Weekend in London, again

Nicole and I got a table booked at Duck & Waffle two weeks before as we knew that we were going to have to go through the hell week at uni and needed a good break after that. After our financial economics presentation on Friday, we hopped on the train and got ourselves in time for dinner. We went to The Little French Restaurant at Earls Court as the food was pretty decent and affordable, and I managed to bring Phanit away from his computer games to come join us! 

On Saturday, we started the day late with a full English breakfast, then went straight to Picadilly Circus for lunch with Seow Wei, Zhao Feng, Eunice and Alicia. Zedels had pretty interior and I loved the posters on the walls, but their 9 quid 2-course meal offer was a bit of a scam as you can't choose anything else besides their steak with a shredded carrots starter, or dessert (pear tart I think? or coffee and biscuits sort of thing). Instead I had rabbit and pasta and shared a lovely Gateau Opera (chocolate cake, basically) with Nicole for dessert.

We were stuffing ourselves so much, and even went on to Gelupo for more sweet treats. I had the mint chocolate flavour and it was yummy-mummy! I was starting to think that we wouldn't need to order so much for dinner since we had loads of goodies throughout the day, but I was wrong.

Our Duck & Waffle reservation was at 5 p.m., so Nicole and I headed to Camden market to walk around for a bit before heading over to Liverpool Street. The timing and day for such a dinner were absolutely perfect as we were blessed with a very beautiful sunset. To be honest I was screaming with excitement inside as we went up to the 40th floor, but had to remain composed and all that, y'know. Only when I saw others whipping out their cameras and phones, I took my little x20 out and meekly took a few shots of the beautiful London below.

Everything about Duck & Waffle was great that evening, and the service there was excellent. We went for a walk around Westminster before heading back, then met up with Nicole's friend and stayed up late chatting over drinks at Phanit's place. The plan for Sunday was to visit Borough Market but we decided to detour and went to Harrods instead. 

We had pastries for breakfast and I tried Gran Caffe's Mille Feuilles and a cup of moccacino. Despite their posh interior and prime location, the service was rather bad and the breakfast was too sweet for my liking... I expected way more from them and I'd say that I was disappointed! Should have just gone in to Harrods' food hall and get some of their lovely cakes instead!

It was one of the nicest, most relaxing weekend I've had since I got back to England after cny, and I'm definitely gonna do this again soon!

#3 carrot cake

My mommy's recipe:

• 240g carrots
• 120g canned pineapples
• 60g raisins
• 60g walnuts/ I used an extra 60g raisins instead of nuts because Nicole's allergic to nuts
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence
• 4 eggs
• 150g brown sugar
• 180ml corn oil/ canola oil/ I used light olive oil
• 240g self-raising flour with 1/2 tsp baking powder & 1/2 tsp baking soda/ I used Allinsons Wholemeal Seed & Grain Flour, a teaspoon of baking powder and baking soda each
• a pinch of salt, which I forgot to add

Beat the eggs and sugar until the mixture gets fluffy, everything else comes next.

Fold in the flour mixture until you get a nice consistency.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes on 170 °C.

Note: Squeeze the carrot juice out so that it's not too wet. Also, chop your raisins and nuts before adding for nicer bites. 

As for the cream cheese topping, it's a ratio of 1 to 1 of soft cream cheese, and an equal mixture of melted butter and icing sugar. Meaning that if I use 100g of cream cheese, it's 50g of butter and 50g of icing sugar. I thought that we didn't have any icing sugar left in the house so I missed it out in this batch of cream tonight. Was in the cupboard all along! 

That's it for this week's 52. Hope everyone will enjoy this recipe, goodnight folks! 

#2, detox

HA. Kidding! Nope, I did not have any mayonnaise on my healthy, veggie, fruity, week - that was a day before I started on week 2's challenge. Healthy week it is, but I might have gone a little overboard with the amount of groceries for this week!

Day 1 and 2 were easier than I thought. I actually get to snack on whatever amount of fruits and veggies, so that felt very nice! Grapes and melons are my personal faves. 

Day 3 failed because Kimmie hosted a Vietnamese dinner specially for us, and she really did put in a lot of effort to make it happen. That's a one-meal discount but I still kept up with my plan the next day. Tomorrow is Day 5 and it's beef day! Yep, I'm finally eating meat again after 4 days - it's not hard being vegetarian after all. 

Anyway, that's all I have for blog updates. Rather abrupt end but it's gonna be a crazy week at uni this week: 3 tutorials + 1 coursework presentation. Wish me luck folks.

more than just dough and cheese

Remember I mentioned that there were lots of pizza dough left from the week #1 challenge? I tried making different kinds of pizza (and buns) and I'm glad with the results! I used anchovies as fillings for my pizza buns and had them with seaweed and sambal. Yeap, Malaysian tastebuds ftw!

Well, enough of pizza for now, I'm moving on to week #2. This week's challenge... is to go for a detox! I've not tried any sort of dieting before, but my family is going for it and I should too. It only lasts for one week and I've also got to keep up with my workout regime, so wish me luck and hopefully I don't get lazy.