcastic, haha. i do love a cool wet day after a long stretch of hot warm days. such a nice contrast and everything is so much fresher after this rain. the vegetables growing in the courtyard by our amateur gardener are all standing stiff and tall and glowing instead of limply falling over the side.

i wonder when it is time to eat them, it wont do to let them grow old so that they become tough and fibrous. i think not a lot of us will be tempted to cut them and eat them, because they are not the common vege, like celery, or brocolli, but swiss chard and greens. i doubt many like those vege. 

i saw her watering the potatoes yesterday, they were growing just below my window, and i asked her what vegetable are they, and she said potatoes. they are only showing the leaves and i thought at first it was basil.

she is not growing tomatoes like last year. now those vege i like, and they produce a lot of tomatoes throughout summer so that you can harvest them continuously. but these ones, you can only harvest them once, and then they are gone.

i have finished reading the rise and fall of becky sharp by sara manning. and made a comment about it saying it is a nice attempt to bring the story up to date for our modern times, but i said that it fails because nowadays women dont have to rely on marrying well to get on in life. and so the point of the story is lost. in fact, that is also why adaptations of jane austen transplanted to our modern times dont work so well because the drama of winning a good marriage is all lost when a girl dont have to rely on that to do well in life. in fact, i should say that the whole genre of marrying well has spawned a huge amount of novels in the old days, but that is not likely to be the case for novels now. but women men relationships can still find lots of fertile ground to plow for novel story lines.

this one might provide fresh ground for a novel, i think. it is a woman complaining about her man. she asks why he ask her a stupid question like where the dishwashing liquid is. and it is quite a common one, where a woman thinks the man is deliberately trying to aggravate her, when from what i see, it is just ignorance, or just the woman controlling her kitchen and not let him get even near it, so it is natural that he has no idea where she keeps things in it. she had set him up, and then she complains why he is so ignorant.

so what do u think, am i mistaken to say it is the woman who without realising it, created the man who lives with her. she is the mistress of the kitchen and wont allow him to do anything in it, because she likes it her way and he would disrupt it by putting things away somewhere else, or make a mess of the kitchen etc. the reason why i say it, is because i know it is easy to do that. it happens to me, and i recognise that behaviour in me. the thing is, i am aware of it and i try to avoid it. like seeing simon do things in the kitchen and i stop myself from remarking on it, or correct him… because it would make him too nervous to do anything in the kitchen, or make him angry about it , either way it will stop him cooking and that is not what i desire, as it is important to let him do what he likes and feel at ease about it. that way i dont have to be expected to do all the cooking.

that is a very dangerous thing to do, to divide the duties and make each person responsible for a particular chore. it will bite back in the future. if u do all the cooking, dont complain if years later u find he does not know how to cook and rely on you to cook his meals all the time. it is something that women have done and later complain bitterly about when the man they have made is helpless in the kitchen and rely on her for every meal. 

a pleasant day

london 11.26am sunny 10C saturday 2020

yesterday the pubs and restaurants in london are asked to close. and today this morning i saw the pimlico library closed and at the victoria library i saw a notice saying they are closed but the doors were open and a man came out saying they will be close 10mins from now. so i entered because i want to get the papers, and the reading room door was shut, but i can see through the glass that there were quite a lot of people inside. i asked the librarian and she said they are closing and no idea when they will open again. so bang goes my chance to read the papers from today.

though i have to admit i myself have allready decided to stop going to the library so the library closing is just another logical step to lockdown in london really. we can still read the news online, though since it is all about the virus, it can get a bit repetitive. 

we can still go out and sit in the sun, but it is a bit cold out there so i am sitting in the sun inside my flat. haha. i suppose i shall try to get out and sit in the sun outside later when it gets warmer. 

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

and cooking food.

i went earlier to the sainsburys in pimlico and got a large pork leg joint 2.5kg, and 1kg of chicken legs.(still usual prices, pork£3/kg, chicken £1.85/kg) so that would be me ok for meat. and that is really all i need.

i froze 3 portions of the pork, and am cooking the 4th , soya sauce pork, with 5spice powder to make a stew. and sitting in the sun on my sofa whilst typing this online. its very pleasant actually.

luckily, i can get books to read using the online books to borrow that the library is providing. it is called the cloud library and i am reading a book called american royalty, in fact finished it allready. a fictional imagining that america crowned george washington and went the royal route, creating dukes and a aristocratic class…

and of course there are the free books i can get via my kindle. there is a website i can get that sends me free books that i can download in my kindle. i have loads of books that i have yet to read. that should be useful now that the library is closed and i cannot borrow books anymore. 

 

 

 

food

london 12.45pm 9C sunny wednesday 2020

yesterday night i went to a chinese new year dinner given by a casino, in west london.

there was no notice about it, i only know of it because one of us have parents who are members of it, and so told her and she told us. it seems it is open to all but we did not know that then.

we went last year and it was really a delicious and lavish buffet, and the memory of it still lingered with me, that is why i wanted to go this year. last year they advertised it and asked people to rsvp at eventbrite. it is a website that allows people to say they are coming, so that they can get an idea of how many to cater for.

this year there was none of that. one of us told me she had booked a table for 10, and told me the name she booked it in. so i thought i can use that to gain entrance. usually in casinos they are quite strict about letting anyone in, wanting them to apply for membership etc and proof of age. last year i was not asked for ID. but i decided to bring my passport anyway.

i was there at about 6.45pm, and i saw a (added, young) chinese guy sitting on one of the easy chairs at the foyer, waiting for something, and i thought oh dear are they that strict that they want the host to escort the guests in. then after a bit i saw one of us there at the desk so i decided to join her.

they were asking her to show ID. and i was asked for mine as well. later i overheard the receptionist saying to her that they need to verify her age, because she looked young.

later, i heard more of what happened from the others who arrived after her. it seemed she had a disabled person’s travel card, but it has no date of birth on it. and it seems anyone who looked under 25yrs old must show ID. she was 25yrs old. so she had to go home to get ID.

meanwhile i could not get my passport out of the pocket of my jacket so i gave them my freedom pass instead, and though there was no date of birth there, they all know that a freedom pass is only for people over 60yrs old.

it is strange to ask me for ID because i have long gone past looking like i am under 25yrs old. haha. last year they did not bother to ask me for my ID, but i guess it all depands on who is on the desk, or maybe whether they had a bad day or not, haha.

though the others who came told me they too were asked for ID, so this year they must have been told to implement the policy.

it seems the receptionist told one of us that anyone can come in to join in the free buffet. so lets hope they do it every year for cny.

this year the buffet offerings were not so good as last year. it was limited to plain rice, spring rolls, duck, noodles, and beef. and this year they ask us to keep our bags with reception, unlike last year. but it was still very nice to have a chinese meal . glad they got roast duck. it is not something i eat often. this is because i cant find cheap duck sold in the supermarket. tesco is supposed to have one for £5 and i want to buy it, but i can never find it in their frozen section. it is quite easy to cook one at home. 

there were a lot more chinese people at this buffet than last year. elderly people too, like they are a tourist group. and they have moved the food trays to the gambling floor instead of at the bar like last year. so you get a line of people queueing up for the food right amongst all the gambling tables with roulette wheels. it must be real disruptive for the gamblers. but there was no lion dancers like last year, no room for them actually if they are there. 

a grey day today

london 4.57pm 8C cloudy and dark now monday 2020

this is the dish of rice on stewed soyasauce pork. the pork i made yesterday and just heated up, the rice i just now cooked quick with the rice cooker. i must have been hungry because i ate it very quickly and hardly felt full. it was delicious, but it has taken the edge off my hunger now so i wont get a second helping.

i was wandering around earlier in the foodcentre in victoria, and walking past the macdonalds, and kfc. i was looking for a plug outlet to charge my chromebook. while i was there, i thought i could of course use the newspaper voucher by macdonalds whcih i found in the free newspaper on the bus going there, that give me a big mac and chips/salad for £2. the thought crossed my  mind, simply because of yesterday’s offer of a free macmuffin, and before that a £1 big mac.

its one of those things where these publicity promotions  make you think of that food. that is how these promotions work. and i think most people will succumb to it. it does not seem to work on me, partly because i always remember how disappointing the last time i ate it, so salty.  every time i get tempted to buy one, i remember it and it puts me right off . and yet it is so appealing to be able to just go and buy one and eat it and enjoy it. ah well, nevermind, at least i dont experience that disappointed feeling. mind you, it was a long time ago since i ate a big mac. so perhaps they are better now, and not so salty. 

 

its a very grey day today. due to the clouds , they are grey like rain clouds though there is no rain. i guess it can make people depressed when everything looks so misty grey. 

watching tv now

london 5.37pm 7C dry sunday 2019

its dark out there now, and i had to look out of the window to see if it is raining or not. the shops will be closed now, at least the normal big supermarkets,so its too late for me to get the reduced foods. i dont need any reduced foods  really. 

 the so called  convenience shops are still open in case anyone needs to buy anything urgently. not that i am in need of anything. with a freezer of food it is rare that i dont have anything to make a meal at a moment’s notice.

so i have eaten fried rice with prawns,mixed with scambled eggs  and lettuce. its quick and filling. now i am waiting for a cartoon to start, it is another version of the christmas scrooge story, called a christmas carol, but this time voiced by jim carrey, doing all the voices for scrooge as well as the 3 ghosts of christmas. i dont think i have seen it before.

i have discovered that in my chromebook i can get the tv programs to show live over the internet. so even though simon is now seeing a program on the tv screen, if he is still on it, i can see my program on my chromebook.

no wonder there is no need for a big tv screen in the house anymore since anyone can see tv on their laptops. people can by- pass the tv license as they dont need a tv screen anymore. i hope that the bbc tv license is on the way out. they will have to find another alternative. the cartoon is starting now, and i can watch it over the big screen as simon can watch his snooker on his laptop. 

random musings

london 10.50am  22C sunny wednesday 2019

 

 

 

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

very garish colours of summer flowers, these are the ones growing in the communal gardens in my housing estate, now. added. i googled the image of the flowers, and google says they are marigolds. 

when i say housing estate it conjures very ugly housing, but it is not so in mine. it was built in 1898, the first london council housing. and very pretty it is too, with red bricks and the block of flats set in pattern and tree lined. it used to be millbank prison. this area must be very unsavoury in those days for them to think of siting a prison here. right next to the river too…and they boarded the prisoners to the ships that are bound for australia from the banks of the thames here too; 

just goes to show that in olden days no one wants to be near the river, as it is swampy , prone to tides and most probably because it must smell awful, as the river acts as a sewer in the old days. now, everyone fights to be near the river, with river views commanding a premium.

the picture of the hamburger is the one i took at belushi’s, when i went there for their £1 burger yesterday. it was a very dark corner of the pub, and i took it without a flash, because i could not access the flash in my camera. i am surprised it came out quite bright, when i thought i would just get a dark blob.

it was a rather nice burger, with lovely smell of barbequed beef. that smell is quite difficult to get nowadays. the reason being that many of these high end burger places cook it lightly, to keep the middle slightly red. to keep it tender. but this one even though cooked right through was still very tender, which is good of them. i think the secret is very high heat. but whatever , it was lovely to get that smell of barbequed beef. heavenly.

later i saw a chap eating a hamburger with a knife and fork, and i thought, 1) his hamburger is much smaller than the one i got, 2) they dont give us knife and fork at belushis, we have to eat it with our fingers. i suppose we could ask for knife and fork and they would give it to us, but we dont mind. 

lucky i went to wash my hands first at the toilet. usually i find it difficult to eat with the hands, but this one was very manageable. even though the bun was big, and the meat was big.

they provide lots of bottles of sauces on the table, but i did not put them on, as it just makes the whole thing very messy if u do and it does not need it really. it would mask the taste and smell of the meat and defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.

and two of the malaysian women who are regular goers of these offers were seated there allready enjoying their burger. i went there at 12.30pm, actually i arrived in the area at 12pm, but felt it was too early and went wandering in the nearby  lidl and poundstretcher shops before hand. so it was nice to have their company while we ate. they live near hounslow , west london, so no wonder they chose this branch of belushi’s, in shepherd bush, as it would be nearer them. and it was a coincidence that they chose the 12-1pm slot as well.

in the evening i thought i shall go to trafalgar square to see the opera, marriage of figaro. i arrived just after 7pm, when it starts. lots of places to see it really as the square was not full. you can even see it on the outside of the fenced area, without needing to go through security if u wish. but if u stay outside it does mean you wont be committed to staying… and that means you will be tempted to move on, like i did. there was a lot of speech singing rather than actual singing, if u know what i mean.

anyway i just wanted to wander about, and appreciating the sight of the buildings around trafalgar square, and the people and just savouring the atmosphere of being in the middle of london in this pleasant warm evening.

so i strolled along to chinatown, and sat a while in leicester square looking at the people, and then popped into two grocery stores in chinatown, before they close, and bought a flat and a thin noodle £1.15 each.

and looked at the queues forming to get into some restaurants in chinatown, and not in others. very curious phenomenon, where one place would have long queues to get in, whilst next door no one is in it. 

added. 11.37am, how nice of them, just after writing the above, i saw an email from them saying they are giving me a 2 for 1 voucher to use from now till the 20july..