Laidback tripping aka Why Adelaide is not for 'Type A' types

Great weather, good food, good wine, lazy swims and soaks in hot tubs and golly, eight hours of sleep every night! These all sound like the perfect ingredients for a great holiday, but as much as I enjoyed the getaway, it wasn't too long before super laidback Adelaide got a teeny bit too ardous for me.

I was looking forward to immersing myself in the heartbeat of a colourful city, but all I found was a faint bleep on the cardiac monitor. Surprise, surprise! Adelaide resembles a sleepy retirement village (complete with plan your funeral commercials playing on the telly), even when the weekday CBD folks came out to play. Taking it slow may be just what the doctor prescribed for us high-strung types, but unfortunately, prolonged periods of lazy time don't quite sit well with me. Me and my pitiful Type A personality.

It was 5pm on a Thursday and there we were in the heart of the Barossa Valley, sipping cocktails and watching the sun set over vineyards while waiting to be seated for dinner at the the ultra swanky Appellation. Picture perfect and something others would kill for, but right there and then, nothing appealed more than the thought of hammering at the keyboard on my messy office desk. No siree, I don't think I do lazy very well at all.

But that said, it was still a good holiday and if anything, the break's made me look forward to Monday morning more than I have in awhile. Helloooo deadlines, oh how I've missed you. In the meantime, here are my favourite snaps from my week of kicking it back in South Australia.

Breakfast for junkies. In transit at Melbourne airport, and the only time I felt real hunger for the rest of the week.

Fresh produce at Adelaide Central Market. Oh the colours!

It's always nice to have a street with your name on it, even if it wasn't named after you.

Hotel room picnic with market buys: Cheap but yummy Moscato, crackers, salami and the tastiest chilli speckled pecorino.

Sunday brunch to share at Cafe Crema in Glenelg: Chorizo & beans hotpot and vanilla chai lattes.

One of my favourite buys. Rings that actually mean something!

Foodie stop: Good Life Modern Organic Pizza.

Love their philosophy...

And their sea salt speckled garlic bread.

Pity about the pizza!

Mucking around in the candy shop.

Tram ticket wisdom. I like new beginnings!

Braving the dark, quiet streets to dinner at Sparrow Kitchen & Bar.

The wine-fuelled walk back was not scary at all. I wonder why?

Italian breakfast at Rigoni's on Leigh (MY) Street.

Breakfast for champions: 2D muscle men and a cappuccino.

All set to conquer Harbour Town.

Harbour Town sunset.

Sunset in the CBD.

The yummiest fritto misto at Andre's Cucina & Polenta Bar.

Perfect spring weather at the Pennington Gardens.

Breakfast at the uber quaint The Store on Melbourne Street.

Fluffy pancakes BURSTING with blueberries.

Need versus want, simplified.

Love their clean-smelling organic skincare.

Impromptu fancy dinner getup with my storebought blazer and beaded blouse. All for just under AUD50. ;) India's trained the bargain hound in me very well indeed.

Zucchini blossoms at Auge. Oh how I love thee!

Checking in to our gorgeous room (Room #1) The Stirling Hotel in the Adelaide Hills.

On to a late lunch at The Locavore. Brililant concept (and a very charming boss).

The setting's pretty awesome too, though I had to squint to read the wall of wines when we returned for dinner on our last night.

Happy as a clam to finally sit down to our first meal at 3pm.

With the obligatory glass of wine! And wishing I'd piled on more than two layers as it was getting rather chilly outside.

Nursing our post-dinner food coma with a chick flick. You've Got Mail hits the spot every single time.

Delicious pan-fried gnocchi at 1918 Bistro & Grill in the Barossa. I don't think I've ever eaten so much gnocchi and eggs Ben in a week!

Chef's tasting menu at Appellation. I was wishing so bad I would be hungry...

But I entered the dinner hall full, and left stuffed and a tad too mellow from the wines.

Cappuccino well done at The Stirling Bistro. They give us a AUD50 voucher for breakfast every morning, how generous!

If there's one thing the South Aussies do well, it's got to be poached eggs. I didn't have a single bad one, and trust me, I had ALOT of breakfast eggs on the trip.

Strolling through Hahndorf, a German town in the Adelaide Hills.

The town was a bit touristy, but gorgeous nonetheless. It made us feel like it was Christmas morning!

Look what I found while poking through the curio shops. Now that's just how I like to cook!

Sipping hot chocolate in the sunshine.

And posing for a picture, of course!

Back to The Locavore for some last night hurrah. Our waiter Ben, who's lived in Asia and is super fluent in Singlish, took wine tasting VERY seriously. We finally decided on our choice of red after five bottles. Or was it six?

So after a coma-inducing meal, and after we had, against all odds, polished off a 'meal on its own' sticky fig pudding to applause, Ben presented us with complimentary petits fours (or threes?) with a flourish. "This is just because I want to kill you."

His ploy failed, though we did roll out of the restaurant three hours later a little worse for wear. See you if you get here to Singapore lah, Ben. ;)

Gone trippin'.

Off we go a travellin' Down Under, this time to the south. Really looking forward to walking the streets, kicking back in designer sheets and busting our month's tipple quota. Till then!

Mommy tears

My baby turns one in October.

I've never had a child, but this magazine comes pretty damn close to one. The sweat, the tears, the back-breaking preliminary start-up and the good old days I used to haul bags and bags of food across town... has it really been a year since we went through all of that?

We're putting the finishing touches on our 12th issue, and I'm getting all teary-eyed.

Happy birthday in advance, sweetheart. It's been one hell of a run, from flapping at ground zero to becoming the relatively well-oiled machine you are today. Your mommies are super, duper proud of you.

Hello again, Bob.

I've been a Bob Blumer fan ever since I saw him on telly; a crazy-haired cook driving around in his Toastermobile, cooking up the most amazing dishes for the most colourful characters. I first saw him in the flesh two years ago at a World Gourmet Summit dinner (where he made us churn our own butter), and I had the good fortune to meet him again on Saturday, this time around at the Starhub Hubalicious Food Festival.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday evening – the wine was flowing, our table mates were nicely rowdy and amazing oyster shuckers (more on that later), and I got to bring my fellow fan girl with me. Oh yes, and we got to eat some pretty amazing food.

In typical Bob style, we had to work for our first course. Oyster shucker, I am so not!

Thank goodness for the friendly, experienced shuckers at our table!

Credit's far from mine, but I'm not complaining!

Lobster bisque

Stinging nettle ravioli – tastes like spinach!

Dessert for mains. Salmon cupcake – salmon fishcake with a beet-coloured mash icing

And breakfast for dessert. White chocolate "egg whites" with a passionfruit sorbet "yolk".

In 2009, with Ken

2011, with Ceci. Why does it look like I'm the only one who aged???

Moral efficiency.

So, I haven't been to the office much since we put our September baby to print. I've decided to condense two issues worth of recipe testing into a week (so I'm not obligated to hit the stoves after my vacay), and I've been zipping in and out of grocery stores and my kitchen like a woman on a mission.

But while I was milking the euphoria that comes with not having to beat the peak hour traffic to journey to the far east, I was also getting increasingly unsettled with each passing day. It's weird, but all that dissipated the minute I sat down at my mess of an office desk this morning.

I can't explain it. I actually feel morally more efficient in an environment of pantry chats and lunchtime trash talking, as opposed to what seems like an illicitly indulgent five-successful-recipes-a-day schedule.

Go figure!

Snaps from the road.

Something spurred me to check back on my very old travel blog to relive my globetrotting days. I wonder how I got the moolah and courage to go to some of the places I did, but I don't regret the seven years I've spent feeding my wanderlust.

The decision to re-ground myself – make more money-wise travel choices, that is! – is one that I've put off for long enough, and a necessary (albeit rather painful) one. I'll live with the restrictions when the time comes, but for now, I've got two epic trips to keep me going until 2012 comes around (with luck and planning I should be ushering it
in India).

I've definitely been slacking off the travel blogging, but here are my favourite snaps from the past nine months.

Christmas in Tokyo

Soy crazy with Ran

New Year prayer for my family

Kyoto in December

Nippon spirit

Lost in translation: Strangers on a train

Always good to have a friend on foreign land. :)

Ichiro-san, who's proof that chivalry is not dead.

Celestial sunset - Koh Klang, Mar '11

Work acquaintances turned friends in Krabi, Mar '11

Junjungan sunset, Apr '11

Bali roadtrip

Made's piglets

Inside Ketut's Ubud home

Georgetown in Penang, Jun '11

Why do I like such mambo jumbo?

The 60-year-old mountain climbing uncle from Penang

Bintan, Jul '11

Buses and trains.

image via weheartit.com

Are you more a bus or a train person?

Me, I've always fancied myself a bus kinda girl, and I thought I'd travelled enough on public transport to know – I may live right smack in central Singapore, but I've spent a good 9 years shuttling to both the east and west, first for school and then for work.

I have very fond memories of my bus rides to and fro Temasek Polytechnic – trading gossip with my hospitality course mates, late-night rides home snuggling up to my then boyfriend, solitary afternoons buried in a Nora Roberts novel or lost in my thoughts... I couldn't understand why anyone would choose the invasive chaos of a packed train over the undisturbed tranquility of a bus.

Things changed when I enrolled at university. Taking the bus to the extreme west of Singapore was no longer a choice, both for efficiency and the well-being of my behind. And so, I begrudgingly squeezed into a crowded carriage, and over time, assimilated myself into train culture – nudging my way into a seemingly packed peak-hour carriage, staying upright through hearty jerks without holding on to a pole, narrowing my eyes at over-eager seat grabbers, and perfecting the art of discreetly checking weirdos out. In fact, I'm quite sure you wouldn't spot the bus girl in me should you spot me on the train tomorrow.

I came to realise that trains can be unwelcoming, but also super efficient. They're fast and almost never prone to traffic delays (congestions maybe). And when I'm overseas, the metro system often makes more sense to me than the intricacies of a city's bus routes. Can you blame me for switching loyalties?

If I were more philosophical, as I was this evening, I'd liken the switch to the realist taking over the idealist in me. It is true. I'm always in a rush to make it from point A to point B these days (I fear I have progressively serious punctuality issues), I almost forget what it's really like to slow down and enjoy the ride.

That said, I would have been happy to remain a train girl forever (until I get my hippie VW beetle that is), but by some strange stroke of luck, I downloaded a gem of an iPhone app called gothere.sg last night and out of curiosity mapped my home to office route. The results changed my life. Instead of braving the peak hour train crowds for a 68-minute journey to work (of which I am constantly checking my watch to see if I've missed the feeder service), I could in fact hop on a bus for a 77-minute ride in relative peace.

Have I been rushing around like a crazed bee and fumbling my way into crowded trains for squat? No guesses how I'm going to work on Friday morning... I'm thinking it's time to slow it down a notch, if I can roll out of bed 10 minutes earlier.

It is impossible to watch a sunset and not dream.

07 Aug '11: Sunset on Raffles Place

One of my favourite things to do on a lazy weekend is to strap on my running shoes and... walk. While there is some form of sadistic euphoria that comes from pounding the pavement, walking brings with it a soul-soothing contentment, and a reminder that the simplest pleasures in life are often best savoured at your own pace.

I usually take to the hiking trail when I'm on my own, but I like having my walking buddy with me when it comes to taking the long route through the urban jungle. It's nice to be in good company and, because CH is a voice of reason, it gives me a chance to regurgitate the thinking I do during my walks of solitude. Sometimes, I get a plan of action out of our conversations, like I did today; at other times I get a big, fat reality check, like I did today, too.

Me: So, I've given myself till my 25th birthday before I start living more responsibly.
CH: -does a double take- I never expected to hear you say that so soon.
Me: Why not? It's about time. It's been seven years. After Adelaide. Okay, maybe India.
CH: -unconvinced- Yeah, yeah, and what's planned for next year after India? You're always flying somewhere.
Me: Hmm. But can you imagine how rich I'd be if I didn't travel? All these years?
CH: Well...... Haha, yes.

- lapse into comfortable silence -

Me: Then again, I'll be cash rich but poor in terms of life experiences!
CH: Really? How "poor" exactly will you be if you don't go to Adelaide?
Me: Shut up.

Old friends. Gotta love them to hate them.

Time check.

I have 34 days to scrimp to splurge in Adelaide;
58 till the self-imposed end of my gypsy lifestyle.

picture from here

Pantry Puttanesca

It's been awhile since I cooked purely for pleasure, longer still since I made dinner for myself. Cooking for one is, rather ironically, a treat in the Khoo household. You see, making your own dinner takes some forethought, as there is always food of some sort on the dining table, but I was in the rare mood to spend some time pottering about the kitchen doing something unrelated to work.

Eschewing cookbooks and food websites, I flicked through my mental archive of toss-it-together recipes instead and almost immediately decided on pasta Puttanesca. Why, I have no idea. I'd barely skimmed through an article on it weeks, possibly even months ago, and all I remembered were these key words – tomatoes, anchovies and whore's pasta. (Culinary lore believes that Puttanesca was named after ladies of the night, who lured men into brothels with the sauce's intense aroma.)

I vaguely remember olives and fresh herbs in the equation, but I was too lazy to trek out to the grocer's, and really, isn't the absence of a recipe the best bit about non-work cooking? Somewhere along raiding my pantry and mentally rocking up a recipe, I decided to corrupt it all with a topping of garlicky breadcrumbs, just because there was panko in my kitchen drawer. This is bastardised Puttanesca at its worst, comforting home-cooked supper at its best.

Leigh's pantry Puttanesca
Serves 2

1 small box cherry tomatoes
4 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
¼ cup panko or stale breadcrumbs
Handful pasta (I used wholewheat spaghetti)
1 tin anchovies 
handful of baby spinach
handful of feta, crumbled (optional)
handful of basil, torn (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Toss the cherry tomatoes in 1 tbsp olive oil and ⅓ of the garlic. Pop these into the oven and roast at 180C until the tomatoes start to blister and shrivel. I didn't time, but it probably took me about 30 mins. Remove from oven and set aside.
2. Toast the panko in a small frying pan with 1 tbsp olive oil and ⅓ of the garlic, tossing or stirring occasionally until the crumbs are golden.
3. Cook the pasta until al dente in a pot of salted water. Drain and reserve ¼ cup of pasta water.
4. Heat the remaining oil in a pan and saute the remaining garlic until fragrant. Add in the anchovies and cook, stirring continuously, until they melt. Tip in the roasted tomatoes, give it a good stir and then add in the spinach. Cook, covered, for a min, and then add in the cooked pasta. Add a few tbsp of the reserved pasta water and toss to coat the pasta.
5. Crumble in some feta to taste, and stir through the basil, if using. Eat immediately, preferably in front of the telly! :)

Leigh's Meatless Mondays

I have all these half-arsed ideas about ethical eating and food politics, but I never quite got around to tangibilising my thoughts and making a scrupulous stand. I have, several times over the past few years, attempted to dig a little deeper, but it's hard to breathe in a whirlpool of discourse when you've got confusion sitting on your lungs.

"I'll only eat happy meat or none at all." Now that's something I wish I could say with conviction, but I have a million questions running through my head. Are kampung chickens considered to be free-range? What about pigs? And cows? Is free-range even an applicable term when it comes to farming in Asia? The answers probably lie within the encyclopedia of information out there, considering the number of investigative journalists fighting to expose dark trade secrets, but inertia currently has an iron grip on me.

The next best option for a confused but concerned meat eater would probably be to not eat meat. I did attempt it for awhile, back when I was 21, living in India and getting into the yoga swing of things (and trust me, it isn't that hard to go veggie in India), but any green notion was lost to the wind the minute I set foot on Parisian soil. Steak frites? Oui! Confit de canard? Oui, oui! Foie gras? Oui, oui, oui!

And realistically speaking, vegetarianism is hardly an option now that I've made a career of knowing and writing about the flavour nuances in the infinite world of food, of which meat is a huge part of. The most conflicting part is perhaps how much I love and crave the whole process of tasting, learning and knowing.

Gone are the days when I would eschew a hearty burger (medium doneness, with a side of limpy hand-cut chips, please) in exchange for stir-fried greens. In the past year, I haven't had even the slightest conviction to going green, but a recent conversation I had with a friend has got me thinking that I could, amidst all this bumbling and self-doubt, let go of my nonchalant all or nothing approach and try to make a semblance of a difference.

This quite wisely sums out what I think:

image from here

So yes, I've decided I am going to embark on my personal Meatless Mondays, starting today. It's one hell of a baby step, and perhaps an inconsequential footprint in the world of food ethics, but I think I owe it to me. Salad, anyone?

Only human

The official changing of hands finally happened yesterday. Despite the two-month-long limbo I've had to wrap my head around the switch, nothing quite prepared me for the whammy of emotions that hit me, right in the heart.

The torrent of tears were unexpected and illogical, but understandable when one has to say goodbye to the best mentor a writer can ever wish for. The finality of it kick-started a mental reel of pivotal moments, all of which brought on a mix of reluctance and gratitude, along with fresh waves of tears.

So I gave in to them for a bit, then I fixed my makeup and hailed a cab to a press conference. I sniffled a little while sitting through the peak-hour jam, acted fairly normal amongst work acquaintances, went out to dinner, teared a little while waiting in line, shared a few laughs over coffee and a slice of murderous chocolate cake, and then went home and let it all out.

My tear ducts haven't been on overdrive like this in a long while, and it was incredibly bizarre and inexplicable, yet so cathartic at the same time. It was less a lament of loss, more a recognition of acceptance and change. So, I'm cutting myself some slack this weekend for being human (and a woman). Life will roll right along come Monday.

The spark, the all-consuming spark.

Adrenaline. Discipline. The mounting momentum that negates all aches and tired eyes, and the silent race towards the finish. I've always taken pride in our ability to leave the office at a decent hour even during crunch time, but I found inexplicable joy tonight in working with the girls in a near-empty office, united by the common goal of sending our monthly baby to print.

To be perfectly honest, I'd slipped into a bit of a career funk in the past couple of months, and that unsettled the shit out of me. Having spent so many of my formative years identifying with my affinity with words, I couldn't quite put a finger on what it was that shaped me, if not for my crazy-eyed obsession with the written word and the ceaseless energy I derived from the publishing world. And yet, recent recognitions meant little, and gave me nothing but a short-lived ego boost.

However, tonight was a startling reminder of just how much this – this stripped down task of marrying words and pictures on paper – fuels me, and how magazine publishing, with its absurd juxtaposition of ever-shifting plans against a clockwork print schedule, reels in the mad hatter in me.

I think I got my mojo back. :)