Ice-creams in high summer

Posted on by cheryl

A picture of some home made ice-cream by Keiko, writer of Nordljus. More recipes and all about food can be found at the beautiful blog, Nordljus.

Come spring in Sweden and the newspapers begin to review the upcoming launches of new ice-creams for the summer, everything from tub ice-creams, ice-cream on sticks to ice-cream in cafés are reviewed, to get to know the crème de la crème of ice-creams for the summer. It’s high summer and I’ve been doing my fair share of ice-cream epicureaning, well alright, more like devouring. Continue reading “Ice-creams in high summer” →

All-American bacon and cheese burger at Chili’s, New York

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Nibbling the big apple XII

A farewell all-American bacon and cheese burger, at Chili’s in New York, served up with a tequila mind boggler!

It was during the 1980s that the catch phrase, “Where’s the beef?” became popular in the United States and Canada due to the television commercial for Wendy’s hamburger restaurants, by Joe Sedelmaier. Since it was first used, the phrase has also become an all-purpose phrase questioning the substance of an idea, event or product.

Well, when in New York, we never got the chance to visit Wendy’s, but we did go into Chili’s at the airport just prior to taking off, where we had our very last all-American bacon and cheese burger.

If Singapore has its chilli crabs and chicken rice, Sweden has its meatballs and lingon berry jam, then the United States has its beef burger – in all variations. We ate burgers for most of our meals in New York and when we deviated from the burger, we found that the meal hadn’t satisfied all that much. It was a quaint realization that the all-American beef burger, with all sorts of toppings, was my favourite meal when in New York. We even had burgers for breakfasts.

My absolute favourite burger served is found at Michael Jordan’s The Steak House NYC, along 23 Vanderbilt Ave, New York 10017, at 44th St – Grand Central Terminal. They served up 10 oz (283 g) burgers and 14 oz (396 g) steaks that were grilled to perfection! Being a beef person, Jordan’s Steak House made it an even easier choice of a juicy beef steak over fish anyday!

The classic burger.

We’re not letting go of our burger experiences and here, you’ll find a favourite breakfast burger recipe that is quick to prepare and beats fast-food burgers:

170 grams of ground sirloin beef meat mixed with some salt and black pepper.
Slow fry in butter until as rare as you want it.
Put on toasted hamburger bread on a bed of salad, tomato slices and a pickled cucumber.
Add a helping of melted flavoury cheese (Gouda or Cheddar) on top of 4-5 slices of crispy fried Bacon and a pineapple slice. Add a helping of mushroom stew. Serve with deep fried potato wedges on the side and maybe a fried egg.

Serves one.

Coke or a cold beer on the side.

Should keep you warm and fuzzy until lunch.

Rockefeller Center: the Eiffel Tower of New York

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Nibbling the Big Apple XI

Though it’s not yet Christmas, it’s all the same magical, to view the Swarovski Rockefeller Star topper that adorns the Rockefeller Christmas tree each year.

I hadn’t expected the visit to Rockefeller Center to have been any different from the visit to the Empire State Building. But it was. For one thing, not all visitors were forced to have their pictures taken for souvenir purposes, and one could choose to by-pass all picture taking and head straight to the top.

The weather had let up some and the skies though cloudy, were azure as the eye could see. The view from the Observation Deck of Rockefeller Plaza or the Top of the Rock, proved more beautiful than that of the Empire State Building, with a more open, less cagey design. There were friendly staff on the Observation Deck to help with your queries and take pictures for guests at a minimal fee.

The Observation Deck, at Rockefeller Plaza.

Wooden benches with name plaques engraved with names of those who donated the benches, were placed alongside the wall of the Observation Deck. And because it was such wonderful weather, we took the opportunity to sit, relax and simply enjoy being at Rockefeller. It wasn’t as if there were no others there, but the generous layout and space around the Observation Deck meant that one could have their privacy to take a languid unwind, as others walked by. Continue reading “Rockefeller Center: the Eiffel Tower of New York” →

Galliano for Dior, Fall couture 2008

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John Galliano for Christian Dior, Fall Couture 2008. Photo by Alessandro Lucione

Collections for Fall Couture 2008 are already out on the runways in Paris and my favourite thus far is John Galliano for Christian Dior. An artist who uses the human form in expressing himself, I have thus far, never tired of Galliano’s creations. Even after the season has come and gone, I find myself constantly drawn back to his creations, to peer over them, to study their expressions and sometimes, wonder if they were user-friendly.

Fifties silhouette with wasp waists, full skirt and lace details. Photo by Antonello Trio.

The soft female form seems to be Galliano’s focus this Fall for couture, drawing inspiration from the fifties with nipped waists, full peplum skirts, and sheer organzas that accentuate the luscious curves of shoulders, thighs and thin ankles. But even with an accent on curves and the use of sheer materials, the overall impression is one that is still proper and demure with knee-length or t-length skirts. Continue reading “Galliano for Dior, Fall couture 2008” →

The Chanel 2.55 Classic

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The Chanel 2.55 Classics and Reissues, my favourite colour being the one in ivory with gold chains.

What you put in your bag is very important to you…Traditionally, for a woman, a bag holds the things you need for the day, but it’s also your little beauty factory, which is very important to the identity of the woman. …the modern bag …by 1920, …became a symbol of women’s independence. It said she could go where she wanted to go, and didn’t need a man because he held all the possessions.

~ Farid Chenoune, author of Carried Away: All About Bags (2005)

Chanel bags have previously not appealed to me because I found the quilting too much mademoiselle. But I love bags with a story to tell and the Chanel 2.55 Classic quilted flap is one such bag. Launched in February 1955, hence its name 2.55, the quilted flap bag draws its inspiration into being, from many threads of Coco Chanel’s life, most of which came from the orphanage and convent, Aubazine in the south of France.

Coco Chanel wanted a bag that was hands-free, thus the double function of the chained handles to the bag, where one could wear the bag across the body or on the shoulder. The burgundy coloured lining in the original design for the black quilt flap 2.55s, came from the colour of Chanel’s school uniform at the Aubazine convent and the inspiration for the quilting came from several sources, including the stained-glass windows of the abbey at Aubazine, jockeys’ riding coats as well as her own light-brown suede cushions in her rue Cambon apartment in Paris. The open back pocket of the bag was where she stashed extra money and the zippered pocket was where she had her love letters. The original bags came with a Mademoiselle Lock because Chanel never married and the honorific mademoiselle was the custom. The bags with the interlocking Cs are today known as The Classic Flaps, whilst versions of the bag relaunched by Karl Lagerfeld in 2005/6 are known as Reissues. The Reissues have a twist lock without the Chanel logo on the outside. Continue reading “The Chanel 2.55 Classic” →

Maria Gibson, at Midsummer’s in traditional folkdress

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Maria in a traditional Swedish folkdress, hand-stitched and sewn. Photo by Robbie Nordin, Robbiesphoto.com.

For some years now, I have observed that Swedes have several forms of folk dresses and a National Costume, that they use on special, festive ocassions such as Midsummer’s. Sverigedrakten lends a good history of the folk dress, where the dresses displayed the wearer’s province of origin, their distinct style of clothing, their culture and history. Folkdresses went out of fashion around the mid-1800s, where these days, they can fetch enormous prices at auction houses due to that the textile to the dress was usually hand-loomed and then the dress hand-sewn. An approximate cost to a folkdress today would be around 15,000 kr to 20,000 kr, which is about USD $2,500 – $3,000 or SGD $4,000 – $4,500. Continue reading “Maria Gibson, at Midsummer’s in traditional folkdress” →

Midsummer’s Day 2008, in the Western Swedish archipelago

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Brrrrr! My first toe-dip of the season, and possibly my last.
Missing the warm beaches at Singapore’s Sentosa Island. It would take quite a lottery win for me to go swimming in the sea this summer if the weather doesn’t let up! Outfit: A white crochet halter neck dress by BCBG Max Azria.

This island in the western Swedish archipelago has its own tradition on Midsummer’s, where it was here that the Society of Arbores literally brought back forests and green life.

For a number of decades every century, as long as anyone can remember, huge shoals of herring used to suddenly appear along the western Swedish coast. It is said that the sea was so full of herring that they could hardly find space to swim amongst themselves. During winter the fishermen could cut a hole in the ice and the herring would pour up onto the ice by themselves. While this might be of a slight exaggeration, the thing was that year after year the herring did indeed come back, by the millions. The most important periods were between 1747-1809, and then in 1877-1904. Continue reading “Midsummer’s Day 2008, in the Western Swedish archipelago” →

Midsummer’s Eve 2008

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I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II (i).

Sitting at the foot of the Midsummer pole. Western archipelago of Sweden, 2008

The weather is ever changing this Midsummer’s Eve, which marks the ancient middle of summer or the summer solstice. It is during this time that even south of Sweden experiences hardly any night and where night is marked these few days with a long dusk that turns to dawn. Continue reading “Midsummer’s Eve 2008” →

Meeting with Geoffrey Pereira: exploring expression in photography

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Part of Geoffrey’s Fabrics portfolio. Model: Vanessa Tarachin. Photo by Geoffrey Pereira.

Geoffrey Pereira (left).

Journalist Geoffrey Pereira and I met whilst he was on a visit to Gothenburg, for the World Editor’s Forum that took place in early June, 2008.

It was wonderful meeting a fellow Singaporean on foreign soil and Geoffrey shared that, while managing a small IT department in Singapore Press Holdings, he had cultivated a passion of another sort, one that allowed for self expression beyond words, that of photography.

I had the opportunity to browse through Geoffrey’s themed photography portfolio. The above bare-backed picture of a woman with saturated colour swirls, is one obtained from his Fabrics portfolio, where he experimented with expressing the female form against various types of fabrics, the colours and textures of the fabric contrasting to the pallor of skin.

A portfolio that caught my particular attention was what Geoffrey called his Trash Bag Project, where he worked with cutting and stitching pieces of trash bags to form wearable outfits. Continue reading “Meeting with Geoffrey Pereira: exploring expression in photography” →