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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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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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Brewtown Newtown

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So I realise I haven't written here for a while, I've started my research semester so I sort of got bogged down with uni. It's been quite full on because it's meant to be 35 hours a week but I'm loving it so far because this is what I've always wanted to do. I've kept the best part to the end :D Anyway, just recently we've submitted our research proposal and after that we felt like we needed a treat so decided to hit a hipster cafe somewhere. We visited the famous Brewtown Newtown. I’ve heard that often there’s a huge waiting period to get into this cafe (as it’s quite popular), but thankfully we didn’t have to wait long.  We started off with drinks. The weather was quite warm so I got iced chocolate (which was just their hot chocolate from the menu but with ice). I found the drink to be pretty average but my friends really liked the drinks they ordered. One of them ordered freshly squeezed orange juice and found it to be quite different comp...
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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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Picnick View Cafe

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We actually had plans to somewhere else but spontaneously decided to come here (as we were running late). I remember reading about this somewhere last year and wondering where the location was.  I used to do volunteering here with Cancer Council and did one of my placements here last year so I knew the area well but I had no idea this cafe was hiding here the whole time (it’s because you  can't see the name of the cafe from the street). It's completely hidden, all I could ever see was Campos coffee. We sat down after ordering food and looked around at all the hipster elements of this cafe. They have a lot here, it's pretty much packed with stuff. We waited for a while and started wondering why the food wasn't coming. We found it quite difficult to sit outside (it was a really hot day) and there was no arrangement inside (it's a really small cafe). Seating area Word! Soon after, one of the staff came and told me my dish would take a...
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Moong dal and pumpkin curry

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Mum left some moong dal in the fridge, I've never cooked with it before so I wanted a recipe to use it. This was probably one of the easiest curry I have ever cooked! So simple yet so delicious :) Recipe adapted from: http://www.steamingpot.com/pumpkin-moong-dal/ I modified the recipe as I did not have some of the mentioned ingredients. Ingredients 1 TB EVOO 1 cup of boiled moong dal (1/2 cup raw) 1 onion, finely chopped 1 tsp of garlic and ginger paste Turmeric powder (sprinkled) Curry powder (sprinkled) 250g pumpkin, finely chopped, skin on  1 red capsicum, small cubes 1 tomato, small cubes  Cumin powder (sprinkled)  Few green or red chillies  Fresh coriander Method 1) Boil moong dal (refer to instructions above- easier if done beforehand) I already had my boiled moong dal so I started from step 2 2) Add EVOO oil 3) Add onions, garlic/ ginger paste and turmeric powder once oil is hot 4) Stir for a few seconds 5) Add pumpkin, boiled lentils a...
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Sculpture by the Sea

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My homie and I took off to Bondi today.  It has been raining all week but today's weather looked promising. Unfortunately the beautiful weather did not last as long as we would have liked, but we managed to get some pretty good pictures. For lunch, we had plans to eat at The Grounds by the Sea but it had started raining and there was no place to sit indoors. So we started exploring and ended up at Mojo's Tapas Bar. We discovered this place by accident but it turned out to be fabulous! Both dishes we ordered were vegetarian. Shown below is a potato and onion omelette, served with a side of aioli. Tortilla Espanola ($9) The cous cous dish was quite different to what we had expected. The inner filling was cous cous mixed with roasted vegetables, parmesan and spices. The outside crumbed layer definitely added the to the presentation, along with the yoghurt and cucumber salsa on top. Bolas De Cous Cous ($10) Overall,...
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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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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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Winterlight

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W interlight? What's that? I hear you ask! Well, no one seems to know what it is because it's such a small event. So I thought I'd write about it and make it all trendy haha :P So basically it's a local winter festival happening in Parramatta. It's kind of like a mini version of vivid but it's on during the day as well. Activities include ice skating, workshops for kids, various food stalls and much more! Oh, and did I mention there are big bunnies too? :P Winterlight is at Prince Alfred Park and finishes on 12th July. 
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