Jetlag miniquiche and the zen of XL

Singapore, the return visit, was a blur of jetlag, shopping and eating. It occurred to me that I had shown remarkable restraint with food during the whole trip and so, on the last day, I ventured into the Haagen Dazs cafe and spent a small fortune on a super-sundae of my own creation. I think it was icecream in the flavours Belgian Chocolate, Chocolate and Tiramisu, drowned in chocolate fudge and with chocolate sprinkles. It was a sort of chocolate on chocolate with chocolate on top experience, the perfect treat for the ultimate day of a fabulous holiday.

Singapore is funny when it comes to spending. Most things are crazy cheap (shoes, restaurants, ipods) but treat foods like icecream and Starbucks coffees are expensive, even compared to the pricey parts of Europe. Perhaps the Singapore government is taxing the junkfood in order to keep the population slim. If they are, then it's certainly working. I saw a few chubby kids, but most Singaporeans are tiny - a fact which makes shopping for clothes both a pleasure and a psychological challenge. The thing that gets me most excited about buying jeans and pants in Singapore is the knowledge that they will be the right length. I'm am only 5ft 2 and nearly always have to get more than an inch trimmed from any pants that I buy. In Singapore, this is not a problem because the population is generally petite. However, it's a bit confronting to move from the browsing phase to the point of trying something on, because invariably the (petite,tiny) shop assistant will look me up and down and announce "I think you will be an L or an XL". In NZ I wear a 10 or even an 8 (US sizes 8 or 6), which are considered small sizes. I'm glad I didn't go to Singapore when I was larger, I would probably have been reduced to a sobbing mess through consistently being unable to fit an XXL.

The jetlag hit rather severely in Singapore and I had the surreal experience of waking up feeling like it was, say, 7.30am, then checking my watch and finding it was 2.30 in the afternoon. Then of course I could not sleep at all on the plane and ended up feeling really funky through sleeping about 15 hours straight, then not sleeping for 24 hours. At Changi airport I bought some Melatonin, which is the best thing I know of for resetting the body clock. Melatonin is a substance that your pineal gland produces and it forms part of the hormonal adjustments that tell your body that it is night. It used to be available off the shelf in NZ, but these days is a prescription medicine, I'm not sure why. I took 6mg last night, slept well, and today feel mostly normal, even if I'm missing the coffee machine badly. :(

In the air I amused myself by alternately following the toddler around the plane and watching the in-flight movies. Has anyone seen this movie, Waitress, directed by the late Adrienne Shelly? I thought that it looked like a piece of brainless fluff, but actually it is quite engaging. The unhappily pregnant main character, Jenna, has a turbulent personal life and few prospects but she does possess a talent for making pies. She uses her pie-making as an emotional release and names them accordingly. For example the 'Bad Baby Pie', when she found she was pregnant, and the 'I hate my husband pie' and 'falling in love pie', both of which are self-explanatory. I don't really do pies, but I was needing a quick, light meal yesterday when I was in the half-life of severe sleep deprivation, and so here we have the Jetlag crustless miniquiche.

This is a great meal, fully PN compliant, that you can jazz up in any way you like. I will put the recipe up on the Sana site in the next few days, but everyone knows how to make a quiche, right? You just whizz up some eggs and egg-whites - I use 2 extra ews to every egg - with a little milk (or butter, cream and grated cheese if you want the Cuisine Magazine artery clogging version), then add .. other stuff. Mine has smoked salmon, chopped onion, cubed feta cheese and some spinach. It is best to use fresh spinach. Frozen does 'sort of' work but the final product turns out a bit mushy. You are suppposed to make quiche in a crust, but I just put the mix into my silicone muffin tin and bake for about 40 minutes at moderate heat. I sprinkled some Parmesan on the top and grilled it to slight crustiness. I made 11 Jetlag miniquiches and they worked out at something ridiculous like 70 calories each.

*****

Tomorrow I head back to work to show off my tan and divvy up the Swiss chocolate. I'm trying to hold onto that holiday feeling by reminding myself that regular life really should be more exciting and less stressful in general, not just in those few weeks of escaping the 'daily grind'.