Tag: reviews

Yelly Writes

Confessions of a serial rewatcher

Yelly
photo by @yellywelly

Okay, I’ve been indulging in comfort TV binge-watching. I have several favourite series(eseseses – yes yes, I know that series in plural form is still series!) that I watch on repeat: The Good Witch, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias, Sullivan’s Crossing and Chesapeake Shores.

I’m currently binge-re-watching Chesapeake Shores and I’ve just realised that my series favourites have a lot of actors in common! And because I like Virgin River, and they’re apparently filming Season 8 (yaaaaa!), the characters are fresh in my mind. Every time a familiar face appears on TV I just shout out their TV character name.

  • Muriel (played by Teryl Rothery) has appeared on Chesapeake Shores as Robin O’Brien, The Good Witch as Meredith Mitchell.
  • Lydie (played by Christina Jastrzembska) appeared on Chesapeake Shores episodes. Interestingly enough, she appeared as Bella’s grandmother in New Moon!
  • Lilly (played by Lynda Boyd) appeared on Sullivan’s Crossing as Phoebe, Maggie’s mother.
    Charmaine (played by Lauren Hammersley) appeared on Sullivan’s Crossing as Connie Boyd.
  • Abby (played by Meghan Ory) appeared on Sullivan’s Crossing as Sedona.

All this to say that yes, I do watch the same shows over and over again. I’ve read that it’s a well-known fact that people who watch the same shows just want to avoid making decisions, and that rewatching the familiar is comfort-seeking, trying to regulate their emotions. The decision avoidance is a sign of decision fatigue, which is often a warning sign of burnout. It can also be a subconscious desire to reconnect with a past self to experience a version of yourself that you actually liked (I think this is true for me!).

I do love rewatching the TV shows because sometimes there are details you missed and you go “ooooooh so that’s why!

Do you know of any actor crossovers? What are your favourite TV binges?

Okay. I know this post is random. Go back to your regular programming!

Yelly Eats

Food tripping in Colchester

Yelly

Food tripping in Colchester today.

We went to try a relatively new Taiwanese food street place named Honey Bear (cutesy, I know! But you’ve gotta love a bit of kitsch, eh?). I had I had a taro milk tea with black pearls (black sago) and egg pudding. Alan had the fresh milk oolong tea, which was okay, but it was certainly very milky.

For lunch I had a I had a traditional Taiwanese breaded and deep fried fillet of chicken beaten until it’s thin and about twice its size. It comes as a “bento” – and I use the quotation marks because, strictly speaking, a bento meal is Japanese. My deep fried chicken was served with fragrant rice, curry sauce, spring rolls, pickled veg and a fried egg. Alan chose a dish from the chef’s recommendations board which was beef brisket served with steamed rice and a lot of carrots!

There was a lot of food and I must admit it was better value than I expected. I couldn’t finish the rice! I did love the pickled vegetables and wished there was more than what was served in the bento.

The taro milk bubble tea was okay, if a little too milky, but the egg custard pudding in my taro milk tea tasted the way I remembered it from bubble tea drinks in the Philippines. I could probably eat a whole glass of just the pudding completely on its own quite happily!

Whilst it’s good to know that there is a “specialist” bubble tea place accessible in Colchester, to be quite honest, I might be happier waiting for my next trip to Chinatown in London to get my bubble tea fix! 🤭🤔

Yelly Eats

The (Chicken) Bucket List!

Yelly

Chicken is probably my favourite meat.  I mean, truth, currently have a lot of pork in my freezer at the moment (I once had a 2kg pork shoulder joint hiding in the bowels of my tiny freezer) but my meat of choice is chicken.  It’s so versatile and is probably the healthier option (granted, fish is probably the healthiest option but if you want a perfect middle ground, trust me, poultry is king!) than pork or beef.  I’ll take chicken any which way.  I love it baked, broiled, stewed, poached, steamed, roasted, barbecued…I could go on.  I’d probably eat chicken however way it’s prepared. I may have already done so.

My all-time favourite chicken dish, however, is Southern fried chicken.  I loved it so much that every time I hear of a chicken place that claims to serve “proper” Southern fried chicken, I ask Alan if we can go and try it out.  Thankfully, Alan is almost always too happy to indulge this particular obsession.

I’m truly grateful that Alan shares my passion for finding the perfect fried chicken (Southern).  We scour – well, okay, scour is probably too strong a word – we peruse social media, read through the food section of newspapers and magazines to read about these chicken-serving places and make mental notes of the places that we want to visit.  We’ve discussed chicken places to death so it dawned on me that the next step in this fried chicken journey was to put together a list of chicken-serving places that we wanted to try.  So we’ve written up a rough list of the places we’ve either tried or want to try.  The qualifying characteristic?  They claim to serve some sort of fried chicken.

And so…presenting our chicken bucket list!

1.    Roost
2.    Spit and Roast
3.    Mother Clucker
4.    Bird
5.    Clock Jack
6.    Wishbone
7.    Red Dog
8.    Jubo
9.    On The Bab
10.    Stax
11.    Ruby Jean’s Diner
12.    Joe’s Southern Kitchen and Bar
13.    Chooks
14.    Meat Liquor
15.    Rita’s Bar and Dining
16.    Eat 17
17.    Jackson and Rye
18.    Clutch

So watch this space as I write through the (chicken) bucket list!