Baking Sundays – Baby profiteroles with vanilla sauce and raspberry jam

Sundays, I love Sundays.
It is my so called baking day and we made Baby Profiteroles 🙂

I remember the first time creating these guys was in hospitality class in high school, many years ago. A good ol’ versatile choux pastry in need of major elbow grease. Resulting in delicious puffs and eclairs. I even made it a few years back, they came out too dry, you wouldn’t think it possible to overbake these guys… but i found out it was quite possible XD I also had a love for delicious custard puffs and that’s what I always try to buy whenever I head to an asian bakery back in Sydney.

Today, I have revisited the choux pastry with my partner in crime and nutted out some dainty mini puffs. I’ve been craving some custard puffs… but we only had a finite amount of eggs… cue in 3, enough to make the puffs but not the custard XD I sat cross-legged in front of the oven watching them become golden and yummy. When at last, after a few hurdles, they came out smelling great, we filled the cute little puffs with raspberry jam, drizzled with vanilla sauce and devoured in front of episodes of Arrow. Satisfied little home bakers we are :]

Det var veldig kaldt i dag! It was very cold today!

Wow… what’s up with this -10 degrees in Bergen??

My face was frozen numb with all my goosebumps standing to attention as I power walked from the bus stop towards the warmth of my classroom. I was pretty covered by my puffy sleeping bag-esque down coat but my fingers! Fingers were pratically popsicles (!!!) from holding onto the water bottle.

I know, I know, I hear you say, girl, you should have just stopped and pulled on some leather gloves but you know what I thought? Hey, I can totally hack this… so I soldiered on. Haha, this is not a tragic story… I didn’t end up losing two fingers from frostbites, I was just cursing under my breath and willing myself to walk even quicker without scraping and ruining the heels of my boots. 🙂

Dum di dum… time to start working on my lekser (homework). See yas!

Week1 : Super intensive Norsk course

The first week of Super intensive Norwegian class have come to an end. It was surprisingly helpful but i was hoping for it to be moving at a even quicker pace or just  just a little more in depth. Haha I’m asking a little too much from the first week of the absolute beginners course. As I recall taking French super intensive,  it felt like we consumed so much more french… maybe because I had not had any self study before that course.. hmmn…

The jist of things were quite easy to follow and the classes helped solidify quite a lot of what I have been self studying before arriving in Norway.Truth be said… the self study was laced mostly with procrastination but it definitely helped to have a bit of background before wandering into the course.

We ended the week with a gathering at one of the class mate’s home and practiced our Norwegian so far, i bet we were all over the place with our grammar, but our hearts were in it! 🙂

I’ve had  quite a good week as well! The weather in Bergen has been amazing… IE it didn’t rain when we were all out and about 🙂 Since coming to Norway, I have been in the kitchen cooking cooking cooking. Freinds gathering = happily cooking some yummies. It’s pretty crazy stuff. Oh, and I have a full list of dishes I want to cook, dishes that i’m craving that my mum and grandpa makes exceptionally well… but have yet to find the ingredients nor the equipment… .-. I gotta ask around some more and get some good pointers *nods*I had a yummy nikujaga recently… I believe the youtube chan ‘cooking with dog’ has the instructions! Anyways, here’s the stuff that has been brewing in the kitchens and group effort gatherings:

I’m hoping to go to my fav vietnamese restuarant to get a bowl of pho some day soon. I have been craving it for over a week. I think I might just be out of my league to try my hands at making a bowl of that awesomeness… plus I don’t have a massive pot to keep the stock on a rolling boil throughout the night… yeh my uncle from america made it when his family was last in Australia… it was soooooooooo delish!!!! TT

I’ll leave you with a pic of a friend’s cat XD
Well well, until another time 🙂

The Sweet side of life – Elsker deg cinnamon rolls!

Cinnamon Rolls anyday XD
Though the list should really also include them little blueberries – Blåbær! ❤ They are currently pretty affordable… around 13kroners a pack. That’s pretty billig (cheap) to me (around $2) … since i remember purchasing blueberries in australia for $5-6. yarh!

Woot ! first day of spring!

Hi there,

Oh look, knobby trees. It’s the first day of spring but it sure does not feel anything like it.
Either way, I double – triple checked the hourly forecast for the day before wandering out without an umbrella and also… in my lighter coat.
It was a great sunny day… actually… can’t quite remember if it was a sunny day or not, but it was definitely nice out and about. Remembering that one of my friends requested for random shots of Bergen… I pottered about and snapped a few for story telling 🙂

Easter is coming and the homeware stalls have really adorable items to be bought, i think it’s up there with my coconut turtle from fiji… ok… maybe my coco turtle trumps this by far XD There’s also awesome easter chocolate eggs and mazipan lollies that turn half price after Easter, I am staring at you, you little chocolate eggs!

These next few pics are of the Bergen city centre, kids love to wander about the stones in this area, i recall that it is also a water feature during the summer. I guess it’s a little too daring to have the water on during the start of spring, seeing how things are still freezing over XD This is just off Festplassen, where there’s a massive pond (?) that’s totally frozen over, some years when the ice is thick enough… you can even walk on the pond! I shall take some photos tomorrow of this pond, the greenery surrounding it is quite pretty… however, it can look sad during winter/start of spring 🙂

The mountain you see in the distance up there takes about 45 minutes to walk, I have yet to test out that time, I need to get those walking shoes pronto! The other option is  a nice little cable car ride up that costs… no free fare in Bergen!  That big stone is called the Blue stone (until i am told otherwise XDD). It’s a highly used meeting point 🙂

Good old Henrik Ibsen statue by Nils Raa in 1981 chilling by Bergen’s main theatre ‘The Nationale Scene’. I’m not too sure why the 4 statues up on the staircase are painted all fluro, but yes, i like it!  This following pic shows a lonely lolly shop, it is also very close to the threatre and to the main cinema of Bergen, this lolly store gets much traffic when popcorn and frozen coke just does not cut it for movie goers X)

Just lunching, mafia and lazing the friday away with international students and bergen locals. The rain and snow came soon after we walked into the cafe and its reign was over after the many hours we sat and willed away. I took two tries to order a chai latte at the counter, yay to taking baby steps! Jeg vil gjerne har en chai latte. Takk. What I got out of this outing was that I really need to work on my norwegian. Yay to classes next week! *Strums up courage to banish procrastination*

Quick Fact: I actually trained it all the way to Oslo and back just last weekend… and THE couch has arrived! I thought it was meant to look grey… but it’s brown… must be the yellow spotlights in the lounge. I have a bit to write, shall update with some more fluff soon!
See yas!

Gardening time!

Spring is here!

Over the sunny long weekend, I’d been reading up on gardening and various plants that would be easy for a beginner’s foray into the wonderful world of gardening. After hours and hours of googling, blog reading and youtubing, I was right and ready to hunt for my supplies~!

I wanted herbs and tomatoes…in one pot and not too much maintenance… and hopefully not too many bugs *dies*. I remember the wastage in the past… when we needed a bit of herbs but the supermarket only sold them in a large bunch! How convenient and proper would it be to have fresh herbs and vegies just outside the kitchen? Way proper! XD I needed to enlist buddies to help with loading up the potting mix and fertiliser and for good company.

The first on call was of course, my sister… however… she loves her Saturday sleep ins, hence a very difficult person to enlist. I unsuccessfully harassed her to wake up. I then called upon my good old cousin… whom i know looooooves the sausage sizzles that our local hardware/garden centre cooks up. She was easily persuaded! She exclaimed that before I called, she was failing at reading her study notes on a lovely Saturday morning… and that she had already taken a nap at 9am (it was approximately 10.15am then)! With combined effort (barging back into my sister’s room with my cousin on speaker), we got my sister to agree to a good outing!

After a lax half hour deadline, we were parking and wondering whether to get the sausage sizzles first or check out the supplies! As none of us were all that famished, we made our way towards the nursery. On our way… we did get sidetracked by a lovely fairy floss cart. Detour! 🙂

*nom nom* *ahem* Onwards to the nursery!

I came prepared with a list of plants for my one pot wonder. I picked up some cherry tomato, coriander, sweet basil and nasturtium seedlings. I had read to include the Nasturtium as it’s an edible flower, as well as, a great companion plant to tomatoes… keeping the munchie bugs away from my tomatoes and also help with wooing the bees and the butterflies for pollinating 🙂 I really wanted Borage as well, I read that it has really nice statement blue flowers,  a great companion plant to tomatoes as it should repel bugs along the lines of white flies and aphids and the leaves were meant to taste like cucumbers! It’s just positive after positive after positive, alas, the nursery did not stock them.*cries* My ever helpful cousin got most of the seedlings to the trolley, whilst I, read from my list. She even brought over some Vietnamese mint *YUM!* but I had to say no… as the plants on hand were definitely enough for a beginner gardener like me. I told myself… give yourself a week… if the seedlings have not died off yet… then you can go get some more kinds of seedlings… I think a week is actually too short a time frame.

Whilst being all jolly and whipped up in a gardening moment, my sister grabbed herself a little pot of eggplant seedling… because she loves to eat eggplants and thought … why not! XD I quickly googled companion plants for eggplants and found that marigold was a companion plant. Edible too! Popped them both into the trolley. We hunted for organic  potting mix and fertilisers. Heavy and dirty… the potting mix got our hands real dirty… in hindsight, we should have grabbed the sausage sizzle first then shopped. Next were pots… and a garden owl caught my sister’s eyes…. it was almost $8… too much of a bargain to pass by. It was swept away to the check out with us.

We managed to eat the sausage sizzle… it was more than a bit disappointing.

*twiddles thumb*

The next time i had any proper interaction with my seedlings other than watering them… was today! I had a good chat with my colleague who gardens… and I told her I shall be transplanting my little plants into their bigger pots. I really have no inkling of how much roughening up the little seedlings can take. I ripped a little hole to pour the potting mix neatly into the pots… but then it just split and quite a bit landed on the grass… lucky grass XD By the time I got everything transplanted and pressed a little firmly around the plants (I feel like i may have pressed a little too firmly… I mean… how firm is firm???!! *frustration*)… I kind of half buried the coriander and the tomato plants… the roots just kept staying up…. =.=;” I hope everything is alright. I also popped the eggplant and marigold into my sister’s pot. I seriously hope these seedlings aren’t little delicate princesses… that can’t take a little beating… the tomato plants do look a little sad *sigh*

Here are the potted plants! I hope they weather the harsh treatment, the stress of transplanting and the lack of water for the day… I made sure to add a bit more water this afternoon =.=” Haha, I am hoping quite a lot today *fingers crossed*
Fun side fact: The supposed fertiliser and potting mix i bought? I had unknowingly bought 2 potting mixes… one with fertiliser mixed in (ie don’t have to add nutrients for up to 6 weeks) and the other… straight. I know… what fail. Got to return the Potting mate and get some liquid nutrients for my plants 🙂

Sister’s Eggplant and Marigold

My Tomato, Basil, Coriander and Nasturtium Pot

Big Kisses and Polka Dots

Another week, another set of nails 🙂

During the Pastel green, red apples and polka dots! week… remember how I bought a strawberry red/pink… I had my eyes on that colour first! Ok I lied… I had my eyes on the green… second, was this nice ‘Big kisses’ colour from Mode. The two colours would go well together to make strawberry fruit nails! I think I’ll save that for another week.

This week I sported this: Tada~~~ *waves fingers*

Neons, Kites and bows

What does Neons, Kites and Bows have in common?
Read on to find out :3

While waiting on a message that never came, I noticed that my current nailart (of 7 days) from Pastel green, red apples and polka dots, was being all rebellious on my right hand (middle finger). It was peeling once again. I had previously applied a generous dashing of top coat to keep it in check but it had broken free of its confines and was all out to ruin everything *high drama*! Yes, the trouble maker had been giving me grief right from the start… I guess it was its way to protest against my harsh treatment of him and his peers (I’d gone to wash the dishes and hand washed some clothes for good measure ._.” ).

Pastel green, red apples and polka dots!

Red Apple on Polka Dots

When I’m done with all my obligations in a day, I just want to relax and have some me time. Facials would be nice (sadly need to buy new facial prods… all out) but getting my nails done up pretty is right up there with the joy of stuffing my face silly with yummy creme brulee!