The Strawberry Sundae that Disappointed

Above is my strawberry sundae from Gateway Park (Brewers Fayre) that was a disappointment because it lacks the promised wafer on top, and strawberry syrup drizzle were all stuck at the bottom of the sundae (kinda stupid, right?), and the strawberries were still frozen chunks of ice!

*sigh* I miss the days of Knickerbocker Glory from Tootsies. Why oh why did they go into administration? :(

Dinner on Friday was made of...

Rib steak and cheese petit pains, +onions on mine.


Gooey delectable chocolatey goodness in a ramekin, hot from the oven.


Mmmmmm...

You love my food posts, really. :P Considerably non-witty, non-wordy, and more diet-breaking than any of my lengthy posts.

Re: iPad

I'm not a geek reviewer. I don't review. I typed out a review about the BB Curve, and gave up on that because I got lazy.

But I'm just so disappointed about the iPad.

Nevermind the horrible name, but the features are unexciting after all that hype. Don't get me wrong, it does look very good - Apple hasn't lost its touch on that - but seriously? No multitasking? No Flash support? It's effectively what you get if you crossbreed the Kindle and the iPhone - a touchscreen eBook reader that runs some other apps.

I already read eBooks quite happily on my tiny BB screen so I have no need for a glorified eBook reader. I'm more likely to get an iPhone than and iPad - after all, iPhone is infinitely more portable and does pretty much the same things. No, scratch that. The iPhone might actually be better for it has a camera, which the iPad sorely lacks.

I don't know about you, but I like doing more than one thing at a time with my gadgets. I don't only read the news - I have several tabs open, and sometimes even a game running in the background, plus my camera downloading into the HD. Researching for things and bookmarking and copying items into other programs for future reference? Requires multitasking too.

Even browsing the net it may fail at, as the iPad does not support Flash. A lot of websites have Flash. Will the iPad then give you the best web experience? I doubt it.

I don't think I'm an Apple fangirl - I love Apple stuff. MacBook, iPhone and iPod all look fantastic and I lust after them with every fibre in my body. I suffered internally of extreme jealousy when I saw that SN had both a new MacBook and an iPhone when I visited him. But one thing I did not like about some of the Apple gadgets are the fixed battery. All batteries have a habit of dying, not holding charge properly after x number of recharges. It's unforgivable to pay the price Apple demands on their goods and realise that it isn't going to last as long as you hoped due to wear, and you can't replace the part most likely to wear out with time.

I'd hate that.

Might be a better idea to look at Modbooks, after all - it's a tablet and it runs on Mac OS, so it does everything a MacBook does (save for having a physical keyboard). Or just a plain old MacBook if a touchscreen is not necessary. And you can actually replace the battery for a new one.

Me, I'm debating between a MacBook or a cheap-and-cheerful Asus Eee T91MT (after Always Innovating's Touch Book failed to impress).

Simple fares - bread and butter pudding & homemade vegetable soup/stew

Sometimes I forget the simplest things are the best.

Two nights ago I bought a loaf of bread on the discount shelf at Somerfields after work and decided to make some bread and butter pudding. I made some before ages ago whilst I was still in first year of university, and it was really yummy (despite never having bread and butter pudding before... but the taste is confirmed by a recent bread and butter pudding I ordered whilst we were eating out). So the result from two nights ago:

Bread and butter pudding.

To those who aren't familiar with bread and butter pudding, it's made of layers of sliced buttered bread in a deep dish with generous sprinkle of ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, sugar and raisins/sultanas/fruits. Then you beat egg and milk and sugar in a bowl and pour it into the dish, letting the slices of bread soak up the liquid mixture and then baking it in the oven until the top is golden brown.

So basically ingredients that you can find in most kitchens.

Couple of mistakes I made whilst doing this:

1. Putting sultanas on the top, which got a bit burnt in the process of baking it.
2. Baking it for too long; it was just slightly too dry to be proper bread and butter pudding.

It smelt great whilst it was baking in the oven! All buttery and cinnamony. Heaven! I didn't put much sugar in it because I didn't want to oversugar it since I wasn't following any recipe, but I ended up eating it with a drizzle of golden syrup and it was fantastic! <3 Leftovers in the fridge that got a bit hard can easily be softened again by drizzling some golden syrup and milk over it and then microwaving for 2-3 minutes before eating. :)

I also made a self-imposed rule yesterday that I will not buy anything more from the grocery store until Boy gets back on Sunday so that I can finish up whatever else that is in the kitchen. This includes a whole lot of the vegetables that I bought which I might as well finish because Boy isn't that much of a fan of vegetables.

I chopped up a whole load (potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, Savoy cabbage) after work today and dumped them into my slow cooker with some chicken stock cubes and hot water and pepper and Chinese five spice and cracked two eggs over everything to make a familiar childhood soup. Because of the amount of stuff I put into the slow cooker, not only did it fill it up as if I were feeding yet another army, it also turned into more of a stew than a soup - more solids than liquid!

All the same - nice and warm in my tummy for this cold, cold night! And comfort food that is also relatively healthy!

Vegetable stew.

Yum yum. ^^

Of spending days off productively.

I got myself some clothes and bras from Bravissimo on their post-Christmas sale and they arrived on New Year's Eve. Completely sold and ecstatic with the clothes! For the first time ever, I don't have to physically squeeze or misplace my boobs in an effort to do up the side zip, and my boobs don't look like they're flattened and pushed up to my chin! Hooray! I'm tempted to go and get more shirts and tops from them right now, but I really should curb my spending. It's not like stuff from Bravissimo is cheap. :P

I'm a bit sad about the bras I bought though. I got them in the last size I know that fitted me and found quadroboobs staring back at me in the mirror. :( I'll have to return them, which is sad because I loved the look of Cleo's Billie bra - deep mulberry red with a sheer black overlay and frill trims. Looks fantastic on by themselves and the frill trims hide the top overbulge nicely, but unfortunately with clothes over it'll just look hideous. *sigh* They have run out of the size I'll need too.

No, I do not invest in bedroom-only underwear. :P

Sad.

I brushed off my failure and went into this new lingerie shop called Braways on the High Street that's a bit like Bravissimo - they cater to larger cups (up to K... mad!). Got them to fit me rather than my just guessing my size and ordering off the internet, so now I have two new sets of bras that fits, which makes me a happy girl. :) Bad news is that it's worse than I thought - it's 34*/36* depending on brand. Yeah, how the f*.

To think I used to laugh at MJ for her ever-growing boobs.

Maybe I really need that diet that I've been putting off for so long. :(

Anyway. On top of shopping yesterday (and posting out a parcel to Boy that made him a very happy man today and made his family envious), I also went and finally got myself a haircut that I've been meaning to go for since forever! The split ends were really bad by the time I did get them cut though. Ugh. I told the stylist to take off 3 inches and layer the rest. She also suggested shortening the front to frame the face.

Before & After

I'm very happy with the haircut, my head feels so much lighter and the ends no longer tangles up. And for once a stylist did not take off too much when I said 3 inches, and I actually still have enough hair to tie up into a ponytail for work.

I believe, after these 3 inches worth of hair has been cut away, that is the last of my highlighted hair gone (not that anyone but a hairstylist could tell anymore after I attempted to dye it back to black multiple times). Hooray! Fingers crossed that it's healthy hair from now on!

Tonight's dinner:

Soy sauce and garlic salmon with red peppers and broccoli baked in a bag and a side of sausage and herb stuffing with some crisps crumbled onto the top. I know, quite a large serving. :( Need to learn cook for one person, not an army.

The problem is, I'm lazy. I like cooking but not often, so when I do cook I like to do large amounts so I can just heat things up later. Problem is, if I eat small amounts of food, it will take me far longer to eat it than the food spoiling, so I just end up eating lots. *sigh*

Iced over!

Venturing out in the snow when it was freezing and there were ice on the ground, the silly people that we were. I think we wanted to have our old Nando's+movie night that we used to do quite regularly but stopped due to financial reasons. So we went out for Nando's again and watched Did You Hear About the Morgans? Pretty cute chick flick with some funny parts, but nothing too memorable. I still don't like Sarah Jessica Parker, unfortunately, and again Hugh Grant was casted as a British man who is rubbish at everything.

Which is a shame, because he is quite charming. Not as charming as George Clooney though, aged as he already is, I think he'll be fantastic in Up in the Air.

Anyway. Some pictures of frozen over Britain on Tuesday (it has been getting worse and worse since then).

Outside the shops and cinema on the wharfside.

The wharf has frozen over. I don't remember the wharf ever freezing over the past few winters I've been in Lincoln.

Some really confused ducks wandering around in circles on the frozen wharf!

More of the confused ducks leaving icy trails.

^^ I found them so incredibly cute. Too bad the Blackberry has such crap a camera!

Let there be music!

I love musicals.

I grew up with a family that loves music. We had a karaoke machine when we were younger with a boxful of VHS tapes of English, Chinese and Malay songs. Family gathering warrant digging out the karaoke machine and everyone having a go at singing. And I remember a time when we had to karaoke for ang pows during one Chinese New Year. My parents also sent all of us for piano lessons when we were younger - one that I gave up at Grade 3 because I decided I wasn't at all musical. My theory was great, my oral was great, I have no problems playing scales, but getting my two hands to play together in time was the most difficult thing ever.

So that was that. But that didn't change how I grew up listening to popular music of the 70s and 80s, and some classical music thrown in on top. And our TV was made of stuff like the Sound of Music (which I remember trying to record, but the VHS tape didn't last long enough and cut off halfway, and I watched it with Brother #3) and King & I (which I watched one evening with Dad). Both of which I still have good memories till now. Oh, and of course we have the singing and dancing of Disney features.

I wonder if watching musicals is my way of escaping adulthood and going back to the childhood filled with song, laughter, happiness. All that sappy stuff, and you have to admit that musicals tend to be more memorable than your usual film. But regardless of why I do it, I finally started on my DVD collection of the musicals I want with a copy of the Sound of Music and Oliver! which I bought to watch over the 2 weeks that Boy is going to be at his parents' because I'll be bored and lonely. Also because he doesn't like musicals - too cheesy or something. I don't understand how he can not like musicals - they're generally so happy. :) Still, I wonder if I can con him into taking me to a West End musical at least once if we ever end up in London for more than a day.

Watching the Sound of Music right now - such blatantly American accents for a film that supposedly has Austrian characters. :P I would've mistaken the accents for those in Gone with the Wind!

And I just realised - I'm only on day 2 of Boy being away and I'm already out of movies to watch. :( In need of a social life, me!

Snow Day!

Hooray! I'm getting a couple of days breather from work and stuff because no one wants their eyes testing tomorrow what's with all the snow and such, so I get a lie in tomorrow. Awesome or what? And work likes me too because that means they have an extra day they can use for me to test if they ever get busy on my day-offs.

What snow, you ask? This snow!

It started snowing again whilst I was at work sometime during lunchtime, stopped for around an hour, and then continued with a vengence. So much that schools have been shut early and people are being sent home from work early just so that everyone can get home.

Yes, a little bit of snow and the whole country shuts down. :P Britain is one of the worst-prepared 4-seasoned country for snow, really. We usually don't get much at all, and this 3-4 inches worth of snow is something out of the ordinary. And snowing for more than a week is definitely something unexpected and surprising (most city councils only have a week's worth of grit in stock!). Whereas Canadians must be laughing at our pansy-ness.

I know I haven't written for some time. No, I'm not lazy. Really. But whilst everyone is busy being snowed in, I thought I might as well put a bit of an update on.

So how was everyone's Christmas?

I spent the earlier part of Christmas week at MJ's for a couple of days because I needed to pass on some Christmas presents to the honorary family. This year is also the first year since I've been in the UK that I have not spent Christmas at MJ's (barring first year of uni, I think). In return I got a load of presents too. What touched me most was that honorary mum decided to cook a Christmas roast meal with the usual pudding whilst I was visiting even though it was a few days before Christmas. It was pork rather than turkey, but still. They decided to have two Christmasses this year, one for when I was around and one when it is actually Christmas.

Which was really sweet of them to go through the trouble. :)

So... presents. I was going to take photos and post them up, and then I forgot. And then half of my Christmas gifts were eaten/used. And now I can't be bothered anymore to track down all of my gifts to photograph them, so instead, here's a list of stuff I got.

I got from honorary family a duvet cover, a turtleneck jumper, a box of Roses, and some Avon nail buffer and makeup stuff from honorary mum and dad. Got a double frog figurine and angel earrings from MJ. I have no idea who gave me a cat calendar, so I'll assume it's from all of them (or Santa!).

Trust them to know my obsession with cats. :D

Boy decided to go down to his family's for Christmas, so we went set off on Christmas Eve after he finished work at 5pm. Horrible driving conditions though - dark evening/night sky, poorly lit most of the way, patches of ice on the road and fog so thick we couldn't see past a couple of metres in front of us. Couldn't wait to get there.

Presents from Boy's family include an Elizabeth Arden makeup set and Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise EDP from Boy's parents, Nina Ricci's Nina EDT from Boy's brother, and box of Lindor Lindt milk chocolate truffles (not pictured) and a pretty compact mirror from Boy's grandparents.

Also got a present from my Secret Santa (from work), which is a gift box of Bailey's truffles and a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream, and a litre bottle of M&S Irish Cream. Not tried either yet, but sounds good enough!