Afternoon Off

Posted on 2013/04/09 18:47:38 (April 2013).

[Sunday 7th April 2013]
Chie took Erika to a friend's baby shower in the afternoon, and I was given the afternoon off from parenting duties.

I decided to have lunch in the Fountain restaurant at Fortnum and Mason. I quite like sitting at the counter there - it offers a good vantage point from which to spy on the well heeled regulars. My main course was a rather inventive vegetarian option - globe artichokes with spring morels and asparagus - the morels in particular were really good. I do love a morel. The "triple cooked" chips I ordered as a side dish were a bit of a disappointment though - triple cooked chips are meant to be crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside - these were just like soggy homemade chips. Not sure what went wrong there, but I explained they were a bit below par, and had them taken off the bill.

After that I headed over to the Harp to sample a few ciders, another thing I had missed while I was in Japan. The Harp always has a really good selection of real ciders - and not pasteurised ciders in bottles either, but live ciders in those sort of bag-in-box affairs. I always order halves (I'd order quarters if I could) so I can try a few different ones. This time I had three different ciders, all from Severn Cider - two single varietals (Frederick and Dabinett) and one called "Brown Snout".

I sort of ran out of imagination a bit at the point, and in the absence of being able to think of anything in particular to do, just did a little bit of shopping and headed back to the flat. It felt like a bit of a waste of an afternoon off really, but I suppose was feeling a bit under the weather still, and that seemed to have sapped my enthusiasm somewhat.

Erika and Chie came back from the baby shower towards the end of the afternoon / early evening - and they had a balloon. It's the first time Erika's ever had a balloon to play with, and she seemed quite interested in it. Although perhaps more the ribbon than the ballon itself.

In the evening I made a Thai green curry for dinner, although I think I put too much curry paste in and it was a bit overpowering.

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