Masterchef JVM style

Back in Baltimore, eating out once or twice a week was one of Andrew and my favorite things to do on date night. Eating out in London is actually a very pricey experience, but buying food at the supermarket, however, is extremely reasonable! With me not working yet, and the both of us liking to cook, we pretty much make dinner every night together! I noticed I had several of these homemade delights on my phone and thought they deserved a post.

Since the food is so different here, we make a lot of things inspired by meals and places we liked back home. We have a "baba's" dish with seasoned grilled chicken, rice, hummus and a side salad inspired from the little Mediterranean place we used to frequent in Locust Point, and calzones that really were just a product of the whole wheat crust recipe Andrew found online that we used to make all the time back home. They are filled with spinach and ricotta and mushrooms and grilled chicken. I like to cover mine with buffalo sauce :)

Few people know this, but back when Andrew and I first started dating, I invited him over for dinner to make him fall in love with me via my chicken fajita pie. This was the very first time I ever invited him to dinner at my house, and he shows up with a bouquet of flowers and a homemade apple pie he made from scratch - egg white washed and all. He didn't even know that was my favorite dessert! So last week, we were reminiscing about this first homemade dinner date and recreated his infamous apple pie. I really love that we can cook together so often :)

Feeling at home in London :)

And it's about time! I don't know what happened, but ever since the St. Petersburg trip and then coming home to Andrew being at Cambridge for a week and really missing him, I've just had a whole new perspective about being here! It just really is starting to feel like home! I just have this completely new bright and shiny attitude about life in general and no real event that brought about the change of heart.

It's no secret that I had been struggling with adjusting to London living. I've missed my family and friends back home so so much. I've been doing my best to put a positive spin on everything, but it's been really really hard getting settled. Recently though, I've been really busy and having more consistent friendships is really contributing to me feeling good here. While Andrew was at Cambridge to be inducted and kick off his new program, I saw all the people I know in London in a 4 day period! I had dinner and drinks with Alison Samedi on Thursday, Girls' night with Corinne and Elle on Saturday and then brunch with Vale and Rob on Sunday! 

 
Alison and I went to this cute little dim sum restaurant in the Victoria station area. I had never had dim sum nor knew what it was really so we ordered a bunch to share! They come in these cute little bamboo boxes and are pretty much dumplings I guess. They were really delicious! But the best part of the culinary experience was eating these giant fruit pastries at the Patisserie next door! 

Then Saturday, Corinne, Elle and I went out drinking and dancing in Fulham and Earls Court for my very first real girls' night out since I've been in London. It was SO much fun. We went to the Elk bar in Fulham where I had been before on my birthday and then to Miss Q's right by my flat. We danced and sang and had such a fabulous time all night long! I haven't been that sweaty and disgusting from dancing my heart out in a really long time :) 

Andrew got back on Saturday late afternoon and I have never seen him so drained both mentally and physically. He had a terribly packed schedule from basically 8 to 8 every single day he was there! I hope that he can keep up the morale and enthusiasm from that week, he definitely has his work cut out for him! That Sunday after he got back we went to a delish little organic cafe for brunch with Vale and Rob. We hadn't seen them in awhile and it was the perfect afternoon complete with my first sample sale! Vale is a fashionista and really intuned to designers and what's hot and instyle. The sample sale was for Orla Kiely, and there were REALLY cute things! I didn't end up finding anything, this time, but Vale did. And it was so funny, because we were hanging out with them on Sunday talking about the differences between being married and not and then I get an email the following Wednesday that Rob proposed!! She and I are going out for a drink tonight to celebrate. They are the sweetest couple ever :) 

Finally, my friend Suzie from High School and her boyfriend and friend Forrest came to London for a visit! They were staying close to my flat and invited me out with them. Poor things, I walked them all over the place from Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace to Westminster and finally, onto the London Eye! It was such a fun blast from the past, I really enjoyed myself and showing off MY new city. 

I am a really lucky girl to have so many wonderful people in my life and to have such great experiences. One of my favorite quotes is "I find that if you love life, love will love you back" and that's the attitude I'm really trying to embrace :)

The Beautiful St. Petersburg in French

Russia. I've always thought about it as this mysterious, cold country with people in fur and drinking vodka. Or as the delightful snowy place in Disney's Anastasia. There was also the unit in grade school history on the Soviet Union and the cold war and the times that it came up in the discussions on WWII before that, but I never really gave it much thought until recently. 


When you get married, you not only get a husband, you get a whole new family! I am lucky in that my new family liked me enough to ask me on their big family trip this year to St. Petersburg even though my lovely hubby could not go! What makes this even more of a big gesture is that they reside in Belgium and Luxembourg where their everyday, native language is French. My insanely cultured, American self only speaks English and in all honesty (I found out) not that well! But more on that later.


For those unfamiliar with the process of visiting Russia as a non-Russian citizen, you have to obtain a visa. This procedure is not as simple as you may think because I started at the beginning of August for this September 2nd departure date and three trips to the Application office and two days before the trip is when I finally secured mine!

4:00 AM came VERY quickly after 2 hours of sleep Wednesday night. I was so worried about oversleeping that I couldn't sleep at all!  My flight was at 6 AM so I had to hire a car to pick me up since the tube wasn't even running that early! It was amazing to see just how close we actually live to Heathrow Airport because it takes 40+ minutes by the Piccadilly line but only 15 minutes door to door in the car! Granted there was also no traffic on the road but still, who knew! 


My connecting flight was in Zurich and I was worried I would not make it since I saw it was boarding when I looked for the Gate number immediately after de-plaining leg one. Luckily, after I passed through security Andrew's aunt Ann was waiting right there for me! All the Belgian family was going to be on this flight and I knew Ann from my wedding. I was the final piece of the 19 person group!


I was a little nervous landing in St. Petersburg since Andrew's uncle had me worried that I was going to meet some resistance when entering Russia having an American passport! But the woman at Passport control did not say a word, checked out all my forms and visa, and I was stamped and on my way! This is the first time we all met Olga. Oh Olga. She was the French speaking Russian guide hired to narrate the trip and she was everything I pictured a Russian lady to be - short, round, blonde, and had the stocking/old lady boot combo down! And then we boarded a giant coach bus solely for our group and we were driven by the oh so friendly (try to read the sarcasm here) Serge. Off we went!


Olga wasted no time jumping right in and pumping everyone full of information. I, unfortunately, did not benefit from this as she only spoke in French. We were taken to a WWII museum built underground in the middle of a traffic signal which commemorated the Russians' ability to keep Hitler and the Germans from taking over the city for 900 days when Hitler anticipated 2 weeks maximum! And that first night, we ate at the Restaurant at the Astoria hotel where apparently Hilter wanted to have his celebration banquet when he did take St. Petersburg. Oops!


Dinner that night was my first experience of Russian food. We arrived to plates of cured meats, raw fish, and some white meat. Our place settings included a wine glass and then a mini shot-sized wine glass. The waitresses walked around and put cranberry juice in the large wine glass and vodka in the small one - like it was water! And the vodka glasses were kept full all night. Everyone immediately raised their vodka to cheers the beginning of the trip. WHEW was that hard to drink! I only took a sip and had to dump the rest into my cranberry juice. This was the only drink I had all night. The rest of the first dinner wasn't too memorable. Everything was really heavy and the side of the main was plain white rice. 


Everyone was pretty exhausted after that so it was early to bed that night because the rest of the trip that Ann planned had an 8 AM - 5/6PM itinerary every day! 

I woke up that next morning with THE worst headache ever. Thank goodness my roomie for the trip, Sophie, had something for me to take because I don't know how I would've survived otherwise.

In 4 days , we saw the Hermitage (the largest art museum in the world - according to Olga), Catherine the Great's summer palace, the palace she gave her son, the Palace where Rasputin was murdered, the church with the Graves of the Romanov family and Alexander the Great, some of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen, a Russian Orthodox service, and took a boat ride! We had three course meals every lunch and dinner, and despite that, I came home 5 lbs lighter!  

It's probably easiest to bullet my experiences from this point on to help me organize my thoughts, so here we go!


HIGHLIGHTS & Take-Aways from the Trip:

• The Hermitage with beautiful paintings from Rembrandt, Matisse, Van Gough, Picasso... I really enjoyed it! Especially since my mom and I didn't get to do the Louvre while we were in Paris. I like that the palace got the name "Hermitage" because Catherine the Great would spend a lot of time by herself in there - like a hermit.
• The Jacobs van Merlen family taking pity on me and translating. Olga would take us on 2 hour+ tours of the museums and palaces where she literally spoke the whole time. Ann would sit next to me on the bus and translate what everything was we were seeing but it got to the point where even family members who were not so comfortable in English would translate for me since there was just so so so much French! Towards the end of the trip I kind of hung to myself because I didn't want people to miss out of information trying to translate for me! 
•  Catherine the Great's Summer Palace was insanely huge and the decorations were beyond anything I could ever imagine. The details were fantastic, complete with an entire Amber room. Everything had to be restored because the Germans occupied the palace during the war and embraced Hitler's philosophy "to destroy a country you must destroy its culture." It was terrible to see the pictures of the destruction. I took a video of the ballroom in the palace because you can't comprehend for a picture the size and fabulous-ness of it! 
• Lunch at Bellini on the river. It was a restaurant in a converted building where the Russian army kept their horses I believe? I could be making that up but I think that's what someone told me. Again, everything was in French! But the restaurant opened only for our group and we all sat at one giant table! It was clean and modern and simple and elegant. This was the first time I tasted beetroot soup which is a specialty of Russia. I REALLY enjoyed it here - I say "here" because we tried quite a few beetroot soups throughout the trip. The other really memorable thing about this restaurant was the apple tart for dessert... fabulous.
• Lunch at the Podvorye Restaurant. This was in between the the out-of-town summer palaces trip. It was kind of by itself and looked like a playplace for adults almost. All the buildings and structures were made of dark wood and there was a chicken coup in the front "yard" next to a merry go round. The main building was a log cabin and there were authentically costumed Russian singers that sang for the room. The room had 3 sets of long tables for groups. We were at the table in the back, furthest from the entrance. There was a group of Japanese men at the middle table and some Italians on the opposite wall. Each of the other groups had 20-30 people I would think. We were probably the smallest. Well, we're all talking (this meal I am seated with Andrew's dad, Steve - Jill's fiance, and Olga the guide) and then we here the Italians start shouting then clinking their shot-wine glasses of vodka and down the hatch it went. They did this a few times and then the Japanese started mimicking the shouting and shot taking and then the two tables started going back and forth - shouting and standing on the chairs and taking shots! Only about halfway through this, our table sees that the Italians have switched to putting water in their glasses while the Japanese are still shooting vodka... This is when Hubert tells the table that the Japanese (he knows a lot about the culture because he does a lot of business in Japan) love to drink, but are NOT good drinkers. After the shooting, each of these other two tables take turn singing songs of their country, or at least are native to their language. I got a little of this on tape because this whole experience was just amazing! None of us spoke the same language yet it was like one big party in this room! Dea, Andrew's step-mom, eventually found out that the Italians were a group a pediatricians and the Japanese, well, we found out the Japanese were spending their very intoxicated afternoon at the Hermitage!! I don't think they were going to get much out of this fantastic museum in their current state... This place was also my first time eating BEAR! I had know idea it was bear until later that night! 
• My inability to speak proper English. I didn't realize how much I rely on sarcasm and slang in my everyday vocabulary. For those in the group that attempted to speak English with me, I really had to think about what I was going to say and simplify as much as possible. It was a really good experience for me because it was really tough to do!! I've decided I should always embrace this way of speaking, it's more adult like and strengthens my vocabulary!  
• Russians don't believe in leaving any wall blank!  Every palace/church/restaurant had floor to ceiling decorations. The attention to detail was incredible! Catherine the Great's summer palace was probably the most grand with the gold detailing EVERYWHERE and the Amber room, but even the ceilings were painted everywhere you went. Another really impressive place for detail was the Church pictured above with the bobbles on top of each steeple-like structure because in was floor to ceiling mosaics! I can't imagine the time that went into that... 
• Spending the last afternoon with Loic. It was the first time we had free time and were able to walk around the city. We saw the old Singer factory which is now a multifloor bookstore, the Hermitage plaza again, the Nevah river, a baby bear on a leash, monkeys dressed like babies, St. Peter's Church... I love walking friendly cities :)  
• Some of the Jacobs van Merlen boys getting furious with Olga because of how long winded she was about EVERYTHING. 
• Dinner the final night at Russian Empire. I think Andrew's family probably thought I was a such a snob after this meal, because it was the only time I cleaned every single plate! But how could you not when the restaurant was located in the "oldest and most luxurious" palace in the city, the Stroganov Palace, and is renowned as the most "exquisite" restaurant in Russia! The food was served on Gianni Versace plates and the wine was fabulous. The first course was a seafood plate with a scallop, prawn, salmon, and caviar. There was cranberry sorbet in between to cleanse the palette and then an green olive served in a mushroom-like broth came next. The main way a white fish on a light and fluffy potato bed with a hollowed out zucchini filled with tiny mushrooms in a cream sauce. Delish! Dessert part one was a saffron infused sorbet with a whipped cream on top and then to go with the tea/coffee service, the wait staff brought plates of homemade ganache truffles covered in nuts (it took all my will power to only eat one!) and these warm-right-out-of-the-oven thin almond cookies. It was absolutely fabulous, but the best part of the evening was sitting with Laurent and Max and Coralie! Max and Laurent had me in stitches telling me stories from when they were younger - it was just a really nice end to the trip :)   
• Everyone telling me that I was brave for coming on my own. I think it was brave, but I felt very comfortable with everyone almost immediately although I don't think I would go again without Andrew UNLESS I could at least understand French.I just really feel like I missed out on a lot of the stories and trivia since I didn't understand...

All in all, St. Petersburg was really a unique and a once in a lifetime kind of place. It felt completely untouched from Western influence especially in that all the street signs were in Russian with the Russian symbols and letters so if you were trying to find something that you saw in a guide book, it was completely impossible because you couldn't read Russian and therefore had no idea where you were! The people were really weary of us while we were there too - trying to ask directions (because some people did speak a little bit of English) was hard because people did not want to stop and talk to you. We were literally waved off the few times we tried. 

Olga showed us pictures of what St. Petersburg looks like in the snow and that inspired Dea to perhaps want to try a long weekend there again in February. We shall see! 

I made it back in one piece to London on Monday, and thank goodness I made a friend on the plane because there was a Tube strike going on so we were able to share a cab. It felt good to be back with my own food and in my own bed!

Thank you Jacob van Merlens for an incredible experience :)

Party in the USA

Yes, it's been a significant amount of time since I've posted.... life happens!! I like to think of it as a little summer break. I feel like the last few weeks/month has been a whirlwind blur! 

August, Andrew and I went home to the United States of fabulous America. We landed on the 20th in NY JFK airport, rented a car, got stuck in traffic immediately on I-95 had an hour to change and get pretty before we arrived at Shana's wedding! It took place at a gorgeous church in the Bronx and was an hour in a half in Latin! I've never been to a Catholic service in Latin before. But Shana looked beautiful as did the rest of her family. It was really nice to see just how happy everyone was that Shana and Mike were getting married - made you really feel like they are going to be a really great, forever couple - which is what you would think you should feel at every wedding, but it was extra strong at this one :) 

The reception was also beautiful on the water in New Rochelle. I've never seen so much food at one event in my life! The band was my favorite part - a 14 piece group that sang salsa style songs, black eyed peas, oldies, EVERYTHING and the dance floor was never empty! Such a great time :) 

And after that, we drove to Steph and Paul's, picked them up, and drove to the shore at midnight getting there at 2 AM! It was a perfect relaxing time and I ended up talking poor Steph's ear off. I realized the significance of not having a good girl friend in London - I had a lot to say! But we spent the day on the beach and I even went in the ocean! Although then, I did nearly have a panic attack thinking about all the things I couldn't see under the water. It's been awhile since I've been in east coast murky water! 

Steph and Paul have recently gotten engaged and have chosen me as the maid of honor! I'm so so touched and am pumped to have such an important role in their special day! So we made sure to celebrate :) We had a lovely dinner and some drinks and some crazy susan cookies!! I love crazy susan cookies - one of my favorite things about the shore. I would love to ask her her secrets because while I think I make the best oatmeal raisin cookies known to mankind (with the inspiration of mama Sileo's recipe) I cannot achieve the gooey thickness that Susan does!!

Then Sunday, we were off to Maryland. Ashley was up in the New Jersey area and was nice enough to drive us down since we no longer had a rental car. This started the craziest week ever. I had zero down time between seeing friends and family and driving back and forth between Baltimore and La Plata. It was SO busy that I didn't even get to eat at my favorite places - Regi's, Baba's, Beach Bums, and Dangerously Delicious pies! We did get to go to the Best of Baltimore party which I always love, as well as a pre season Ravens game. I was extremely stressed at the time as I felt I was being stretched extremely thin, but I'm glad I got to see and spend time with everyone that I did :) 


It was really hard to say goodbye, especially to jesse and my fam. I really miss them. BUT i didn't have too much time to dwell on it since we got back Monday morning to London and I had to bust my bum to be able to go St. Petersburg that Thursday on a 6 AM flight!