Sugarless

It was mother's day back a few weeks ago, and my mum was happily overseas, ditching us kids at home to fend for themselves. Which was fine because they hardly ever go on holidays, so it was really good that she took two weeks off to visit China. She came back on a Saturday and since I was out that day, I managed to get her a belated Mother's Day cake.

From 117___05

This was the maccha red bean cake from 85degrees.

Selfish Pot

Winter is coming.

Which can only mean one thing! Hot pot! Nabe! Shabu shabu! When my parents were still away, I had my own hotpot dinner for two nights in a row. It really only required one tray of pork, one tray of beef, plus a packet of mixed balls (like lobster balls, fish balls, and others), and 3 bunches of bak choi.

From 117___05

And you get this! We don't actually have the gas stoves for hot pot, but we have a big electric one... which I wouldn't dig out for an individual serving, so I just took a small metal pot, dragged a tall chair to the stove, sat there and dug in.

Filler Episode

Sorry, filler entry today! No time to type a proper entry, so you gotta be pacified with the fattest Jack Russell terrier.

From 117___05

He doesn't like photos obviously, because he's shy. Or just doesn't like Stanley very much. I love how one ear is always bent though! 

No Sushi for you!

I realise that my blogging days have to be either Wed-Fri, or never. So if I schedule enough blog entries to last me through Saturday-Tuesday, I'll be fine... don't have to worry during work. Unfortunately, this streak of entries will draw to an end pretty soon before I accumulate enough material for another month's worth of daily updates. It's been fun =)

From 117___05

This is a revisitation of Cafe Ish, one of my favourite cafe of all times. Located at Surry Hills, it's actually not a far walk from China Town. Cafe Ish is a fusion of Australian and Japanese cuisine, so you see ingredients like kangaroo and crocodile, as well as soft shell crab... some served with rice and miso soup. I have ranted about their wattle maccacino... I don't know what a maccacino is in coffee term, but it's pretty much like a cap. Presentation NEVER fails with their wattle maccacino at Cafe Ish. Yes, I've learnt to appreciate latte art... this rosette is so hard to do...

Instant, but not quite!

Recently read an article on how to brew iced coffee the way the Japanese brew theirs in Japan. There is a difference in taste and texture, and it seems the secret was to drip the coffee directly into a cup of ice, thereby cooling the temperature down immediately, instead of first dripping the coffee and then shaking it with ice.

The Korean family I used to work for at the restaurant where I was waitressing at used to make really good iced coffee and I'll be helping myself to it. I never discovered their secret... when I asked, she just pointed to the nescafe blend 43 cannister and told me to add hot water, a little sugar and then ice. Haha. I tried and couldn't make it quite the same way... for some reason.

From 117___05

I don't have a drip coffee machine. This is the closest thing I guess, it's like a filter inside with coffee grinds that, when you -slowly- pour hot water through, will brew the coffee. It's like instant, but not so instant! I saw it from BW's site, "apparently" you can only get it from Taiwan's costco and does not exist in the Korean supermarkets at Strathfield, cos, you know, that's where I found it =P

Clash of the katana and wakizashi

It's been a while since I had dinner outside. Maybe it wasn't that long ago, I don't remember, but dinner usually means missing my last bus back from city, which is at 7:30, and it means taking a train back to Pennant Hills station and then catching a bus... such a hassle just to stay out late.

From 117___05

But during one Saturday when my parents were away at Beijing, I had to drive myself to work at 6:30am, so decided that dinner will be nice, since I can just train to Penno and drive home without waiting possibly half an hour at the station for the bus home.

EntertainMe(nt)

Short one! Guess what came?~

From 117___05

I've been getting my yearly entertainment book from "Gift of Time", and this year, Sandra, who sold it to me the first time, actually initiated an email to me asking if I'd like to purchase it this year too. Why not? :D It's for charity!

From 117___05

So we organised via emails and, like last year, I picked it up from Pennant Hills Station. It's actually pretty common in Hong Kong for people to buy things online and organise a pick up at a particular station, so you can see lots of people standing around stations, holding on to packages and waiting. Not so common here, but it was interesting that the station master didn't mind at all. He did jokingly ask for a handling fee, but otherwise, I safely got my hands on the new entertainment book. So far, I notice it's thicker than last year's, but!! My mum's favourite pie face vouchers are missing =( sorry mum. Otherwise, it's time to share around and organise catchups to use it up! :D 

Fur or Foe?

My parents are back already, but when they weren't here, I did actually attempt to cook... and it lasted for a couple of days, so it was quite worth it.

Prior to this, BT invited me over to her fiance's place for a briefing on her wedding plans thus far, and he made pho for us. I must say, it felt rather strange because it's not often that a friend will be so good as to cook food for guests... most catch ups tend to happen outside and over restaurant/cafe food. That was the inspiration to make my very own pho.

From 117___05

Burgers and apples

Remember how a while back, there was a post about JC and how I haven't met up with her for a while for a catch up, and that I should call her? Then a day later, she actually DID message me and we organised a catch up the following week? It's great timing and an absolute coincidence that her boss was leaving for a week, which means she can take a 2.5 hour lunch break :D

From 117___05

And this time, I actually remember where the cake and apple juice comes from.

Potions and Tonics

Need to keep calm.

From 117___05

I really suck at games. It's all good if I'm just grinding and all, but if I die, and I keep dying, I get completely demotivated to keep going. Tea is definitely good for calming down.

Phat.

It's inevitable that Tuesday is going to be an unhealthy day for me. Ever since I started work at Thornleigh, it's just been breakfast-maccas, lunch-maccas, dinner... hm... differs between pizza hut and something else that is just as unhealthy.

From 117___05

Once though, when I ordered my usual breakfast of sausage and egg McMuffin meal with black tea (sometimes I'll order an extra hash brown, but who can blame me right?) the guy goes "would you like some cookies too? They're only a dollar".

Pro-ti-fe-roles?

Time to be more positive! I just finished a 10+ hour shift and my brain is pretty much not working anymore, and when you're too tired, too drain to think too much, life is much much simpler. It's all about food and warmth and sleep at the moment for me. I've done all my housework yesterday, so today I get to sit back and relax after having a hotpot dinner, made by self and for self only- individual serving! More on that next time, but anyway, parents are coming back after two weeks of absence tomorrow (and probably a couple of days before this entry gets published), so yay, no more housework! It would actually be a lot easier if I was only doing my own part of housework... ironing my brother's long sleeved button up shirts is my nemesis when it comes to housework. In the future I'm going to only buy shirts made with materials that don't require ironing.

From 117___05

Anyhow, before my parents left and when I was still sick at home (yay for day off), they decided to take me to Seven Hills Star Buffet for lunch. Just because we haven't had a daughter-parents meal for quite a long time.

Warning: Absconding Emo

I told myself that I'll stop skipping photos and pushing them till they are so old that I won't bother to ever dig them out to write an entry about. I haven't been taking many photos recently. Sometimes I find myself asking... why do I take photos? What happens to photos when I take them and then don't blog about them? They'll probably never be looked at more than twice, and put away into a hard disk upon backup... and truth be told, I haven't actually been bored enough to look through my backups from last year, or the year before, or the years before.

From 117___05

Blogging means having them readily available to jolt my memory that I've been to this place, eaten this, experienced this, had a special occasion which went like this... but then again, I don't go into the history of my blog much, and have thought more than once of just closing this thing down and be done with it.

Be Puzzled...

Now that I've started scheduling posts, I realised how much I jump around, blogging things that interest me more before others, other times just wishing to forget certain events *ahem Kuai Zi* and then not blogging about it full stop. Other times, it takes motivation to dig up all these old photos and put them into a proper entry. Scheduling posts and releasing one everyday acts like a sort of motivation... just to see how long I can keep up this daily thing. It's been about two weeks already... I astound myself sometimes. Haha. 

Just a short one today, and nothing about food! D:

From 116___04

This is a puzzle that I bought my mum back a few months ago off ebay. She's been into jigsaw puzzles recently and it's definitely a good thing to encourage. Stimulating the brain by doing jigsaw puzzles, crosswords and sudoku etc helps delay the onset of disorders like dementia and Parkinson's. It's true: you don't use it, you lose it. Applies to lots of things.

Chocolate Love

So while we're on the topic of sweet things, there's this chocolate place that I heard about for quite some time now but never really got a chance to visit because I thought it only existed in Top Ryde shopping centre. Don't go there very often at all, and last time I was there, I went to TomnTom's instead... haha. That was also where my new founded love for TomnToms came about.

From 115___03

This is the place! Oliver Brown. To me, chocolate places are springing up like daisies, just like how cupcake places sprung up all of a sudden, and krispy kremes... so now there's Max Brenner, there's San Churros, Chocolate Room, and now, Oliver Brown.

Cream+Chocolate

My brother doesn't usually give me things, so when Easter came and he passed me this:

From 115___03

It was like, wuah, what happened? What's the occasion.. What do you want from me?! But then I did give him a Malteaster Bunny before that, so... hm.. exchange? :D Haha. I know, Easter's long gone... but on this blog, time does not matter... it's all the same. Blog entries continue coming at 1212... for now.

Duck is (always) good

Perhaps this blog will be seeing more entries about those Groupon and SocialDeals etc type of dining experience. Even though I remain pessimistic about them, on the exception of Kobe Jones... I guess one thing I discovered was the power of user reviews, such as those on eatability.com (where I have taken to reviewing restaurants as well, just contributing back where I take from), and quite a few coupon holders will give very honest reviews about the restaurants.

From 116___04

So BT is getting married next year and she was hunting for Chinese restaurants to hold her wedding dinner. It'll be a huge event, with about 300 guests or so, meaning more than 12+ tables. She was considering Zilver and Sky Phoenix. It was scary because she was swaying towards Zilver for a bit... but she's finally decided to go with Sky Phoenix at Pitt Street. Good thing too, because a wedding banquet review popped up on eatability for Zilver, and it sounded like a horrifying experience with tears and headache, broken cake and memorabilia, dirty pathways and small change room, vegetarian guests not attended to...

Graduation Dinner(s)

From 116___04

So the night before my graduation, my parents went to the fish market and bought some seafood back for dinner. This has become our tradition now actually, any special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, we don't go out to some Chinese restaurant anymore. Instead, my parents will head to the fish markets, get fresh seafood and cook a wonderful dinner. It works out to be a lot cheaper, tastier and much much more comfortable at home!

Cruising past...

One of the rare high school meet ups which I attended was at Cruise Bar. Rare because even though it does get organised from time to time, I always find myself double booked on those events, most memorable being the day when I met Nobuo Uematsu. That day coincided with a high school meet up.... and the other being during the kpop concert. Much as I love my high school friends, I couldn't reject the opportunity to meet THE composer of all times, nor could I rip up that $90 ticket which my brother bought me for the kpop concert.

So this time, we all got dressed up and headed to Cruise Bar.

From 116___04

The lighting has been adjusted for these photos, but because of that, it's all grainy. Bad lighting. You know how restaurants love to dim down the lights just for that romantic feel? It's actually also known to reduce appetite, so all maccas are brightly lit up. This was their seared beef salad: snow pea leaves, cherry tomatos, cucumber, toasted sesame and ponzu sauce. I love ponzu sauce salads. If there's anything to make me eat healthy, it's ponzu sauce.

Guilty Fast Food Day

Just had the most unhealthy day ever of junk food. This is what happens when no one bothers to cook and I get the car. It's only... day 4 and I've already resorted to instant and junk food... Tuesdays have always been particularly trying because it's the second of my two looooong days of therapy work, AND it's at Thornleigh, where there's a maccas right next door, a pizza hut and domino's close by, among other restaurants that are perhaps healthier but fancier, like Istana, Lee Central... Subway... which is only the former... but I don't trust Subways very much. I remember back a couple of years ago, I just finished donating blood at Red Cross and I was heading straight to work afterwards. Grabbed a Subway. That subway nearly killed me, I don't know what was in there but I had some sort of food poisoning from it.

Ever since then, been kinda weary about going to Subway.

From 115___03

Anyway, after a day of maccas and pizza hut, to balance things out a bit, I'm blogging healthy.

Five-grain rice: brown rice, black bean, pearl barley, oat, hulled millet, raw buckwheat, soybean, eyebrow bean and chick pea.

Round pizza is Round

Short one today! Just came back from work and feeling quite bright and awake after drinking more long blacks at work. Technically not a real long black because it's really just granules of instant coffee and hot water... really getting used to it.

From rhizome

Feeling so much like a chocolate pizza though. This was from ages ago when I had a small catch up night with JY at Castle Tower's Max Brenner.

Black is cool

From 117___05

For those with hay fever or the general flu/cold, nasal congestion and cough is a sure symptom. I used to always think that dairy will increase the production of phlegm or sputum, but apparently, all it does is thicken it.

Getting a little too gross?

Dream a little Dream~

It's still coming, these blog entries that appear at 1212, though I'm fast running out of material... almost all backdated stuff have been cleared! And being super busy recently, I haven't really done anything special, shall revert back to those small entries with one photo soon.

From 117___05

So during one of my sick days, I went to Bunnings and got two 50L containers, and two smaller ones, with the intent to tidy up my clothes cupboard. For years, my clothes cupboard have housed winter and summer clothes, and when it's winter, the summer clothes go to the space at the top, the winter to hang at the bottom. I haven't done that this year yet and I dreamt that I was tidying my cupboard that night. Funny, I listen to my dreams a lot. Last time, I dreamt BT and I went skydiving with some other friends, so I sent her an email the next day. Am not a superstitious person, but dreams have always been weird to me. It's... some sort of subconsciousness... and it's helped me out a few times, like not forgetting to bring assignments to school or something, haha.

Rise Restaurant is back?

How weird. I posted about JC yesterday and how it's time to set up another date, but being the lazy me, I didn't actually contact her. AND since that post is scheduled to come out in two days, she wouldn't have seen it yet... but today, I received a chat message from her asking if we'd have lunch next week.

It's bizarre! We haven't talked to each other since 3 months ago! I was talking to this French woman a week back. She's really into meditations and using music to speak to planets and communicate with souls... I absolutely adore her French accent, it's enough music for my ears just listening to her speak, BUT I digress. She was talking about how everything consists of particles vibrating, and how our conscious thoughts have a frequency. I'm not going to go into all the psychosomatic, energosomatic and mentalsomatic methods of healing (I don't even know what they are!) Basically, she was telling me that events that appear coincidental (like when I'm thinking of someone and they suddenly call, or when I really want ice cream and an ice cream truck pulls over), are really due to thought frequencies matching...

It's hard to pay attention when I was really more drawn to her French accent.

From Rise

Enough weirdness. This was from agggges ago at Rise Restaurant. I went to Rise a few years ago with SM, FL and tt, when it was still under the management of Hideki Okazaki, who owned the restaurant back then and was also head chef.

Somewhere in Wynyard...

I haven't actually been going out to eat all that often. Even if I do, it's no where special or new. Probably by now, you'd have realised that the past few entries were scheduled and probably backdated to months ago. Written when I had the time to write, ie when I was sick. I'm writing in the past tense because I'm hoping by the time this one comes out, I'll be all well and playing badminton again, because really at the moment, I'm feeling anything but well. It feels weird to write for the future...

While this is still going to be very much a food post, I have absolutely no recollection of where I actually went, nor the restaurant/cafe's name. It was all very long ago when I had a catch up with dear JC, one of my only university friends from my undergrad. We're due for another catch up soon, I think.

From 114___02

Good deal of Teppanyaki

So after that terrible fiasco on the part of Kuai Zi last time, let's have a good post shall we. My brother bought this Spreets/Groupon deal for Kobe Jones, I think he bought a 6 course meal initially and only bought one. When he realised it wasn't for two, we were at a bit of a conundrum because who wants to go to Kobe Jones Teppanyaki by themselves, right? The deal came again shortly afterwards, but for the 12 course meal, which he got too, so we could go together. Yay.

When he rang up to reserve a spot, the kind lady said they will upgrade the other guest to the 12 course meal without additional cost =D This, my friends, is what good service sounds like.

From 114___02

Cocktail to begin, and sake was part of the voucher. Here is one place that does not discriminate voucher holders from non-voucher holders. So far? The only place that doesn't actually.

Wagamama has a FRIEND

Even longer ago, back at the start of the month, my brother and I went for one of those Groupon deals. It's festering across the world, these online deals for restaurants and services like massages, or even a getaway to Thailand, or laser treatments, or teeth whitening...

From KuaiZi

One starts to see a terrible trend happening, with bad restaurants proposing deals and putting up photos of food that looks much nicer than what they really are online, cutting the price ridiculously by 50% or more, and then providing terrible service for these "coupon holders" when they claim their vouchers. Then, for this really bad service and food, one can only think: well, I saved myself $xx, really can't expect it to be anything really good." Or perhaps when something doesn't go according to what you expected and you complain, the staff will simply shrug his shoulder and say "the coupon doesn't specify that you'd get what you described". The savings, however, are so tempting because they make it seem so big, that food adventurers cannot help but fall for the same old tricks, time and again, hoping against hope that this time, maybe this time, the deal will genuinely be a good one. Think of the savings! The new food place that you might gossip to your friends next time!

From KuaiZi

On the other hand though, think of the savings you make if you DIDN'T buy the deal in the first place, and think of how you wouldn't be disappointed. I've been skeptical about these deals online and haven't bought myself one till two nights ago, urged by my brother. Haven't gone for it yet, but hopefully it'll be good because online reviews dictate so. Haha, who am I kidding, I hold on to no expectations when it comes to deals online, however, he's been treating me to quite a few meals, and so far, only one is worth mentioning and worth its value at all, and that is Kobe Jones. Thought I'd return the favor and treat him sometime. This entry, however, is dedicated to Kuai Zi, a place which I hope closes down as soon as possible.

Tea gets Cold in Winter

Back entries from last month! Or was it longer than that... I have quite a few subscribed blogs and pages on my google reader (which was actually introduced to me by pottie. Saves so much time from manually going into each site and checking for an update, which is so old-school now that there's all the rss and reader), but no one seems to be updating nearly frequently enough. So while I have spare time on my hands from being sick, I shall diligently blog. If I can't read other people's blog, I shall have to create my own reading materials.

From 116___04

So back a few weeks ago, my high school friends decided to meet up at the Rocks for a spot of tea.

Mountain bread? Fuji-pan!

So while I'm sick and resting at home, the feeling of being at home when I should be at work definitely feels weird. I haven't stayed home for a full day in a very long time... spent the morning visiting a doctor to get mc, and then back home drinking soup and catching up on tv shows. Can't say I didn't bring this upon myself though, I overestimated myself, thinking that since I've been doing sports regularly, my immunity will be impenetrable and I will not get sick this year. At the onset of it, I still went to work, still went out to meet my friends, brother and tt for meals. Now it's worse than ever, but hey, at least I'm all up to date with my shows with enough time spared to blog.

From 117___05

Fuji-pan is a Japanese bakery located at 605 George St, Sydney CBD. Apparently it's owned by the same people who opened Fujiya, a Japanese restaurant close by.

That Time of the Year

Ohh.. scary. Blogger's changed its layout completely! I'll figure out what else's changed tomorrow. If I get out of bed.

From 117___05

Yep. Am down. The fact that I'm blogging this instead of at badminton says alot. And the fact that I don't actually feel tempted by KFC when I walk past it, with the smell of fried chicken wafting all around me. And that I actually ATE pieces of fresh grated ginger in my disgusting lemon ginger and honey tea... something's wrong.

Sick leave tomorrow! =( Calling them early in the morning. Bet they'll still hate me.