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One of the best things about the Christmas/New Year period is the downtime you get. For me, this has let me catch up on my reading list which has been growing for a while. One of the most significant books that I’ve read this year is Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I think that everyone should read this book, particularly if you are looking at being more healthy.

The book title sounds strange, yet when you read about his definition of food and the strange things the food industry giants have done, it makes a whole lot of sense. Admittedly it talks about problems more prevalent in the US, yet it is wholly applicable to all other nations as more and more drift in their direction. What is so great about this book is that it uncovers how very little we understand about food science and the complexities surrounding food and its benefits on health. Pollan exposes all the marketing tricks and misleading facts that lead to industries providing empty, nutritionless calories only serving to feed the modern diseases of obesity and type II diabetes.

The best part about this book is that it provides some simple advice that you can follow that leads you away from the manufactured artificial constructs you find on shelves towards real food. Simple rules such as don’t buy anything that contains more than five ingredients you don’t recognise, or eat meals not snacks and eat mostly plants, especially leaves. I don’t the UK or Australia suffers as much from the weird chemical contents of food as much as the US, but these rules still apply.

A highly recommended reading that will definitely affect the way that I shop, and the way that I eat.

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Before heading away for holidays, I managed to get a booking to see Avatar 3D at the BFI’s Imax. The last 3D movie I saw required the “special” 3D glasses during only certain parts of the movie unlike this one which required it for the entire duration. It’s definitely a strange experience, but just like most things, you seem to adjust to it after a while.

Being such a visually rich film, this was definitely worthwhile seeing at the Imax although you want to get some good seats. We were particularly lucky getting seats pretty much smack bang in the middle, enjoying all three stories of movie screen in all dimensions. It’s apparently sold out at the Imax until March and I’m happy to report it’s worthwhile paying for the experience.

You can read countless other reviews of the actual movie but I will say that although the story is a little bit predicatable, it’s still worth going to see on the big screen. I’m not so sure a TV set will do it as much justice, and watching it in 3D definitely adds a dimension worth seeing.

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For most of our trip to Lapland, we stayed in the town Saariselka deep in the Arctic Circle. We figured that being so far north, we’d have a chance to see the Northern Lights and despite the great conditions for it (clear skies and really low temperatures) we only caught a brief glimpse of them.

As you can see, there was plenty of snow around and that meant there was plenty of opportunities to do lots of snow based activities. We managed to get around to doing some snow-mobiling, some cross country skiing, riding with some reindeers and sledging with the husky dogs. Saariselka also has a 1.2km long downhill toboggan trail that is definitely worth going down at one stage.

Although my most favourite activity was the cross country skiing, controlling the husky dog sledges was an inexperience to behold. We had a pack of six dogs on our sledge and it was amazing to see how they are simply built to run. Each sledge has a brake that digs into the snow and with our dogs, even with my full weight on it, their jumping efforts sometimes managed to move the sledge just a little bit. Fortunately it’s enough to get them to all stop running at the same time because they manage to run fairly fast.

The dogs are pretty silent when they’re running at full speed and its amazing to see how quickly they want to run as soon as they stop. They start howling, and even leaping in their harnesses, or digging into the snow waiting to get ready. Some of them do sit down, a little bit more relaxed but I’m guessing they’re some of the older dogs used to dragging people behind them. I think we managed to do about two and half hours of a course which was pretty good value for money.

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Being somewhere extremely cold such as Lapland, you think you’d be crazy for wanting to stay in the cold. However figuring it was a once in a lifetime sort of experience, we thought we’d try staying in one of those ice hotels. I’m sure that most people have heard of Sweden’s famous Snow Hotel and being even further north, Finland has its fair share of places like this. So we decided to stay a night at the Snow Village found in Lainio.

The main part of the Snow Village is made out of snow compacted together to form an entire building which changes design every single year. Despite the extreme temperatures outside (-20 degrees Celcius), the insides of the Snow Village maintain a comparably warm 0 degrees Celcius, just perfect for the ice beds that you sleep in. This year’s theme was focused on different elements and colours, with four different corridors representing different themes. Here’s some of the examples:

This corridor was based on a Fire-theme, hence the bright red colours:

This one was based on Water, thus the blue:

And then Forest clearly green:

And finally an Air-theme completely white:

Despite all the layers of clothing, when it’s -20 degrees Celcius outside, the insides feel strangely warm as a result. Fortunately the different corridors are built as one big structure so the temperature inside stays relatively constant. It’s a different story on the outside where you are exposed to all the elements such as snow and wind. It still looks pretty spectacular from the outside.

Just like any ice hotel should have, there’s an ice bar where you can sit on blocks of ice and even a dance floor completely made out of ice. During the early parts of the evening it doubles as an ice restaurant where you can eat your food whilst enjoying the ice atmosphere. Don’t worry if you don’t want to eat in the cold because they also have a proper building with plenty of heating to keep you warm if you find it far too cold.

Part of the experience of the ice hotel is really staying over in one of the many rooms dotted along the different corridors. They offer two types rooms, the deluxe suites which are all custom made and unique with different characteristics and varying structures, and the more ordinary ice rooms. Since you actually get to see all the suites we stayed in one of the normal rooms with ice beds that look like this:

There’s a mattress to protect you from the icy bed, although you are also given a sleeping bag and thermal fleece to take into the room when you are ready to rest your weary head. The suites are pretty spectacular and the following knight and castle-themed room was definitely my favourite.

I can definitely recommend the experience, even if you do it for just one night.

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After such a big night from Towards A Fluid State, I was fortunate enough to wake up without my alarm early enough to head off to the Taste of Christmas. I’d promised to meet other people there before then and had barely enough time to get ready to head their early. I’ve never paid to go to any Taste events, with the theory being that the ticket cost in addition to the plate costs easily make up for any decent meal you’ll probably get in a restaurant. Of course, you can easily argue it’s about being able to sample lots of different cuisines (which we definitely did) but it really does add up.

The highlight of the day was definitely seeing Heston Blumenthal, of The Fat Duck fame, discuss three of his different menu items and the work and detail that go into each of the dishes. It’s a frightful amount of work, as anyone who has bought his tome could attest to, with the pay off being obviously spectacular results. He’s a cheerfully friendly bloke, and happily talked about everything, including his own background and some of the biggest mistakes in his kitchen. Despite all the culinary wizardry and imaginative techniques, it’s obvious that he’s supremely talented and really passionate about what he does. It’s wonderful that he’s all about the taste experience and getting the most you could possibly get out of the food items he makes.

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This weekend was a mixture of catching up with some old friends and trying out some new events all involving wonderful food and drink at the same time. Rather than starting off at the Friday pub, I met Gerrod and Kristy at Sitaaray, a Bollywood themed restaurant where we had a Indian banquet involving many little bites that certainly filled us up very well. The inclement weather saw us consider checking out something a bit local to Covent Garden. Unfortunately two of my more favourite places were a no-goer – Freud being literally crammed body to body in its downstairs habitat, and the other, Bunker apparently there no more. Instead we ended up at the bar downstairs from Navajo Joe where the balance between being too crowded and atmosphere was just right.

Saturday kicked off catching up with my sister for dim sum, this time wanting to try the hard-to-find mooli rolls at Shanghai Blues. Being a bit more of an upscale restaurant, it was definitely on the much more expensive side of dim sum and though everything looked very pretty, some of the dishes disappointed with small char xiu bao and average tasting dumplings. Service was excellent for a Chinese restaurant, although you certainly pay for it. The evening saw a few of us head out to Dalston, heading “Towards a Fluid State”. Thanks to our bus trip, I also know now where Mangal Ockabasi is.

Sunday saw me off to an early start to the Taste of Christmas to dare the crowded floors of Excel London where we saw Heston Blumenthal and grabbed a bite of lunch to eat. We also walked around the stalls tasting some interesting ingredients

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Imagine bringing together the boutique suppliers of food, drink and unique innovative art to a warehouse in the middle of Dalston and you’ll start to get a feel for what Towards A Fluid State was all about. Everything was thought down to the littlest detail and every corner had surprises at all turns.

Not really knowing what to expect was part of the fun to it. All we knew when we bought the tickets is that the event would be located somewhere near Dalston, and even the wet weather and rain didn’t stop us from having a good time. The entrance was small, nothing more than a door down a dark alley (although you did have a blindingly obvious big arrow pointing should you look down from the high street). From there, you enter “passport control” where the lovely ladies behind The Tasting Sessions gives you your passports and the well-formed box that would hold your drinks and bite-sized foods. Any “flights of experience” you bought also end up stamped inside, alongside a free drink (randomly picked from each of the different tasting stands). Each stamp buys an experience, often a combination of three tipples from a particular type of spirit, combined with matching bite sized morsels.

The organisers divided the warehouse into differently themed rooms, centred around the unique combinations of food and drink, all compete with different types of entertainment. It’s hard to describe my favourite with the strong smells of La Fromagerie Cheese and Whiskey emanating from one (cleverly masking any smells that happened to escape from the restrooms) or the huge dining table near the Gin room atop which two roasted pig’s heads sat complete with sunglasses at night, contrasting the rest of the decadence surrounding them.

Our first “flight of experience” was easy, with a sampling of cold sake, provided by Akashi-Tai, and wonderfully tasting Japanese food provided by Tsuru (located near Southwark). A big fan of black sesame, we all agreed that the black sesame mochi was a definite highlight with mixed reactions to some of the different types of sake present. Present company preferred the classical flavours brought by one of the cleaner flights, although I was particularly interested by the more sharp flavours brought by the darkened sake shot.

We followed this with our free drink, provided by the Cognac stand which I went for the “Courvoisier Cooler.” Described as, “A generous serving of Courvoisier Exclusif lengthened with cloudy apple juice, topped with ginger beer, served long with ice” it definitely helped me cool down from the warmth starting to generate from both the spirits and the body heat generated from all the people present.

Some of our party, more particularly hungry swapped their next “flight of experience” for the roast hog meal, which I chose to take over to the Gin stand to watch one of the cocktail-meisters from the London Cocktail Club work his magic forming, “Sage, mint and lemon caviar” using some interesting chemical reactions. They also introduced me to the Chase Distillery’s unique Gin blend which really hit the spot filled with so much flavour. I was definitely pretty happy to give it a go although slightly disappointed I wasn’t able to yet find it anywhere to buy.

We found ourselves with some “flights of experience” and decided to enjoy ourselves back with various congacs, and with the more dessert-sized bites including a slightly salted caramel lollipop, a small Portugese custard tart, and a dark chocolate truffle matching each of the different spirits. Some of the cognacs we tried were really smooth (I think they were the more than 30 year old ones) and with so much depth of flavour.

I remember wanting to leave the stronger whiskey flavours to last, but found ourselves at the end of their night where they’d almost run out of the cheese. By this time, they were happy to sample some of the more interesting blends of whiskey including some lovely single malts provided by Highland Park and Macallan.

I have to really put my hands together to thank the organisers, suppliers and all the people that put the event on. I love the passion the boutique suppliers demonstrated about their products, I love the interesting atmosphere and people that turned up and the quality of the whole experience made the whole night very enjoyable. It certainly helped that the food and drink were top notch as well.

Well done all for taking us Towards a Fluid State.

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A couple of weekends ago, I somehow found myself at the infamous, School Disco for their tenth anniversary. I thought it had shut down but apparently it had simply moved locations to somewhere near Great Portland Street.

We started the night off at Frankies place, then catching a couple of taxis to get us there. A few Red Bulls early in the night seemed to do their job well an I didn’t have any problem staying up.

School Disco wasn’t as bad a place I thought it could have been, expecting something more akin to The Church. Fortunately all it meant was everyone dressed up in themed costume, unsurprisingly around the whole school theme.

We definitely had a great night out and I was thankful it was walking distance home when we left sometime in the morning.

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