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Memorable May

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My health hasn’t been in the best shape this month, so it has been a hell of a hard month for me. The main highlight I had for this month was the DAA conference, but I found myself getting sick right before my travel. Luckily, it was only a domestic flight, so I was able to drag myself out to Hobart. Unfortunately, travel and sickness don't make a good match; it was challenging. But it still ended up being a wonderful trip, mainly because Tasmania is such a beautiful land! I would love to go back again someday (Hobart blog will be up soon). Getting sick this month has made me realise the blessing of good health, once again! It's something we don't appreciate enough until something hits us. The past few weeks have been quite stressful; I could almost tell that I had reached my breaking point and was going to get sick. Honestly, I'm so grateful to my mum for flying home this month. Her presence in the house makes a big difference in my life. To the world, it may have ...
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Floriade 2016

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Hello everyone! Please excuse my lateness for posting Floriade pictures. I can't believe it took me well over a month to get this out. The past month has been very busy and I somehow forgot about this?! My visit to Canberra was a very short one but enjoyed every moment of it. It kind of made me realise that I should go away more often. I came back feeling very refreshed and happy! The last time I went to Floriade was 2014, so it was nice to come back after two years. I tried to do a little experimenting with my camera, and happy to say, I think I've improved from last time :P I'm starting to realise my love for detail photography, the close up flower ones are probably my favourite. Hope you like the pictures :)
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Jittery January

Hope everyone is having a good year so far? I cannot believe the first month is over already! Unfortunately I don't have any food pictures to share this month because I haven't cooked much at all. Even when I did, it was something that I had no time to take a photo of. My mind is preoccupied with something else, and it has been really difficult to get things done. To be honest, this month has been a hell of a month for me. It was stressful, exciting, crazy, painful  depressing...(the list goes on). There were times when I was very close to giving up. I don't think I have felt the range of emotions I experienced this month in any other time in my life. I can't really explain how overwhelming it was, without bringing in the context (will reveal soon).  
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Manageable March

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I started this month feeling overwhelmed and out of control, both emotionally and physically (playing the catch-up game with my workload). As I have said, I have had a lot going in my life in the past couple of months. While the majority of it has left a very positive influence in my life, there are some areas of it where negativity continues to tingle. I have told myself I will focus on the sunny side of it, work around this to normalise it as much as possible. The good news is that I have succeeded; I have managed to focus my shift back to work, and it has been working so far. However, there are occasions when my mind starts drifting away into the other land. But happy to say, I have been pretty productive this month, managed to get through ethics applications, two paper revisions (almost) and a few other things. In other news, I have finally started working on our wedding day blog. It took me a while to start because I wanted to wait until my ‘mental load’ reduced a little. We h...
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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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Finally a dietitian!

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It seems like not too long ago when I was in third year and was trying to decide what I wanted to do. Some of my friends wanted to continue studying in the field for an honours or masters, while some wanted to do medicine or pharmacy and some just wanted to get out there and find jobs.  I remember thinking, what do I do? Where do I fit in?  I was doing a mini neuroscience research project at the time that I had really enjoyed so I was considering honours. But at the same time, I realised I had a passion for food. Now don't get me wrong, I loved working in the lab and doing things I did like molecular biology, haematology, anatomical pathology, etc. But I kind of started realising my love for food and I wanted to do something that would allow me to make a difference in people's health. That was the initial vision that drove me to explore.  Up until this point, I had never done a nutrition subject so it was rather strange. The closest thing I did to nutrition was ...
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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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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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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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Daddy's birthday 2015 | Buttery fruit cake

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Happy birthday daddy! This perfectly describes how he continues to inspire me! And he always is!  In the past, I always used to purchase cakes because I did not trust my baking skills enough to be able to pull off a fancy cake for a special occasion. But this year, I've been a bit of an experimental baker so I thought I'd give it a go.  I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Initially, he said plain cake again (probably because he did not want to trouble me during my final days of thesis writing). After I pressed further, he gave me buttery fruit cake as an answer.  I was happy with this because I had never baked one so it'd be fun to do one. I started my recipe hunt. Most traditional recipes use alcohol but because I don't drink, I had to look harder to find one that didn't so I could eat it too :D Eventually I found this. I've followed this recipe pretty closely with some little changes.  Normally I would not use ...
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