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Wholemeal date and walnut loaf

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Happy Monday everyone! It has been a while since I baked a loaf so thought I'd make one :) Recipe adapted from http://daa.asn.au/recipes/wholemeal-date-and-walnut-loaf/ Ingredients 2 eggs, lightly beaten 100 g pitted dates, chopped 45 g margarine 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 cup water 40 g walnuts, chopped 1 cup self-raising flour 1 cup wholemeal flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 tablespoon LSA oil to spray Method 1) Preheat oven to 180 °C. 2) Combine dates, margarine, sugar and water in a saucepan. Stir and boil gently. Set aside to cool. 3) Sift flour, baking powder, LSA. 4) Add in walnuts and eggs  5) Add in date mixture and mix well. 6) Lightly spray a loaf tin pan. Line with baking paper. 7) Pour mixture into pan 8) Bake for 45-50 mins. Skewer should come out clean.  9) Remove from oven and cool for 10 mins 10) Turn out on a cooling rack. Slice and serve with yoghurt, if desired.
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The beginning :)

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Hello there, As you can tell from the title, I like to partake in shenanigans so thought I'd make a blog and document it. I actually thought about doing this for ages. But I wasn't sure how and when do I begin? Or if I should write even? My 'big' plan was to launch this blog in January this year but it got delayed by quite a bit as you can see we are in June and I'm still writing my intro here! I did make an account earlier though, but I never got around to writing because I was busy with training placement and it took so much out of my time, it didn't really leave time for anything else. (For anyone that's not familiar with what being in placement involves- it's basically like full time work but you don't get paid anything. You may be armed with a whole lot of experience but it leaves you exhausted and broke) :( Now getting to the proper intro - I'm a 22 year old student dietitian living in Sydney. I've always wanted to blog but n...
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Lazy day

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So now I've got a bit of a break for about a week before I go back to placement. It's winter in Sydney and it has gotten pretty cold lately. The lowest was about 4 degrees so naturally all I want to do is hibernate away under that blanket.  Despite of what others think about winter, it's actually my favourite season. But there are some downsides of winter- getting out of bed is ev en harder! :( I'm not a morning person, I struggle every morning when I have to part ways with my blanket :P But today I did something I haven't done in a long while! I stayed in bed, till very late.  I stayed in till about 2pm which beats all my previous records but hey I'm trying to make the most out of my short holiday so don't judge me! I stayed in bed using all the possible gadgets, called up friends - I literally had a virtual party going on in my room :P  Anyway, then I was getting a bit hungry so I finally climbed out of bed and made this:  salmon, s...
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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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Juggling June

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I spent all of this month writing up my paper. I focused on writing my discussion for the first two weeks. Soon after I started writing, I realised, there were other small things I needed to finalise as well, like how I wanted my tables to look, supplementary information, etc. Getting everything together and trying to tie up loose ends has been harder than I imagined, but having some experience with systematic review write up (from last year) was sort of helpful. I was also trying to juggle a few other things on the side (more about this later).  Overall, it was a super intense month for me, but things are looking better now because I can almost see the finish line! The good news is that I've managed to meet the deadline I had set for myself, so I'm happy (for now). In other news, I was doing 'Junk Free June' this month which is an initiative run by Cancer Council Queensland that encourages people to give up a junk food for the entire month. I picked my to...
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Post-thesis celebration

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So I handed in my thesis today!!! After three months of solid hard work, it's finally all done! I'm so excited because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. I know I shouldn't get that excited because I technically haven't finished my degree yet (got a presentation next week) but it kind of feels like I'm done! The thesis does make the bulk of my marks so that's definitely an important milestone and worth celebrating :P So now let me give you a rundown of what I did today- I started off my day skimming my thesis one last time. Then I nearly killed off a forest printing about 140 pages (poor trees!) Next stop was binding. My stomach had started grumbling from all the waiting around so we hit Ralph's Cafe for a celebratory lunch. We had to wait a while because it was lunch hour. But that was okay because we know their food is worth the wait! The Ralph's burger with chips (~$14) After this came, we just went silent as we...
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Bittersweet winter

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Winter is officially over and spring is here! I know most of you are probably super excited but I'm a little sad winter is over.  Yes, I'm one of those weird people that enjoy a good cold weather, contrary to what most people think about winter.  You might be wondering why!  Well, let me give you a few reasons and see if I can win you over :P Firstly, you could pretty much wear anything and get away with it as long as you wear a nice looking coat. You could be wearing the tee you wore last night under your classy coat and still end up looking good. Winter is so forgiving, you don't have to worry about colour coordinating your outfits.  Same goes with shoes, you gotta decide between ballet flats or sandals or whatever else you wear. In winter, it's so much easier because it's too cold to wear anything else :P Just slip on some boots with any random socks you find and you're good to go!   As you can see from this picture- I'...
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Father's Day 2015

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I asked my daddy, "what kind of cake do you want for Father's Day?" He said, "just a plain cake with nothing on it." He's just too easy and kind on me! Happy Father's Day!  I've spent so long looking for a perfect card for this Father's Day but they just don't seem to be have what I was looking for. I wanted something with a nice long message but all the ones I saw had dull cover pages. Then I came across this superdad one and I found it to be quite appropriate for us because he has been like a 'superhero' to me. I ended up getting this cute tatty bear one and thought I'd just write my own long message here and force him to read this later :P So here it goes... To my dearest best daddy in the world, Firstly, I hope you like the card and the other presents. I thought I'd get you this superdad tatty bear because you have been like a 'superhero' in my life. You may not know how to fly l...
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Loss and grief- the sister I never met

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As you can tell from the title, this is not my usual cooking or dining shenanigans story. This is actually quite sensitive so only read if you're okay with a mushy topic like this. Today, I had the privilege to attend a talk at my work where a lady spoke about the loss of her newborn baby. She was absolutely amazing, I'm not one that usually gets emotional hearing other people talk about their losses but I did get teary in this one towards the end. It only took me a few seconds to work out why, it was because it triggered something else. But first, I want to share the lady's story before I tell you mine. The lady spoke about her baby who died two days after he was born because of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. This basically means, for some reason her baby had stopped receiving oxygen a week prior to her labour. He was in NICU after he was born but he had never opened his eyes, he had no brain function. She spoke about all these memories she made with her baby w...
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