minylife.com

Author: jonnyashton@gmail.com

  • Weekend Roast Chicken Delivery in Dubai

    Following a mid morning meal with friends at an egg-cellent restaurant at The Beach, Jumeirah Beach Residence, we were suddenly struck by a mid afternoon hunger. Without wanting to leave our air-conditioning in the (must be somewhere around 50C) heat, we decided to try one of the many delivery options in our vicinity.

    For those of you that live outside the UAE, delivery of almost anything to your door is possible and increasingly with credit card payment, not just cash. Convenient but also dangerous.

    Foodonclick, 24h.ae, Zomato and our growing favourite Deliveroo (download the app and you’ll see why, merits a separate post about the channels at our disposal in fact) all compete for our attention. Today we ordered from Gallus via Deliveroo. Tomorrow we may take advantage of another provider’s discount deals.

    Regardless the half roast chicken was delicious. Still juicy and hot, MinyWife also ordered PiriPiri and Harissa sauces and a green salad. The cats and myself finished off the leftovers. Yum.

    I’m partial to Waitrose’s roast chicken and it definitely wins in the value department (18 to 48 AED) but there’s a lightly delightful herb mixture used at Gallus, plus the lazy/delivery factor, that will no doubt see more deliveroos to MinyHome in the near future.

  • A very feline obsession

    Unless you have cats of your own, it might be hard to understand the rationale behind owning one, let alone two. I sometimes ask myself what is it about sharing a living space with someone who only says hello when they want food and looks at you as though you’re “an imbecile, get out of my way” the rest of the time. 

    I sometimes think I’d rather have a dog. A simple animal that salivates all over me at the thought of chasing after a ball to bring it back to fetch again. Awesome! Then I realise I’m as cynical as Melchior and Gaspard, the feline residents of MinyHome.

    You’ve seen them all over Instagram and Facebook already, you may even have met them if you’ve ever been over to visit. But do we really know our cats? 

    Garfield was easily my favourite comic strip growing up, as he ran rings around his owner Jon and fellow “pet”, Odie, whilst going crazy for lasagne and despising anchovies. He reminded me of a cat version of Blackadder, surrounded by buffoons. I avoided anchovies for many years because of the ginger cat cartoon character, only to try them in my twenties and enjoy the taste almost as much as the look of disgust on the faces of onlookers. Never allowed a pet in the parental home, I’ve owned several since and not looked back.

    Melchior and Gaspard, names selected by MinyWife after the Three Wise Men from the nativity, her first and pre-Miny cat called Balthazar, are both rescue cats. Both from different broken homes (come by and we’ll tell you the story over a cuppa) and both with us nearly three years at the time of writing. Neither like to be cuddled, although after an hour of calm in the house Melchior might sit nearby. If he is in the mood. And after you’ve fed him. Gaspard is curious and superior. In his head at least. 

    Both are awesome, and worth occasional sneezing to have them in our lives. That’s right, to complicate things just a little bit more, we both have cat allergies. We also have a very feline obsession.

    Gaspard MinyLife
    Gaspard “Gingerpants”

    Melchior MinyLife
    Melchior “Catboy”

    Feline Obsession at MinyHome
    Yin and Yang

  • Tough days call for tasty noodles

    After a day spent waiting in government buildings to finalize essential admin, it was important to take advantage of our location and explore The Other Side Of Dubai, aka Deira. We aren’t very daring.

    But we had had a ramen recommendation and we weren’t let down. Hanabi at the Asiana Hotel has a broad ramen menu and will not disappoint. Even the prices, for Dubai, were reasonable too 🙂


    Full review to follow, possibly, once we have digested. Failing that, Miki has already left thoughts on Zomato and TripAdvisor.

  • Yoga with a stiff neck

    Bikram. Ashtanga. Hatha. Vinyasa. Yin. Iyengar. Even gong meditation. We love them all and at all times of day. Our weekends are devoted to a yogathon of sorts, normally spending at least half our weekend travelling to or from or actually “doing” yoga. But there comes a time when we need to take our foot off the gas a tad, and this is one of those weeks.

    5.30am Ashtanga classes are awesome, because it is almost a normal time to wake up. And by the time the class finishes at 7am the day is in full swing as you move from breakfast to shower to car to office without blinking. Except this week, our regular teacher has gone for a two week training session – I am loathe to call it a retreat, but I suppose it is – and the stand-in teacher, unlike the reserve teachers at primary school, is entirely competent. The issue is we aren’t.

    One of the appeals of Ashtanga is that it is a thorough workout, balanced with meditative sessions to open and close a class, but the main essence is to work your  core and whole body through a series of poses, postures and stances, body consistently shaking throughout. The only respite tends to be at the very end, when you hear what has quickly become my favourite yoga phrase: “shavasna“.

    The Corpse Pose is apparently difficult, but after over an hour of fairly intensive stretching, focused breathing and balancing against my body’s natural instincts, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to lay on your back and breathe. MAybe I am missing something.

    I digress. The new teacher normally takes the advanced classes and, being the teacher’s pets us MiNy’s might be known as, we pushed ourselves to the limit throughout and ended up with stiff necks the following day. Gutted. And the rest of the week has been spent recuperating and applying hot balm and getting Balinese massages. Not all bad, after all.