Attempted to bake some Hong Kong style portuguese egg tarts a few days back. Followed a YouTube video and it came out decently well. So proud of myself :> Look at the flaky crust, I'm glad it turned out fine! My parents love it and I'm happy too. :D I only can do this when I am very free because it takes like 2h+ to bake everything!

Had a foodie trip on Thursday. Visited a total of 3 places just to EAT. So it was eating and eating the whole day, what's new? Can someone ask me out to do something else other than eating? Like cycling, visiting a zoo, shopping or something.

First stop: Table Manners @ Changi City Point.
I always wanted to go to this place after reading some blogs! Personally I was very interested in the lunch menu rather than dinner. For lunch, you can actually mix and match your food and this option is not available for dinner. For example, 2 greens + 1 meat or 1 green + 2 meat. I like to customize my food so I can pick everything I feel like eating. Quite a wide variety to choose from! I had 2 greens which are aglio olio and pumpkin salad with a meat which is salmon with garlic butter sauce, $13.50 before tax. I feel that is quite affordable and the portion was just right. I would want to go back again to try other dishes!

Second stop: Chye Seng Huat Hardware
Heard so much about this place so finally it's my turn to try! They are supposed to be good for coffee but I'm currently abstaining from caffeine so I got hot chocolate ($6.50) instead. Omg it's so freaking expensive but I still got it anyway because there wasn't much alternatives. The hot chocolate was average, I wouldn't pay $6.50 for it again. Bought a cranberry pistachio tea cake ($3) to go along with my drink. The cake was not bad and I like the banana cake too but didn't take a picture of it. We were supposed to chill over books that we brought but we ended up chatting the afternoon away.

Third stop: Swee Choon Dim Sum
It was my first time visiting swee choon because nobody ever jio-ed me there for dinner/supper. Sigh. Anyway I finally got to try it! I didn't know they have an air-conditioned area, all along I thought it's like a coffeeshop. HAHA okay I super suaku. Ordered only a few dishes like har gao, siew mai, xiao long bao and liu sha bao! All were very yummy! Definitely going back again, probably will ask my family along so I can get a free car ride. It's so inaccessible!

Sweet Temptations

Some bakes over the past 2 weeks!

Cinnamon raisin bun by G

Chocolate brownie

Donuts made by my Korean friend :D

Banana coffee cake with chocolate chip streusel

This is damnnn good, for people who bake, you got to try this!

Click here for the recipe!

Whoopie pie. 

In case you didn't know, its marshmallow cream in between!

Yoghurt cake, peach cheese cake with jelly by G

My proudest bake! Cinnamon raisin bread! Oh my, I MADE BREAD. 

My friends said it was good, made me so happy!

I just feel super accomplished. 

Click here for the recipe!

Chocolate pound cake by G

So as you can tell, G and me are the ones baking! It's like a leisure activity for us. I really love to bake! I think it's more fun than cooking! Or maybe because I already ran out of ideas on what to cook. Baking seems so much easier since the ingredients are usually about the same yet you can make a variety of them. I wonder if I will still have the excitement to bake when I go back. I think of my kitchen at home I am quite sian to bake already, the one in my current apartment is so nice and pretty spacious to work with!

Lots of Macs and Starbucks the whole week because I have been doing work outside! I'm too nua when I'm at home :/

Baked raspberry oatmeal bars because there was too much jam and I had to clear them. Baked oatmeal raisin cookies too (3rd time!) Have been practising to find the perfect way to bake it! Going to give some to our landlord this Friday because he invited us over to his place for a meal so must have some standard!

Cooked up a feast with chicken drumlets, curry, egg with onion, broccoli with mushroom and belachan brinjal! It's been super long since we cooked a proper meal. School work has drained us out and we have no time to cook at all.

Went to city market again to have my favourite spicy pork with vermicelli at the Korean stall. SO GOOD SO AWESOME. Tried this chow mein with chocolate chip, peanut butter, butterscotch and peanuts we spotted while walking. Though it sounds weird, like who on earth eats chow mein as a dessert, IT WAS SURPRISINGLY GOOD! It's like rice krispies, but with chow mein instead. Oh well, chocolate never fails!

Just went through the worst hell week ever. I thought it was bad enough when I had 3 midterms in 3 days. But I had 3 presentations in 3 days this time which was much much worse. Slept for an average of 4 to 5 hours everyday. I even slept on the sofa twice because I wanted to wake up to continue my work without disturbing TY with my alarm. (The sofa was really comfy btw) So I have cleared all 3 presentations and they went well. Quite relieved for one of them because we were SUPER UNPREPARED, like 10 minutes before the presentation I was still editing my slides, trying to come up with what to say. And that class is a pretty smart class, I was worried that we would challenged by questions and we will really die because we didn't even prepare much in the first place. Thank God we managed to answer the questions and we managed to smoke our way through! (Y)

But no it's not over yet, I have 4 assignments to hand up next week. And my final exams start next Saturday. WTH. I have 2 papers on Sat by the way. This is madness. Too busy to notice that time is slipping by so quickly. 3 weeks left in Saint John :O I'm not ready to go home yet!!

SO FREAKING HAPPY MY F21 PARCEL ARRIVED YESTERDAY :D Out of the 4 pieces, actually only 1 piece fitted nicely. And that was actually the piece I was worried it would be too small. The rest were all quite big :O I think I'm bringing home to get a tailor to alter for me :O Too inexperienced with online shopping. Note to self: Get XS clothes from Canada F21.

C made fried carrot cake today! DAMN PRO. It was made from scratch from shredding the radish! Super high level, it was a little too spicy for me but I still enjoyed it.

And there is also the dessert version of carrot cake made by G! This was super good too! I had like 4-5 slices in total! :/ Oh my, how to not get fat you tell me. Too hard to resist!

I am so happy and relieved today! Cleared both my midterms today and that marks the end of all my midterms (had 7 in total!) It has been a hell week rushing assignments and mugging for midterms I AM SO GLAD ITS OVER FYEAH. It was a horrible week because I (finally) fell ill 1 week ago. The last time that I can remember falling sick was year 1 sem 1. That's like 2 years ago. My immunity system totally rocks. So anyway I had a 1x good one with fever, sore throat, runny nose and cough. Being the typical me, obviously I didn't say a thing about it (yeah, forever want to act strong) G noticed my voice changed and ask if I caught a flu, I just replied 'really meh' I hate admitting being sick haha I am weird. And I am saying now because I have (almost) recovered! Even as I am typing this I still feel weird discussing about it, but I just want to jot down this experience. TY I hope I didn't spread to you, though I think I already did. Oops :O Get well soon!

I AM GOING TO MONTREAL FROM TMR TILL SUNDAY! :D
Bagels, poutine, chocolate HERE I COME (Y)

Summary of my past week:

1. Baked new stuff! Super proud of my bread pudding and oatmeal raisin cookies. The oatmeal raisin cookies were SO GOOD! The recipe rocks! We all agreed it was super good, it was crispy, tasty and not too sweet! Check out the recipe here! Baked bread pudding twice, the first one was more crispy and the second one was more moist. They preferred the moist one. Being the greedy me, I liked both! Rocks when topped with ice cream (Y)

2. Virgin attempt trying pumpkin spice! Tried pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks and pumpkin spice muffin from Tim Hortons. Actually I still don't quite get what is it, I can't quite taste a distinct flavour from it.

3. Went back to Relish Gourmet Burger for a meal last Saturday. But this time we dined with 8 other Singaporeans from NUS and NTU. SO COOL. 12 Singaporeans in a restaurant! One of my friends was here and I was so shocked when he appeared at my doorstep. Honestly I was expecting a deliveryman, but so pleasantly surprised to see my friend from Montreal! So yeah, we had lunch together with his group of friends. Felt pretty good to meet new people even though it was only for a short while because they had to go to other places.

4. Discovered a new Turkish dessert called baklava at city market which is DAMN AWESOME. It's a dessert with chopped nuts and soaked in syrup. Super sweet but you really get hooked on it. Even my friends who are not fans of super sweet stuff enjoyed it too! The best part is the uncle was so kind! He kept feeding us food, he sells bread too with all kinds of sauce to go with. He was so generous, but we were so full because we just had a burger meal. He told us to go there with an empty stomach next time so we can try more. Omg, never seen someone so kind. It makes us feel bad leaving empty handed so we bought baklava from him, quite a good business tactic actually. 

5. Attempted new homecooked dishes such a mui fun, portobello mushroom stroganoff pasta and japanese curry noodles.

6. Lastly, I added many new Starbucks cards to my collection, got some for friends too! I feel so guilty about it because I didn't buy it. I have sinned.

Monday blues

Felt super tired and restless yesterday so I decided to skip lessons! Skipped both lessons that are taught by the prof I ranted about last week. Not that I am still unhappy with him, but I just really felt lazy to go to school. Since I'm on exchange, just slack :D For once, I don't have to pack my lunch/dinner to school on a Monday! 

It felt really awesome to be home alone for so long (about 9 hours), I could do whatever I want and I really like this feeling. So I took off my clothes and walked around like no one is looking, sang freely like no one is listening and danced like no one is watching. Okay, I am just kidding! I didn't anything crazy or wild, I just like the solitude and peace when I am alone. Wanted to do something exciting and I decided to bake some earl grey cupcakes to surprise my friends when they come back from school. I like to give people surprises! Used my Love Tea #7 (contains chinese black tea, dark chocolate, freeze-dried strawberry, red rose petals) from DavidsTea instead since we don't have any earl grey tea at home, so actually to be exact its just tea flavoured cupcakes. I have to stress that THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'M BAKING ALONE, that's why it's exciting. Usually we would bake together and I will just do certain steps here and there. This is my virgin experience baking something all by myself! Another level up :D I felt that the tea cupakes were pretty successful except for the frosting which failed super badly. I think I added too much milk, it was so liquid that it doesn't look like frosting AT ALL. Oh well, I will try again next time! I choose to blame the ingredients because I didn't have everything that was required! 

Lunch: Dumplings, egg with onion, oven baked fish  

Love Tea #7 cupcakes

My super liquid frosting on top. Sigh, fail max. 

It's supposed to be lemon buttercream frosting by the way. WHAT A JOKE!

It's the thought that counts right?

Eat and eat only

Cooked vermicelli today! Apparently its sweet potato vermicelli as the packaging say so but it doesn't have the taste of sweet potato though! Bought this from the ONLY local chinese mart some time back and finally cooked it today. Another virgin attempt, so many virgin attempts on this exchange! Turned out very tasty, I really like it that I had 4-5 servings :O Love the chewy texture, like dong fen! Super easy to cook too, only added simple condiments like soya sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, pepper and chilli padi! Would love to have this again! 

Cooked chicken as a side dish! Okay chicken is boring now, I am pretty sick of cooking meat since I ran out of innovative ideas to cook them.

TY and G baked lemon bars! :D Doesn't look very presentable so I didn't take a close up shot of it. But it still tastes good! Love the lemon filling that is sour yet refreshing, perfect with the crispy and crumbly crust. Topping it off with B&J cookie dough makes it more awesome. Oh well, ice cream never goes wrong! 

Eat and eat and eat only. 

:8

We baked again yesterday! Okay actually only G and me baked. This time we baked banana chocolate chip muffins. I LOVEEEE BANANAS. This was so yummy I had 4 at one go. :8 I CANNOT RESIST SWEET STUFF!!

For dinner we had macaroni with salmon. It tastes much better this time! The previous time I forgot to drain the water away after cooking the macaroni so it was a little soggy :O

Feeling rather adventurous today so I decided to explore the West of Saint John alone! Was enjoying the pretty scenery along the way :D All taken by my iPhone so the quality isn't very good. Okay actually the quality is DAMN BAD. Photos don't do justice at all! It looks better on my instagram. It's been long since I last used my camera, oh my I really need to go travel!

YUCKS OKAY THE QUALITY SUCKS :<

Whipped up a new dish for dinner! Honey garlic pork ribs. So yummy! I love Lee Kum Kee premix but a pity I only had one pack of this. Need to make the sauce from scratch in future. :/

BEN & JERRY'S ICE CREAM :D :D :D

If I had 1,000,000 flavours was so good! Lots of ingredients inside SO YUMZ! (Y)