A little behind the Best of 2009

Its been a crazy two weeks... An amazing early Christmas present was revealed to me on the 20th December... a sneaky little trip to Paris before Christmas. Not only was this sneaky, but very exciting since we had tried to visit last year for my 30th birthday, but were scuppered when a fire broke out in the tunnel, hours before we were due to leave the St Pancras Champagne bar.


This time we made it, but um... we had a little trouble getting home! The wrong kind of snow shut down the whole service and we were lucky to gain another day in Paris before flying back to Heathrow. It wasn't as simple as it sounds, but I won't bore you with the long and arduous details... we'll I'll just finish the story.


We got back to London, but not home. A sudden flurry of snow brought the south east of London to a halt and no bus, taxi or train would travel there. Already exhausted and having missed our train that afternoon to Norwich where we we spending all of Christmas, after a stiff G&T in the warmth of a boozer we decided to hot foot it up to East Anglia where we knew we would get a warm bed and welcome. Twelve hours after leaving Paris, we finally made it, not home, but to our Christmas hosts, albeit without any presents, clean clothes or the gluten free Christmas cake...

So, as a result of all our Christmas stuff and computer remaining in our spare room till last night (when we spent a very Christmas-y evening opening presents, drinking Champagne, and eating mince pies rather than blogging I'm afraid) I am rather behind on GwenBells Best of 2009. But I am back just in time for the final push in time for new years eve about the resolution I wish I'd stuck to. Problem is I can't think of one. 

I don't usually make new years resolutions, instead opting to choose things I would like to do more of...positivity is the name of the game here. So combining this positive outlook with a resolution to make new years resolutions each January, I resolve to write more here.


Happy New Year!

Tea of the year... best of 2009

When GwenBell posted the challenge for today being about the best tea of 2009, I thought I might skip it. I have always been a bit of a coffee monster, but then reading back through my posts this year, I have talked about tea one - albeit accompanied by a stack of gluten free sweets!


And how could I have lived for so long in a tea producing country, without having tasted and drunk classic Darjeeling or Assam..? One of my favourite places to shop in Delhi was Sunder Nagar, home to two of the city's three tea shops. My favourite was Regalia Teas, where foil packs packed with hand picked and rolled tea leaves and incredible range of infusions lined the shelves.


Not knowing much about tea - what makes one superior to the other, how Darjeeling compares to Assam and Earl Gray etc... I grilled the owner asking why why why... Lucky for me he was happy for the opportunity to talk leaves, picking methods, seasons and infusion times. And I was happy to learn, and subsequently discover my favourite tea of the year. An organic Darjeeling that was a perfect breakfast tea with a delicate taste and a world away from my usual teadirect.


When we moved back to London, I made a special tea trip to stock up for our return, complete with an elegant and traditional silver tea caddy to maintain the quality and aromatics for as long as possible in London. We are still drinking our Indian Darjeeling every morning and will try to eek it out into 2010.


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Moroccan Afternoon Tea


Cafe Coffee Day in India


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Best of 2009 Blog Challenge - Best challenge

Best of 2009 was started by GwenBell, and today the subject is best challenge of the year. No which one to pick...


Well, it all began with my first Indian cookery class where I met Cait, a passionate not-for-profit worker, who invited me to see the project she was working on in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Now, if the state were classed as its own country, the malnutrition levels there would be rated worse than Ethiopia. Of all malnourished children in India, 60% live in this state and Cait was running a project for RMF to address the situation. I had to see it.



When I received the invite out west, I had been in the country for just a couple of months. Jack had already been having his own adventures through working in deprived schools and for the charity, and I was craving my own opportunity to explore outside the city walls. But, I have to admit I was unsure. Very,very unsure about going. I had only met Cait a couple of times, and knew nothing of the charity she worked for. I had not yet travelled on the trains, or used the sleeper system and had only a smattering of pigeon Hindi that would not get me by out in the land of over 300 languages. But I had no excuse. Even when I phoned Jack and asked if it would be ok for me to go (I was clutching at straws for excuses by then), he said “go for it!”...when I had been hoping for “why no dear you may not go, the countryside is far too dangerous for my precious Kim”. I knew that if I turned down this opportunity, however scary it may be, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

Looked like I was getting the adventure I wanted!
The whole 3 days was a thrilling ride, pulling me out of my safety box and into the heart of India, full of things I had never done before:

• Travelling on those legendary Indian trains (alone) where everyone was really friendly, one family offered me their chapattis to share. I never did work out how to say “sorry I cannot take your offer of bread as I have coeliac disease”. 
• Travelling from the station on the back of a motorbike, bag precariously wedge between me and the driver, over bumpy, dusty dirt roads through crowds of waving kids. 
• Eating Indian hospital food – of the most delicious meals ever- and eating rice and dal with my fingers. 
• Meeting mothers with their children on the brink of starvation, not knowing what on earth to say or do. 
• Making up my own job title - Nutrition expert - for field workers and being sat awkwardly next to the speakers at the front of the meeting.
• Eating communal meals where I had no idea what they were made of.
• Sweating and sticking to the plastic seats of the jeep that we shared with 8 men from the Nutrition Centre, in 50degree heat and no air conditioning for 12 hours of the day.
• Devouring afternoon street food snacks without a care for the roaring spice levels or hygiene having not eaten all day (my hotel breakfast of omelette came sandwiched between 2 slices of toast.. the strangest thing I was presented with on my whole trip!).
• Being guest of honour on the last day of a week-long tribal wedding where dancing with the villagers was obligatory for hours and hours. 

How three days were so full of their own challenges, I will never know... but I know it was the making of me. Looking back to that time now from my sofa on a grey London day, I know I was firmly out of my comfort zone. But when I really think about it, I have no idea how I got through it all. I was so very happy, bombing around the Indian countryside, desperately trying to take it all in, all the while knowing that the experience would change me forever... 

What challenged you this year...?

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Best of O9 - Moment of Peace

Best Trip, Restaurant, and Book


Trip to Malnutrition Project

What am I eating

Best of 2009 Blog Challenge - moment of peace

I have had a change of plan for my contribution to the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. I am enjoying myself far too much to restrict it to just once a week. Remembering all the awesome things that I have done, discovered, learnt this year, I am finding that I have too much to say and share to restrict it to one blog post. So, I am going to write when the inspiration takes me, enjoy the memories and the time to reminisce over a steaming cup of coffee.

Today, it’s all about the best moment of peace. Before this year, I know I would have struggled to write about a moment of peace. But the challenge this year was to find me some, and strangely living in an overpopulated, chaotic, noisy developing country, I found it...by the sack load, in yoga with ohms, chanting... the whole caboodle!

It began with a daily dawn walk to early morning classes for three solid weeks. It ended in head stand and a truly peaceful mind for the first time in my life. I haven’t quite managed to bring this discipline through with me to my London life, despite having the time, but I have kept with me an understanding of how to breathe, how to be flexible, strong and focused and most importantly peaceful.

Ohm to that!

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Best of 2009

The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge

I love the beginning of a new year, in the same way that I used to love the beginning of a new school term. A clean slate on which to doodle hopes, dreams plans and resolutions and give direction to the year ahead. Before commencing on what I consider a lovely task (who doesn’t like to dream what cool stuff is coming your way?) I always indulge in a little review and reflection on the year rolling to a close.

And in what I see to be a truly fateful find, I have just discovered Gwen Bell’s #Best09 which calls for a review of the year in a blogging community stylee, asking for a best something each day ranging from restaurant experience to moment of peace, aha moment to advert. Unable to ignore the hands of fate, I will be doing my own take (as Gwen encourages!) as I know I will fall behind. In fact I am already behind since it’s the 5th December already. Every week, I will cover the “best ofs” from that week that I have something to reflect in one blog post, starting with:

BEST TRIP - BEST RESTAURANT MOMENT - BEST BOOK

Feel free to join in too...

It is safe to say that this year has been the biggest trip ever, in both senses of the word. It would be obvious to talk India being the best trip of the year, but to me trip suggests a journey away from home, and since we were living in Delhi I cannot technically bring it under this category. However, I will get it in somewhere, somehow though, believe me.

No, the best trip of 2009 was the rather unexpected and impulsive trip to Australia as holiday and re-acclimatisation to Western life before arriving in London. Two of my best friends moved back to Australia in the past year, but thankfully back to the same South Australian city of Adelaide. There had been no talk of visiting them, however discovering when talking on skype that India was exactly half way to Adelaide from England sowed the seed of thinking “since we are halfway there already...” and whoops, we booked a flight.

After six months baking in subtropical heat we landed in a mild Adelaide winter and inhaled the clean cool air, having forgotten what a cool breeze felt like. Dividing our time between our two friends who lived on different sides of the city (one beachside the other vineyard-side) we scheduled a foodie trip to Melbourne in between too. Just to make the most of being there you know.

It was the best because...I got to hang out with my friend and her new baby boy; see where my girlies now live; mooch round Adelaide’s amazing covered food market; dig into suppers of Aussie style BBQ squid; revel in the stacks of gluten free food EVERYWHERE, visit boutique wineries in Adelaide Hills and Barossa Valley; cruise the legendary coffee shops of Melbourne; Sample the incredible cuisine at the city’s wine restaurants; have even more coffee at late night coffee bars; stay at a beach house with a power cut; have a candlelit winter BBQ; spend five hours watching whales and their babies 100yds from our feet in the sand; watch an Aussie rules game with a flask of tea; teach my friends authentic Indian cookery... I’m not even scratching the surface.

Oh and one experience that qualifies as my best restaurant experience of the year was every place we ate during the entire trip understood gluten free, Coeliac requirements and I didn’t have to explain. There were always options for me, helpful staff and I wasn’t called a celeriac once! Shops with every gluten free flour imaginable, moist, dense gluten free cakes made from clean natural ingredients (so good I ate the one I supposedly bought for Jack!)...It was a sweet taste of relief knowing that I could put my trust in these restaurateurs and shop owners. Australia caters well for those with Coeliac Disease. Lucky Aussies.

Which leads me onto my best book of 2009. This has to be Maggie Beers Harvest. Like her homeland, it provides a stack of gluten free food, reads like a bedtime novel, was given to me by one of my best friends ever and I even got to meet her at her farm when we were cruising the Barossa Valley.