Shenanigans of a dietitian

It's that time of the year, December has always been a month that has me feeling nostalgic. Maybe because I'm away from a very special girl who means more than life to me.  It's her birthday today so thought I'd go down memory lane and write a thing or two about her.  We met at school in 2007 but we were aware of each other's existence before this :P I distinctly remember the first couple of months because she was so kind to me and she would always compliment. She became one of the sweetest girl I knew.  We pretty much clicked from there on. Someone in our group even named us 'dynamic duo'. We got closest in year 11/12 because we had the same subject combination which meant we were together literally all day. I've heard people say, excessive company of someone leads to conflict and I've experienced this with other people I've known over the years, but we have never had any serious fights. We've held some small grudges wher

Today I paid a visit to The Grounds with two of my best mates. I've been wanting to go to for a while but it's really difficult to fix a time when the group is available. With my school friends, we have a long tradition of catching up after every semester but it's getting harder as we have more commitments now than we did as 5 years ago. Anyway, we picked The Grounds this year because we've all seen too many pictures from this cafe on Instagram and other social media so we wanted to see what the raving was all about. We arrived around 1pm which looked like a very busy peak hour. There was a bit of queue for the tables so we followed suit. Soon after, we realised the line was for people wanting to eat inside and there was a shorter line if you ate outside. The weather was nice and cool so we figured it'd be better to sit out rather than waiting for a table inside. So we got takeaway- Smashed avocado with feta, tomato and mint ($9.50) Roast marinated chicken

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

I've been thinking about making kale chips for a while now; it was one of those things I thought would be too complex. Normally, I use kale in a smoothie or a salad but I can never get through a whole bunch without it going yellow. Recently, I've had a go at making kale chips. It's actually not that difficult, but it's just very delicate. You need to have the right temperature and time setting. Otherwise, you end up with burnt or soggy chips (like I did for the first few times!) I've adapted this recipe from some recipe sites and personal experience :) Recipe is as follows- Ingredients 1 kale bunch Paprika Cayenne pepper Lemon pepper Sea salt 4 Tb Extra Virgin olive oil Method  Preheat oven to 150 (fan-forced) Remove stems from kale and tear leaves into bite sized pieces) Wash kale thoroughly Dry kale with a salad spinner (this step is important!)  In a bowl, mix olive oil and herbs/ spices (amount to your liking) Line tray with baking paper U

I had a reunion with some of my old uni friends. The perks of meeting up with old friends is, it feels like time hasn't moved at all when you meet them! I can't believe it's been almost two years since I saw them properly. It's crazy how quick time flies! We have been trying to meet up for sometime now, but everyone is busy with either work or study so it's really difficult to fix on a date. We set this date back in early July and we all kept our word :D We chose this place so we could accommodate for a friend who is vegan. This was my second time eating a full vegan meal so I was quite excited to see what vegan dumplings would be like! The staff were very friendly and organised. We were served with water and sauce soon after we sat down. Bodhi works just like any other yum cha place, the food keeps coming around and you pick what you like. However, the downside is you can't say yes to everything so you have to turn down some. I started off with satay

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.

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,

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 probab

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

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