Aberdeen and a Meet-up

Aberdeen, the third most populous city in Scotland boasts of its stately and serene architecture of many gray granite buildings, hence dubbed the 'Granite City'.  Most of the buildings were built from gray granite excavated from the Rubislaw Quarry which closed in 1971. Aberdeen is an expensive city, also known as the Oil Capital of Europe, fuelled by the North Sea petroleum industry.  This was where I spent my short vacation with my family recently.

I'm sure many of you would have heard of  Mary Moh, author of  Keep Learning Keep Smiling,  the Badminton enthusiast  and just recently her team emerged the champion  at the Corporate Decathlon Badminton Competition. Congrats, Mary!  At the mention of Badminton I could see the gleam in Mary's eyes!  I was very glad to meet up with her again.  I first met up with her around August  2010 in London.  This time as I was in her 'home city', she was so kind to invite me and my family to her house for dinner, in fact, we had two dinners.

A picture for rememberance before we dig into the  FOOD .... Mary and her hubby Steven with my  family.

From the pictures that you're going to see below, you have to agree with me that Mary is certainly a superb cook and she cooked, baked all these single handedly.... really put me to shame as I know that I will never, ever be able to cook up such a scrumptuous spread, all by myself!  She didn't have much time to prepare this meal for us as she was only back in Aberdeen late the night before and I was certainly amazed at her speed in preparing so many dishes for us.  One most befitting word to describe Mary .'Superwoman'!

Ok, let me introduce you to the menu .... from left, mixed vegetables, then pancakes, cucumber and sauce to go with the Peking Chicken, the foil wrapped pulut panggang, (spicy, sambal glutinous rice roll), mixed seafood and her signature dish, pork belly stew.  Imagine having home made pulut panggang in Aberdeen!   We liked the pork belly stew, very tasty and the pork was tender.  The pulut panggang was absolutely marvellous and my children enjoyed it very much too.

Have you had this before?  Peking Chicken with pancakes and sauce, all homemade!  Absolutely delicious!  I wouldn't dream of making this dish.

See the dessert spread ...... fresh grapes and strawberries, red bean paste Mochi and yummy chocolate Brownies, homemade!  We ate our fill and Mary separately  packed the Brownies for us so that we can snack on them while travelling the next day..... so thoughtful of her!

This was the second dinner we had in Mary's house before we left for home the next day.  Vegetarian 'chai kuih' and Sweet & Sour Pork.

Salted vegetable with pork belly and Salmon in Tomato ketchup sauce.

Hot and Spicy chicken (finger licking good)  and Mixed vegetables.

Dessert ..... watermelon and sweet potato angku kuih.   The angku kuih was very, very soft and yummy! She packed some for us to take home for breakfast the next day.

Mary and her hubby, Steven are such accommodating hosts and we enjoyed their company very much.  We chatted as if we've known each other for umpteen years and my children felt very comfortable with them too.
No one will believe that we met on the internet and through blogging.  I've never regretted starting my blog for I've made many friends and learnt a lot from sharing with my blogger friends.

So much for now and if you'd like to see more pictures of Scotland, stay tuned!  Cheers :)