Le temps

C'est l'ete

Un bon petit souper...


L'art du barbeque


Scampi master!



La famiglia


Bisque

l'action de graces

Time for turkey!!




It took Jason only three years of nagging for me to give in and cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. But two hours before dinner, he came down with a virus and spent the entire meal here:

Pim in Bangkok

I had to transit in Bangkok for seven hours on the way home from Bhutan, so I called up Pim and we had a proper Bangkok experience - i.e. we spent most of the time in traffic, and the rest of it eating.

When I arrived, Pim said, are you hungry, what do you want to eat? I said noodles. She said, OK, let's go for noodles. Then we can go for dinner!

First stop - pig blood noodles. One solid blood:

One liquid blood.

And I ordered what I thought was noodles with fishballs, which actually turned out to be noodles made from fishballs. Which was a bit different from what I was hoping.

Thai fix - customise your meal with fish sauce, vinegar, chilli or sugar.

After the noodles, I admitted to Pim that I had a bit of a stomach bug from Bhutan and therefore was, tragically, not all that hungry. So we just had this small snack after:

Dogs

There are a lot of dogs in Bhutan, apparently all drawn from the same medium-sized, silky-eared, fluffy-tailed stock. They roam the streets in nonchalant little bands, napping in inconvenient places such as the middle of the road - when I first arrived I thought that the dog traffic fatality rate was stratospheric, so many furry canine bodies littered the roads, but it turned out that they were all snoozing rather than dead. Cars drive scrupulously around them, and there is conspicuous respect paid between dog and man.

This small black specimen met us at the bottom of the path going up to Taktsang, and kept pace most of the way, yowling piteously much of the time until it met its mother halfway up, whereby it seemed happier and would disappear for a while, only to reappear ahead of us on the path.


On the way back down, there was a lot of foot traffic, both human and canine - this particular dog had chosen this picturesque, if precarious, perch for a bit of a rest.

Printemps

First week of spring. First of the spring garlic, last of the rapini. So it seemed appropriate to make ravioli stuffed with rapini, spring garlic, potato, goat's feta and lemon for dinner.

Taktsang

Last Sunday we walked up to Taktsang, the Tigers Nest monastery in Paro.

Erm... buildings of some sort. By a stream.

Prayer wheel.

Ugyen turns prayer wheels.

First view of the monastery. Both inspiring and absolutely terrifying for people wheezing in high altitude, some of them incredibly hungover.

Lighting butter lamps on the way up.

We couldn't take photos inside, but we made many offerings, were given butter tea and rice, and met the monastery cat.

On the way down.

View over Paro valley.

Wildflower.

This is Dorji. He was guiding two young guys who were riding ponies up who very kindly, if abashedly, allowed me to take their photo (I won't include it here to protect their shame), and Dorji asked me if I wanted to take his photo too, so I said yes!

Totally unforgettable.