Interruption … there’s a Greater Raquet-tailed Drongo perched on a branch just outside the livingroom window. Really beautiful. (The photo is by EJ Peiker, Nature Photographer.)

Before Sandy and Olive left for Malaysia, I thought I would enjoy ten days of solid partying. In the end I only went out on three nights; I must be getting old! And my diet is terrible, I’m eating junk food every day. It’s fantastic, I love it. Tonight I’m cooking a 350g Angus ribeye steak with heavy marbling and I’ll melt a slab of Roquefort on top of it. Delicious!

Since Sandy and I can't make it to any of the official Singapore Foodfest events, we decided to hold our very own foodfest this weekend.

On Saturday morning, Olive and I sneaked out early to the local hawker centre while Sandy caught up on some much needed sleep. We bought roti prata with fish curry, and laksa for Sandy. For lunch we finished off some scary looking bacon and cheese in omelettes with freshly baked caraway bread. In the afternoon, Agnes, Cindy, Irene, Eric and baby Cheyanne came for tea laden with durian Swiss roll, cheesecake, chocolate cake, Key lime pie and apple crumble. I baked chocolate brownies but somehow managed to burn them so that was a bit of a disaster! After digesting the durian cake, Sandy and I went to dinner with Chris, Pat and Petchara and had a fantastic steamboat of prawns, fish, dumplings, Chinese veggies, noodles and a very tasty homemade Thai dip. Followed by ice cream.

(Portuguese pig stew about to go on the stove.)

Sunday is traditionally a day of cooking for us. We buy sufficient ingredients for the coming week's meals and, especially now we have Olive, try to cook a couple of big dishes to last several meals. I must have had a dream about smoked Hungarian paprika the night before as I managed to pick two dishes based on this spice. Portuguese pork and bean stew basically involves cooking as many parts of a pig as you can find in a huge pot with beans and smoked paprika. Belly pork, bacon, pork hock, illegally imported spicy Spanish chorizo ... the Le Creuset was too small so we had to transfer it all to a large aluminium stockpot. The pig stew should last three meals at least. The second dish I chose was chicken baked with green pepper and smoked paprika. I think we'll start with this tonight, I can't face any of that pig yet.