the long awaited post

i know i know i have been here over a week and i have made one little baby post, but now it’s time for the major post. i finally have a few hours to kill where i am not tired and can update everyone on my adventures.

this town has turned out to be a very vegetarian friendly town. even restaurants that are not geared towards veggies have a specific section on this menu for the veggies. and it’s not just your normally cheese pasta or sandwich they actually come up with really interesting recipes. like this one restaurant i went to amano had this amazing wood burning pizza oven, so i got a pizza with avacado, smoked mozzarella, smoked cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and pine nuts. omg it wa soo delish! then a few days later we went back and i got all of those ingredients in the form of a wrap.

around the corner from amano is this chain restaurant called nando’s that was equally as good. now given we ate here on a day when we were all absolutely starving and probably would have eaten mcdonalds. it was when we were at the tower of london all day then were set to stand at the globe theatre all night. so we stopped at nando’s which was a burger joint that prides itself on adding sauces to make it mild, hot and hotter. I personally got the mild veggie burger with chips (fries) and some sort of spice on those. I whimped out of the spicey sauces because I really didn’t know what to expect. But I must say even the mild was kicking. Needless to say as soon as the food came the table got quite and the food was gone in minutes. This meal proved to be extremely necessary in helping us make it through Othello seeing how it was cold and raining and we were the groudlings where we had to the stand in the pit the whole time, but hey it was an experience!

this past saturday i went to the mecca for all foodies.. borough market. holy moly! i just wandered around there for a hour or town just sampling cheeses, desserts, and bread. i ended up buying a bottle of rhubarb and apple juice, 2 baugettes, organic ice cream, and the best cheese ever i don’t know exactly what kind it is but it’s creamy and kinda has a punch at the end. and of course i got a few suprises for the family!

one problem i am having over here is regulating my iron intake. when i am back home i’m very good at this in that i make sure i get either the right veggies or fake meat products everyday. but here i don’t really have access to that. this all caught up to me the other night and started bruising easily and getting very tired, so i had to reassess what i was eating and make the correct adjustments. so i’m now taking a daily suppliment and eating more things like hummus and spinach to help with that.

also because of the iron problems i decided to break down and eat some fish and chips. now i’m not a huge fan of fried, greasy fish but i knew i would have to atleast try it. so yesterday at the zoo we ate some fish and chips. now i know it probably wasn’t the best place to eat my first but we were starving and i was still quite tired from lack of iron so we had no choice. and yea it was not that great, just what i expected very greasy and fishy, but i suppose it did the trick.

so i suppose that is all really. tonight i’m heading to the theatre to see avenue q which i am very excited about… lewd puppets, yes please!

my eating out habits have slowed down a little bit because it is quite expensive to eat out everynight but i am still on the look out for great veggie food finds!

and on a side note with all the car bombs and burning cars around the city i thought i’d say that i’m doing ok. one of the cars was near our flats, but i’m not going to let those crazy people ruin my trip. as my professor said it adds to the stories for when i get home… “there was danger around every corner”

cheers!

July 2, 2007. Tags: London, United Kingdom. London. Leave a comment.

cherrio from london

I am finally in London! After a very tough flight I am finally here. These past couple days have been so packed that it’s really hard to tell them all apart. I have already eaten a lot of great food so I have much to talk about. I have pictures of everything, but am still trying to locate a cord to my camera to upload on someone’s laptop, so bear with me as I get myself together over here.

First night we ended up at this very interesting Lebanese restaurant where our professor haggled the price of all of us and soon began bringing out plates and plates of food. There wasn’t a whole lot for me to eat because most of the stuff had goat or lamb in it but I did have pita bread and hummus which was good but then I threw in some green beans with some sort of seasoning and man it was delicious!

The next day a group of us went to Portobello Market which was amazing! It was extremely crowded, but there was so much to experience there I didn’t really notice the crowds. The first thing I did was find some food, so I bought a feta, spinach and tomato bagel from a street vendor which was awesome. The feta was not as salty as I am used to, so it made the overall taste of it not as harsh as feta can be. Then almost as soon as I finished that I found another bakery, the Hummingbird Bakery, that I just had to go into. Their cakes and cupcakes all looked sooo good, but I settled on a red velvet cupcake even though I was tempted but other choices such as toffee cupcake, bling bling cupcake (with silver sprinkles on it) and a chocolate cupcake covered in sprinkles. I also got a spinach and cheese muffin to munch on later which proved to be very useful the next day when we were touring the Tower of London and none of us had eaten all day.

Later that day after walking around Covent Gardens I recommend a little vegetarian place I knew around there. I managed to convince all the these meat eating guys to come with me and I really think they enjoyed it. I got a risotto with roasted vegetable and a side salad. Other options they had were sweet potato soup and quiche. Everything looked amazing and all the plates were cleaned by the end of the meal.

So far I have really had an amazing time here and all the food I’ve had has been so yummy. I have a lot more stories to tell, but don’t want to waste them all on my first really post! But I have tons of things to share about my experience as a groundling at the Globe Theatre and the Tower of London. Stay tuned!

June 25, 2007. Tags: London, United Kingdom. London. 3 comments.