OK Diner - Lincolnshire

We were heading down to Essex for my husband's nephew's wedding. My husband was driving, all the way out and back, with me in a passenger seat and my mother-in-law Mary in the back. I could have driven, but only in Scotland.

To tell you the truth, I am not a good driver. My car is also smaller, A/C does not work and the boot does not open. If you want to put anything in the boot, you got to go through the backseats, stretching with full arms to almost climb over the backseat and drop things onto the boot space. That's not good, especially when you got full set of my husband kilt for wedding, my and Mary's outfits and our suitcases. My husband's car is bigger and manual so I can't drive him anyway, so just as well...

It is a long long drive to and from Essex, so we decided to break our journey by stopping at Scotch Corner on Thursday night, continuing on the rest of our journey on Friday, attend the wedding on Saturday and back to Scotland on Sunday.

After finishing work, I picked up Mary from her house to come back to our house. We fed Yuki the cat, who seemed to have sussed out that something was going on but with a look on her face to say as long as she gets fed by someone else she does not care. My daughter, Maria, was the feeder for the weekend. We then loaded our luggage and headed to the South.

We stopped at Gretna Green Service on A74M for a break and dinner.  We had gigantic fish and chips from Harry Ramsden. It was huge ....

We continued on our journey to our destination for the night. Soon after we left Gretna, we crossed over the border (?) to enter England.

We then drove through the Pennines - the backbone of England, to Scotch Corner.  I am used to seeing be-aware-of-deer-crossing-the-road sign but found it funny to see be-aware-of-army-tank-crossing-the-road sign. There was an army training centre.

I was wondering why the name Scotch Corner. Wikipedia informs me that basically it is the modern gateway to Cumbria, the North East and Scotland. Oh, is that all.... I then read on further. The Romans were responsible for building the first roads to meet at this point and in AD71, they took control of the North at the Battle of Scotch Corner. Interesting. The ordinary looking round-about in Scotch Corner does not look that boring any more ...

We arrived at a hotel just before mid-night, slept very well in a comfortable bed.

The next morning, we had a breakfast at a road-side restaurant, Little Chef.  I was now having a sense of road trip feel to this journey.  I got to order something that would be be-fitting to the road trip. I consulted the menu. I was tempted to have vegetarian breakfast but went for pancake. Yes, why not try something different. It was called Pancake Stack. My husband ordered the Olympic Breakfast (Vegetarian version) and Mary ordered bacon sandwich.

So here are what we had for breakfast ...

And my Pancake Stacks - three stacks of pancakes with a double filling of banana and sweet toffee sauce, dusted with icing sugar and served with a jug of maple flavour syrup.

Ok, it did not look exactly as how I had imagined but was tasty. Maybe too much toffee though. I could not finish all and just as well, especially we still got wedding to go to and I had to fit myself into a dress. 

We continued on our journey, driving on A1. I noticed that weather was looking much nicer and warmer as we headed south. I saw fields with lots of orange poppies.  

We kept driving and after one o'clock, it was lunch time again. Feels like eating all the time....

We need to find a place to eat, and to break our journey to stretch our legs.  There are not much service areas but we saw some smaller road-side cafes. Nothing however appealed to us. We even saw a road-side adult shop, rather random...

My husband put on a podcast called Serial (http://serialpodcast.org) by this American journalist on her quest on a Baltimore murder of a teenage girl and her ex-boyfriend who is serving jail term. Apparently it was released in October 2014 and ranked number one on iTunes for several weeks. Immediately I got fascinated by the story and its story telling.

Listening to the journalist's American accent all the way our journey, with weather being sunnier and warmer whilst being hungry and looking for somewhere to eat, I wished there were diners like the one in America.

Guess what. We suddenly saw a sign says 'American style diner'.  What, on A1??   It was getting even more like a road trip!

And there it was. A diner called OK Diner (http://www.okdiners.com) on A1 Southbound near Grantham.

We stepped inside. It was looking promising.  It did remind me of a diner we went somewhere in Nevada.  After listening to podcast and stepping into this place, with music from American Graffiti movie era in the background, even accents of diners speaking sounded American to my ears.

We ordered Diet Coke, bagel with tuna mayo and the OK Beanburger from the menu. 

You can get free refill....

I quite enjoyed our lunch. I thought the service was fast and good, toilet was spotless clean.  They do some deals such as Burger Bonanza every Wednesday and also Knockout Burgers for someone with bigger appetites.  If you are meat-eaters and love burgers, this place would be for you. 

It was a welcome change from uniform looking motorway services and Little Chefs or Road Chefs.
I wish I had tried their curly fries....

I was full yet thinking to my self that there are so many places to try and food to eat during this weekend, to which my husband states, as a matter of factly, First World Problem.

We continued on our journey further to the South East to Essex now.  He has a point, however that would defy the point of doing my blog. I then switched on podcast, back to listening to Serial. Before you know, I started thinking of what I would have for dinner once we got to Essex.... I also nearly forgot why we were actually heading to Essex to begin with. Yes, for a wedding and I have a dress to squeeze myself into for that ...

Our road trip continues.

That's all forks.

Emily's Wedding

Warning: This is another special blog about my daughter Emily's wedding so it is going to be very very very long and with lots of non-food pictures.... 

My husband says a blog should be short but I can't help it.  I just chronicle of Emily's wedding experience anyway as the way I like, hahaha and everyone else can see their official photos!

Well, one week has now passed since Emily and Craig's wedding. They are now on honeymoon to Dubai and then to Bali and my sister and her husband went back to Japan. No more weekends filled with wedding related activities, holiday is over and the rest of us are now back to work ...  everything has now more or less back to normal .... what do we do now....

It was a special wedding - it was also the union of not just two young people but also two different cultures, connecting with heritage of Japan and Scotland whilst Emily and Craig was surrounded by people who are very close to them and very important to them in their lives who were all united by this special occasions becoming an extended and global family - Craig's family, Emily's father's family, his partner's family, my family and my husband's family. And don't forget all those people who attended their wedding - many different nationalities coming from different parts of the world, as far away from India, Pakistan, and even from Japan and Australia!  And the wedding ceremony was held by a humanist and was inclusive of everyone, uniting all families, cultures, heritage which reflects modern and global society we now live within. What a special wedding, and well done to both Emily and Craig who have thought these all through and planned for the last two long yet also short years - everything came together very well!

This is a photograph of Craig when he was a cute little toddler. Who would have thought that after more than two decades later, he would get married to a girl with Japanese culture and heritage that would come to have so much influence over him ...

Craig, who loves Scottish Haggis (note: photo from http://www.scottishgourmetusa.com/product/Hamilton-highland-haggis-in-USA/haggis-for-sale-usa)

Pizza, especially from his local chippy Frank's pizza and Homer from Simpson ...

are now turning into a guy who has mastered the art of chopstick, eating Japanese bento box with ease,

December 2011 - the very first Japanese food Craig ate in Japan

then going to Japan with Emily to appreciate Japanese culture in Kyoto

Pausing in front of Golden Temple in Kyoto

... and doing what Japanese do in Japan - wearing "masuku (white mask)" in public when they caught cold

or pausing in front of camera with "V" sign.

Then Craig's job took him to many different places around the world - such as Norway, America, and then onto South Korea, China and Singapore where he surprised his local colleagues with his use of chopsticks. He even took some photographs of food he ate in Far East for me, contributing to my blogs as Craig's food adventures (see my previous blogs!).

Emily and Craig then went to New York for holiday in February 2013 where Craig proposed Emily, bought a house together in July 2013 when I also first tried take-away pizza from "famous?" Frank's in their back garden under the lovely Scottish sun ...

Frank's Pizza!!!

Thereafter, Emily and Craig, especially Emily had been busy preparing for their wedding.

We lost the count of number of wedding dress shops we went to where she tried many different dresses.... we went everywhere, and guess what?!  She found 'The Dress' in the wedding gown shop in a small town where we actually live which is only 5 minutes walk (well, probably by Maria on foot but I would say minimum 10 or 15 minutes walk by me as I don't do walking. I think 5 minutes just about right for me if by car, hahaha!).

It was actually 15th March 2014 when she found this gorgeous dress by Spanish designer - look at her face, she looked so happy and so excited!

We then went to local Italian for lunch and celebrated.

 

Emily also made Wedding invitations all by herself - all hand-made and designed by Emily

She also wanted to feature Japanese origami cranes as part of her wedding decorations on their wedding day and decided to fold 1,000 origami cranes.

Thousand Origami Cranes or Senbazuru in Japanese symbolises auspiciousness. You may think it's easy to fold 1,000 however it's not as easy as you think. So the next 12 months or so, leading up to their wedding, we were folding cranes. Especially, Emily and Craig, with help from Maria and occasionally me, were folding cranes in the evening after work or whilst watching TV to meet the target of 1,000.

These cranes were to used to decorate wedding ceremony, centre pieces on tables or to incorporate into flowers ....

 

My sister, Mariko, and her husband Kenji, who came to Scotland to attend their wedding were also 'enlisted' to finish off outstanding 16 cranes to make up 1,000 cranes 2 days before the wedding, ha ha ha!

Even Emily and Craig's cat Bailey was also deployed into this mission!

I should also mention that Craig's friend Fraser who stayed with groom a night before the wedding also contributed folding cranes for their wedding...

Craig was also helping Emily with creating centre pieces for wedding dinner tables ...

Can you see origami cranes incorporated into decorations?

All preparations were done and the big day came on Saturday, 2nd May 2015.

It was a beautiful and calm morning ....

View from our hotel room at Airth Castle where the wedding took place ...

Everyone was up, starting to get ready from 9am - Emily, the Bride, Maria and Gillian, the Bridesmaids were getting make-up and hair done by professionals.

I got my breakfast delivered to our room so that I could eat whilst getting ready by myself before I went up to Emily's room to get my hair done and touched up my make-up...

We knew that we would not be able to eat till late afternoon so someone ordered toasties with chips around late morning.  By then I became nervous and could not eat....

There were lovely strawberries and pink champaign for everyone to relax ...

There were lots of hilarity and excitement going on in the room...

Maria helping Emily's dress ....

Gillian's Craig's sister helping Emily with her beautiful veil -
which is a wedding present from Emily's Japanese grandparents who were unable to come from Japan

Something blue - pretty Tiffany's bracelet... 

and final touch ....

Even Gillian's baby daughter Sophia has her own pretty dress for the special day!

At this point, Emily's father Frank came to the room to congratulate her and to get ready to escort her to the ceremony .... girls got emotional and tried not to cry ....

Flowers were also delivered ....

Emily's bouquet ...

This one is for bridesmaids - can you see tiny origami cranes incorporated?

and for wearing on our wrists - mother of the bride and groom, and also for Mariko... with tiny cute origami cranes ...

Guys also got flowers with origami cranes to go with their kilts ....

Wedding went beautifully well. Emily looked absolutely beautiful, her dress was beautiful, decorations featuring origami cranes were beautiful. One thousands origami cranes, each hand-made by everyone with love, dedication and good wishes, all married into their wedding ceremony - what a lovely idea!  I could not stop crying with happiness for both - my waterproof mascara did not work and I had some panda eyes but who cares!

After the wedding, Craig had a surprise, especially to his 'Japanese' family.  A week before the wedding, he asked me to translate his special message to my sister Mariko and her husband Kenji into Japanese so that he could read it out as part of his groom's speech. He then practiced every single day and delivered it perfectly on the day, which impressed them so much they were in tears....

For those who were at the wedding but did not understand what he said in Japanese, here is his original message in English...

Mariko and Kenji, thank you so much for being here on our special day, it means so much to both of us that you were able to make the trip.

I have only been to Japan once, but you made me feel like part of your family and for that I thank you. To me you have been family for years, and I hope you are both as happy and excited as I am that it is now official. 

Once I am fluent in Japanese we can Facetime more often! I hope you both have a great day and enjoy the rest of your stay in Scotland.

Thank you again, Kanpai!

There was also special Scottish ceremony of Address to Haggis. Unfortunately I did not take photos so no footage or photo of haggis from this.  Just as well I was sitting at the top table otherwise I would have had to translate what was said to Mariko and Kenji with great difficulty and I would not be able to translate Auld Scots at all.... phew...

And the speech was done and everyone could relax and eat ....

Tables were decorated beautifully, again featuring origami cranes ....

Do you see origami crane drawings on the card?

Mariko showing my mother-in-law Mary how to use chopsticks!

And the four course meal started with haggis with turnip and potato with whisky sauce - mine was vegetarian haggis which was really delicious!

The next was leek and potato soup ...

For main courses were chicken with champaign sauce (I think...?) but as I don't eat meat, my husband and I had pan fried sea bass fillet, saffron and lemon crushed potatoes and sorrel sauce.  (I forgot to keep a copy of the menu on the table, sorry ....)

Chicken 

Sea bass 

And the trio of delicious desserts including jammie dodger biscuit ice cream!

Dinner was over, every one relaxed ... and happy couple, Mr & Mrs Sweeny!

And, everyone danced the night away afterwards, enjoying themselves ...

It was a lovely day.  It was a lovely wedding. It was also the day William and Kate's baby girl Charlotte was born.  What an auspicious and happy day too!

Later on, Emily gave me a little letter ...

Inside was a message from Emily to me .... awwwww,  please, someone brings me a tissue, quick!!!

So, their wedding is now over....  I know this blog is far far too long but it was such a special event for all of us that I had to chronicle as I see it to 'immortalise' their wedding experience which would not go into their official wedding photo album.

Emily and Craig are such a lovely couple. Just look at how they have worked together to prepare their wedding, folding so many cranes .... it's a dedication to each other, that's for sure.

I wish them lots of lots of happiness and love and to support each other and be best friends forever...

That's all forks!