Baking pt 2

Time has literally flew by. My 3 weeks off and then only 2 days of offsite placements this week and I've felt like I've done no study. Red Eye Clinic is so soon, and I know I'm gonna get smashed, and I should study, but I have procrastinated a bit too much....like watching 4 seasons of Suits in one day, 

Other procrastination includes baking. 

Zumbo's Pash Me Banana Bread

I must admit, packet mix is cheating, but this banana bread for a packet mix is really good. It gives it the height that I can't make from scratch (even though my baking powder isn't expired), but I think the flour he uses is also a better quality. You literally just chuck stuff in and mix it. Only measure out butter and milk. It's also not really sweet, only sweet from the bananas, and has chopped up nuts for texture. Chopping up nuts into small pieces yourself is hard. It's also a lot oilier/buttery and healthier compared to the banana breads you buy at shops. It also includes passionfruit pulp you can mix into butter to make passionfruit butter, but who even needs extra butter on banana bread? It's nice on it's own, and less fattening.

In the oven. Proof that at one stage it had a nice high rise and smooth even brown top

after cooling it shrinks

the edge collapses on itself, shrinking away from the paper

Jap style cheesecake

inside

Ended up using the extra block of cream cheese for this. Next time I'm gonna try no lining the sides to see if the cake will cling to the side and have a nice rise and not shrink as much after cooling. This cheesecake could've been a bit lighter, but I accidentally added the sugar to early when whipping the egg whites, so didn't quite get soft peaks, but was close. It browned more evenly this time since I put it towards the left side of the oven as I remembered from last time the right side darkened too much. This cheesecake isn't really sweet either, but obviously nowhere near as light as the one's you buy outside. No more baking for the rest of the year. Finally used up 4 blocks of cream cheese and a packet of 2mth old expired packet mix. My almond meal has also expired for a few months, but no time.

 

more insect ice cream

Walked past this at Chatswood, and now I've tried all 4 insect flavours from the Economists. They all just tasted sweet like ice cream, and crunchy from the insects.

Thanks BW for getting me my fav almond milk. I first tried this at the food expo last yr in September, and didn't even realised it's out in shops now, and in a bigger size.

yay for free burgers, thanks again BW

Got a wagyu-$15.90 and a hemp burger-$13.50

I couldn't really taste the hemp in it, found it really subtle. Maybe cause the patty bottom was too burnt for me, and I'm more sensitive to burnt things. I've been 'trained' by mum to always peel off burnt stuff in food, but in a patty inside a burger, it's a bit harder to do that...

I should really get my reports done, because now I'm going to New Zealand before going to Melb and Hobart. Yay for more travel and experience. Too bad the lens I bought probs the invoice can't be back dated so that I can get the gst back from it. I'm grateful for an all expenses paid trip to NZ plus clinical experience. I didn't put that much effort into the application, but did dawdle on it for a couple of hours. Now to tell my manager that I need another week off...The irony is that the company is my work's charity organisation. Next week gonna start getting super busy. I feel like I say this all the time haha. Sometimes I am pretty grateful that I only had research last year and not this year so I have time to do other stuff like go volunteer in NZ.

Exam Hibernation

Coming out of exam hibernation after over a month. I do try to study at home pretty much from waking up to going back to sleep, but like most people, I do procrastinate. Even after not really using my phone and charging every 2-3 days, and then trying to stay away from social media, but then not really since need to check if anything important happens in group chats. 

So what else was I up to when I was supposed to be studying but then obviously got distracted? Not in any order:

Free tde case!

tde opened their flagship store in Sydney so you can actually check out the stuff rather than just online, and they gave out free phone cases that day. This lavender purple is so pretty irl! Tbh, don't think it's worth $50 for that little bit of leather, since in America, you can get a branded leather bag with a lot more leather material compared to this phone case. I'm the sort of person who would spend thousands on stuff, but phone cases or cases in general I'll try to spend the bare minimum. As long as I feel like it does the job, a cheap $2 case is fine. The leather case is also too nice to use...

tde is relatively successful from starting off as only online, now stores in overseas as well. Still think almost all the stuff is overpriced, and the stuff I do have were either discounted or gifts. Do have to give them credit for being one of the first to do the whole 'monogramming' thing. Now so many other places do monogramming. Their packaging has also improved, since they didn't do any embossing on the inside, and the same size box I got earlier this year was just white on the inside.

Gelato Messina Jersey Milk-strawberry

Another item which I couldn't physically go to line up to get cause stuck at home with exams. This is one of those 'money can't buy' things. Messina bought a cow farm which supplies Jersey milk for their gelato, and you can't buy their milk even if you wanted to. This milk is different from your normal full cream milk. It goes down very smooth and tastes very natural, not too heavy or creamy but still creamy. It's thin but not watery. It had a more natural strawberry flavour with strawberry bits in it. The milk bottle is so cute as well. Shoutout to BW for lining up for both the phone case and the milk whilst I was stuck at home studying. 

 

I think the Snap chat explains it. I missed out on the event last year, but decided to go this year. So weird to see my church trying to use social media.

Procrastination also involved online shopping. Had a $20 voucher from Mimco, defs going to be the last one since I almost never buy anything from there, and haven't helped buy friends bday stuff from there so will lose my 'tiered' membership. Before they even had tiers, there were $30 bday vouchers, but then decreased that to $20. I think they saw people like me something get things almost for free, like that time I got a $100 keyring for just $0 i.e. free. 

This was quite a massive box for just a ring, I feel like the packaging itself is like a few dollars. The ring was $100 down to $4 after discounts/using my voucher, but these super cheap stuff have to be delivered since they don't have it in store, so ended up paying $14, since they charge $10 delivery. Still reasonable but I would never pay $100 for something that's made in China and not even really branded. Like how much is the actual cost price/profit they make? Small finger problems and the ring doesn't really fit either, but for $14 it's ok. (Although I do spend 4 figures on other stuff, it's really quality which is more important than I can justify spending insane amounts).

There's this new guy who does Star Track deliveries for online orders and he's pretty hopeless. He delivered someone else parcel from a different street to us. Then had to knock again for us to give back the parcel. Initially we're like what do we do cause he delivered to the wrong address...

 

TRUFFLE oil and salt

A super belated present from my optom girls after not seeing them for over 2 months. Now I can literally have truffle everything! From truffle pasta, to truffle chips, salad etc etc. Can pimp up my bland boring (albeit healthy) home food. There's even real pieces of truffle in the oil. Need to up my non existent cooking skills. Super bad photo quality, might take another one during the day. I don't think any of them read this, but thanks for indirectly chipping into my iPhone 8.

Can really feel the effects of not exercising and sitting at home for over a month. So dead and weak, and my cardio according to my fit bit has died, not that there was much to start with... Even when you're on holidays, you're constantly moving whereas exams you just sit and study. Surprisingly don't have much time to go even with exams finished (for now).

I figured there's no point sulking even if I do receive another UF or F on thurs night, so might as well continue to make plans. Ceebs filing/cleaning/tidying everything until I know my results. I think I'm also not going to ask for additional shifts this Christmas at other stores. Probs lazy but I would rather binge watch tv if I pass, and if not, then I will have an extra year of travel and watching tv...

Love sharing my itineraries with people, but too bad not going anywhere this holidays (unless I don't pass, so will defs fly off and save money after I come back for a grad trip if when I graduate...which I may have said more than once...)

Although I love my freebies, ended up skipping a free dinner last week since I was ceebs. Really hating this warmer weather since all I want to do is stay indoors away from the humidity/heat/sun, but at the same time I want to go out and explore places. It's funny how when I'm overseas, especially in Taiwan summer, I just deal with the humidity, but back at home I ceebs cause there's always tv/movies to watch or some productive stuff to do...