The best lunch ever.

My best lunch ever throughout the first semester of my stay in MRS.

It must be because we are all free from classes, assignments, exams.

We had nothing to worry about, and therefore, we put all our hearts to preparing our lunch feast.

There were other dishes as well, but we were so engrossed in eating and food tasting, I forgot to take pictures of the other food.

Cheesy sausages.

Mushroom and prawns with a hint of sourness *sluuuurp*

-by Jeff Lim.

Cheese baked Broccoli *yuuum yuuum*

-Recipe coming up in the next post.

Clara's Chocolate Chips Cupcakes.

First thing after exam: BAKING TIME!

It has been quite some time since I last baked.

This year's Chinese New Year (CNY), I skipped baking because of being so tired after working in Ernst & Young, and I must spend some time catching up with my girls. CNY cookies recipes will be up in the upcoming CNY.

Since it's my granny's 80th birthday, I had to come up with something special for her. She has been the nice granny you read in fairy tales. Always kind to kids, patient and doesn't grumble.

This chocolate chips cupcakes are based on butter cupcakes, and fairly easy to bake.

Baking in the process!

*For recipe please scroll down*

It was my first time piping words.

Usually I just decorate with:

icing and chocolate flakes, marshmallows, rainbow rice, etc.

In the end, my granny had a happy and wonderful birthday celebration! It's my first time celebrating with her. All the while, I grew up without experiencing love from grandparents. Now that I visit her very often, our bonds are closer, and I feel blessed to have a granny like her.

Ingredients:

125 g salted butter

4 oz of castor sugar

5 oz of self-raising flour (sieved)

3 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/3 cup Milk

1 cup Chocolate chips (to your preference)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven at 180°c.

2. Put butter out in room temperature until it softens.

3. Mix butter and sugar, stirring in one direction on high for 3 minutes.

4. Fold in egg, vanilla essence and sieve flour.

5. Add in milk and chocolate chips then continue folding.

6. Fill cups with batter until 1/2 or 3/4 full.

7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until cupcakes turns golden.

8. Wait until cupcakes cool down, then decorate the cupcakes with icing.

Icing:

250g icing sugar

125g margarine

Sieve in icing sugar and mix.

For colours, add in drop of food colouring.

Hope you'll enjoy baking!

xoxo.

A Moment back in High School.

This is a typical Doctor Butterfly video.

Although a lot of people might think this is a stupid video, I enjoyed this alot.

It brought back a lot of high school memories.

I miss high school!

I miss Scales DJ, the JADE, and the girls.

I miss our class party and how we would splash each other with water balloons, pails or water, etc. at every last day of school.

Teachers joined in the fun!

I miss being a high-schooler.

No matter how many times I watch this, it never fails to make me smile.

Beautiful Challenges.

Behind every tide, lies a beautiful rainbow.

Every tide is an obstacle,

See these obstacles as challenges in life,

Face these challenges with strength and belief,

Because every tide you overcome,

A beautiful rainbow awaits you at the other end.

Picture source: BBC Wild Weather documentary.

Salmon with Thai Herb Salad & Lime Dressing.

Personally, I enjoy eating fish alot! There are many benefits in eating fish. Firstly and most importantly, fish is high in protein and low in fats. Fish is an excellent source of omega-3, which is good for our brain, eyes and heart.

Staying/studying overseas, it isn't easy to get fresh fish unless you go to the market such as Victoria Market, Preston Market and the market in Footscray. At my place, they don't have markets here, not that I know of.

In my blog, I will only introduce food that I feel is nice and easy to prepare/make as I understand that as students we do not have much time to prepare our meals, or sometimes we feel lazy. And for this, I will advice my readers that this is a fairly easy dish. Not much cooking involed =)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tbs palm sugar, grated (brown sugar)
2 tbs fish sauce
200g fish fillets (salmon)

Salad:
1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh coriander leaves
1/2 cup Thai basil leaves
2 spring onions, sliced thinly
2 medium red chillies, sliced (red capsicums)

Directions:
1. Oil pan, preheat to medium.
2. Make lime dressing by combining lime juice, sugar and fish sauce in a small jug.
3. For Thai Herb Salad, combine mint, coriander, basil, spring onions and capsicums in a big bowl. Set aside.
4. Cook fish on preheated pan until lightly browned on both sides until well done.
5. Serve at once topped with salad and drizzled with lime dressing.

Honestly, as I prepared this dish, alot of my friends did not enjoy the Thai salad as it had a strong smell. In addition, I believe alot of youngsters are not used to eating raw mint, basil and coriander leaves.

Dear readers, this recipe is just for your referral. You guys can just skip the Thai Herb salad. Try the fish with lime dressing. It is really very nice and scrumptious.

Clara's Paratha.

I am sure alot of Malaysians (peninsular especially) have tried this nice and tasty Hot & Roll.

I used to buy this alot in Monash Sunway, especially where there isn't alot of choice of food in the Monash cafeteria.

Well, I was suddenly craving for Paratha wrap, so I decided to treat myself to something tasty and delicious in the middle of the exam preparation night.

All you need:

1. Paratha wrap (you can easily get this from Coles/Woolworths)

2. Cheese

3. BBQ Sauce/Mayonnaise

4. Ham/Bacon

Directions:

1. Heat paratha on a frying pan on medium high. When colour changes to very light brown, flip to the other side and continue heating.

2. Turn to medium-low heat and add toppings ham, then cheese. This is because you wouldn't want your paratha to be burnt.

3. When cheese melts, add in mayonnaise/BBQ sauce. Fold into desired shape and serve

Tips:

Ham tastes fantastic with mayonnaise, and bacon and BBQ sauce are perfect match.

However, these are only suggestions and you can alter to your preference.

Taa-daa~ Freshly made.

Can you see the cheese oozing out?

Weather in Berwick.

The weather in Berwick last week sucked badly. It was cold and wet.

It hailed!!!!!! 3 times in a day (picture below).

*What an experience*

The Weatherzone (app) showed rain and cold wind high on the radar the the week. The wind went up to as fast as 30++km/h on one of the days. I was still having exams. I had to reach out to my woolly leggings to feel comfortable during exams.

For all exams so far, I have had such great luck that my allocated seat was just in front of the exit. Whenever it is half an hour before exam ends, the invigilator would open the exit-wide open. Cool wind would rush into the exam hall. For the first day of exam, I was wearing normal jeans. Trust me, jeans are never meant for winter. It was so cold that I had to shiver for abit. Then I took the hot pad I brought to warm myself a little. For those who wore jeans to exam, good luck! I saw several of them shivering in the cold before entering the exam hall. Some of them couldn't even finish their paper.

Well, there must be several reasons behind their deferement. Coldness may be one of them.

For the next few exams, I wore woolly leggings. Although they felt as though they were thinner than my jeans, but boy they provided me with such warmth during the exams. It wasn't as cold as I imagined. I love and trust wool products since then.

I must say that I am proud that I am well prepared to combat coldness throughout the exams. People have been telling me that exams held in the Racecourse is freaking cold. The wind would go in the exam through the crevice all the plastic walls. So these are things that I brought and came in handy:

1. Scarf

2. Hand mitten

3. Hot pad

Hailing at night:

The spots that you see on the floor, are not pebbles or stones. They are ice! Little cubes of ice, melthing away so fast that it was hard for me to capture a clear and precised picture with my iPhone. I must say iPhone camera function isn't that strong and powerful.

I missed the one in the afternoon. I heard it hailing at 11.30am, and my friends told me it lasted for an hour or so. I bet those hail, or pellets of ice were much larger than the ones I saw at night. They were pouring down, hitting the roofs and windows so loudly that I, a well known pig, aka tidur mati, was awaken by the loud sounds.

Star Dogs.

,

Smartest and cutest dog ever!

Any idea how to train the dog like that?