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Black Star Pastry (Strawberry Watermelon Cake)

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Some of you might know about the desperate attempt I made last year for the Strawberry Watermelon Cake (see previous post at  Black Star Pastry ).  Yesterday I had the privilege of tasting this cake at a party. I got super excited as I’ve been wanting to try this for almost a year now. I was so tempted to just skip the mains but I patiently waited for dessert time and made sure I left space for the cake :P In the meantime, I went to take a close look at the cake (could not resist, for obvious reasons) and I was amazed at how magical it looked. It was constructed beautifully starting with a layer of almond  dacquoise followed by cream, then a slice of watermelon with cream,   almond  dacquoise and cream again. Finally, it was topped with strawberries, pistachios and dried rose petals. It was a quite a delicious cake but unfortunately, it did not meet the expectations I had. I liked certain elements, such as the lightness of the cream layers, f...
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Last day of uni (Black Star Pastry + Grill'd)

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Last Friday was our last day back at uni, it was kinda sad but more exciting at the same time! We had made plans to celebrate afterwards at Newtown.  I've seen so many people raving about the Strawberry Watermelon cake at Black Star Pastry so that's we decided to settle for dessert. We finished uni at 4, got a little speech from our lovely coordinator, took a year group photo and set off on the walk to Newtown. It was kind of early for dinner so we decided to have dessert first. We got to Black Star Pastry at 5:01 and were devastated to see it had already closed! We were late by a minute (they close at 5). Despite our efforts of knocking on the door, the staff inside did not open up to apologize. But while looking at the door we realised there was another pop-up store at Town Hall. We had to decide whether we would chase it or leave it, and we chose to do the former, for obvious reasons! We desperately wanted that cake! We went to Town Hall and took a while to f...
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Australia's Healthy Weight Week

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This week is all about encouraging people to eat healthy, home cooked meals and making small changes towards a healthy lifestyle. It is also about telling people what we do as dietitians (hence I am writing) The pictures are from the morning tea we hosted (colleagues and myself) for staff on our floor at work.  As you can tell from the photos, we tried to include something from all the food groups. We wanted to make it colourful and include healthier options, where possible.  Fruits: apples, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, figs, passionfruit, nectarines and peaches Vegetables: carrots, snow peas, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and beetroot dip Dairy: low fat yoghurt and low fat ricotta (fritatata) Lean meat, fish, poultry, nuts and legumes: variety of nuts, hommus Cereals: wholemeal pita bread If you'd like to read more information on the AHWW, head over to http://healthyweightweek.com.au/ :) Zucchini, ...
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The Emporium

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This cafe has a great welcoming atmosphere with options to dine in or outside. We went on a weekday so it wasn't that busy. I wasn't that hungry so I ordered a side. It was filled with Dutch, purple and orange carrots with Harissa dressing. It was great in the beginning but after a while, it got boring. It would've been better if they had one or two other veggies (rather than just carrots). Roasted Dutch carrots, cashew dukkah, harissa dressing $9 Chocolate cremeux, honeycomb ice cream, chocolate soil, dulce de leche, espresso gel $16 The dessert however, was delicious. It had lots of crunch, texture and flavour. There was lots of bits and pieces like bread, chocolate, ice cream etc. The amount was good in terms of portion control. Yes, I know the photo doesn't look as appealing as the lighting was poor but it looked way much better in person.
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(Un) Organised October

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This month has gone by way too quick! (Okay, I know I said that last month too but this month went even quicker) It started off with me madly writing my results, then doing discussion. Discussion took me about a week :/ I was rushing to finish my draft because I had to send it to my supervisor and leave enough time for feedback. I allowed myself two weeks time (which I thought was too much, at the time!) But I was so glad I did this later because it can take a couple of days to get feedback as supervisors are too busy to read it in one go. Anyway, now let me move onto the other fun things I did. Starting off with the most important highlight of the month: I WENT TO CENTRAL PERK!!!! I was so bogged down with writing, I almost didn't realise it was finishing and made it in the last weekday after handing in my draft. I had to wait for about an hour but I would say the wait was worth it because I'm such a 'friends' obsessed freak. Getting my butt on that cou...
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Joyful June

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I had one of the most adventurous months, ever. As some of you would already know, I was away for most of June. I flew to Canada to present my first ever oral at an international conference. I had been to an international conference in Melbourne last year; however, it didn’t quite feel as international for me (flying there from Sydney). But I knew this conference was going to be an entirely different experience. One of the biggest challenges I faced before leaving was having to pack for a range of weather conditions and ticking off the tasks I urgently needed to finish before I left. As usual, I ended up leaving my packing until the very last day (this always happens). It felt a little strange to be leaving home for almost three weeks which is a long time for me because I rarely go anywhere without family. Nonetheless, I was also super excited for the adventure that awaited on the other side of the world. The International Society of Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA) c...
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Fabulous February

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I did not write properly last month as I had a million things on my mind. There is so much that has happened, and there is so much I want to write. But I can only write so much in this one post. So I will write the main updates here and save the rest for future. As some of you would probably know from Instagram , I got married earlier this month! I would have liked to have made a big announcement but I decided to go into hibernation instead as I was feeling very stressed. I was starting to crumble under a lot of pressure leading up to the wedding as there were many unfinished tasks (both work and wedding related). Having to work right before the day of the wedding was no easy task, but I managed to get through with a lot of support from my parents, family and friends. I am so grateful for the people in my life who went out of their way and travelled long distances to be here for me. I won’t say too much about the actual wedding in this post as I will blog more about this lat...
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Holiday cooking (Part 1)

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After completion of my thesis, I had the best time doing some cooking experiments. I spent a part of it overseas (see part 2 ) I've posted the recipe for kale chips and wholemeal date and walnut loaf . Veggie mess of zucchini, broccoli, beans, carrots and bean sprouts Rainbow trout cutlets with potatoes, zucchini, tomato and bean sprouts Sesame sprinkled salmon with tomatoes, peas and wilted spinach Wholemeal date and walnut loaf Kale chips with tzatziki Chicken spinach parcel with sweet potato mash Chocolate banana ice cream with flaked almonds (vegan) Oats, coconut and sultana cookies Poached salmon, sweet potato and walnut salad Asparagus and prawn curry Sweet potato, chicken and capsicum skewers Lemon herb salmon with sweet potato mash and zucchini Crumbed chicken on a stick Wholemeal fettuccine with lamb, zucchini and asparagus
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Jumbled July

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This month has been rather depressing because I've been all over the place and didn't get to do what I made plans to do. I was progressing at a steady place trying to finalise my systematic review. But then I heard back from the journal I had submitted my old review to which requires further revisions. Initially, I thought it'd take me around a week, but there are so many little things I need to look into. I'm still not done, but hope I'm closer than yesterday. In other news, I did a short statistics course. I've been trying to find a relevant course for months now, but most courses were out of Sydney or ridiculously expensive. Finally, I found a good one; it was using a software called GraphPad Prism. To be honest, it was overwhelming because stats has been my area of weakness and I did it a very long time ago. But I'm really glad I did it because now I'm armed with somewhat confidence. Overall, it has been a really challenging month. I feel ...
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Mad March

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Wow, I honestly can't believe we've hit the first week of April. I've gotten quite behind with blogging (as you can tell from my late March post). It has been a somewhat crazy but productive month for me. The good news is that I have finally managed to submit my research paper from last year. It was really nice to get it out of the way because now I can focus on my PhD (until I hear back from the reviewers again, at least!)  With my current research, I'm progressing quite slowly (systematic reviews take a long time unfortunately). I'm up to reading my bunch of full texts. I tried to be slightly more environmentally friendly with this SLR and minimizing the number of papers I print. It becomes hard after staring at the screen for a while so I ended up printing approximately half of my full texts. That's probably all the main updates, study wise. Here are all my March eats :)   One pan lemon herb salmon and zucchini Zucchini and lentil pasta...
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