Dinner @ Mela, Northbridge

Mela is a Indian restaurant that I've always walk passed but never thought of going in.

Probably because I'm not a person who knows a lot about Indian food. The only thing that I know is Roti Prata with curry. hahaha.. a bit ashamed when I say this because I'm came from a multicultural country.

In the other hand, Joe is a person who knows his curry really well. His family loves curry. All kinds. Other than that, he knows his briyani too! He will always order Briyani first whenever we go to a new Indian or Malay restaurant in Perth, because that his favourite.



The first thing that we've tried is the Samosa. Saw lots of people raving about it on the reviews! After having the first bite with the sauce, I was instantly in love with it! It is really good! Vegetarian or Lamb, both were good. Love the sweetness from the sauce too.



This is my dinner that night.
Thali. The most common way lunch is eaten throughout India is on a Thali. A Thali describes a selection of curries eaten with rice and bread and followed by a dessert.



This is Joe's.
Lamb Byriani. Traditional North Indian rice dish. The incredible spices & flavours of the selected meat & rice are cooked slowly for hours and served with a curry sauce and cooling cucumber raita (yoghurt)




















This is a good selections of sweets. I didn't have any because I was too full to have anything else!
It looks beautiful isn't it?



You know what's the most beautiful thing that I saw after my dinner? its a Caucasian woman wearing a traditional Indian Sari, standing next to her Indian partner. I felt love just by watching them...don't you think they are so lovely together? I couldn't help it but snapped a photo of them together at the counter. They put a smile on my face. :)

One of my dreams

Came across one of the post from Nuffnang today and it intrigued me a lil bit. Check out Blurb. It's pretty cool isn't it? Its Quick and Easy to publish a book with them. It's not expensive and maybe good for design students if they want to produce a nice looking project submission. Or any kind of book really. Personal, kids, photography or cook books!

It reminds me of when I was really young.. can't remember how old.. probably 13 or 14, I was in love with comics at that time. I read all kinds of comic books, Japanese manga (Slam dunk), American comics (Archie) and even from Singaporean ones (Kiasu). Loved them!



As you know I love drawing, or some people might say I'm just scribbling. During that time, being inspired by all the comic books, I took out a stack of A4 paper, a pencil and decided to draw my own comic. I managed to sketch something similar to Archie but an uglier version hahaha Not that bad.. there's a story line (quite a lame one), a few characters and I even coloured 1 page of it.



Hey, I was quite happy after looking at my rough and ugly drawing at that time! Until a few years later, while I was doing spring cleaning in my room, I found my comic book stacked with all kinds of crapz in one of my drawers. I actually had a good laugh at myself and thought this shouldn't be seen by anyone and straight away without thinking, I threw it into the bin.



Now I regret not keeping it.

Lucky enough, I'm still scribbling until today. 2 years ago, maybe around this time, I was bored staying at home and had nothing to do during winter days. To cure my boredom, I decided to make some handmade dolls to kill time.



Not sure why I made this but somehow it made me start my character Miss Mantou.
Miss Mantou represents me, the events in my daily life and reflects my mood.

Since then, I've been drawing Mantou until today. Take a look at my lil comic here!



and of course, I hope one day I can compile everything into one book and even publish it? That would be awesome.

This is definitely going to be on the Cover. hehe ^-^


Photos taken with Digital Harinezumi.

Brunch @ Cantina 663, Mount Lawley

I have found out that this place is very very popular amongst the food bloggers in Perth.
Seems like most of them have been there for breakfast or lunch! As the usual curious me, dragged Joe along with me to try out this fantastic place.



The look of it already impressed me. The huge wine rack inside the cafe impressed Joe.
The food? Impressed both of us.



Love the medicine looking water bottle.



The menu wasn't huge (lunch), but I think it's enough to give me a hard time to choose what to have because everything sounds very good! At first, I wanted to try the gnocchi, then I changed my mine to Risotto, then I change my mind again to Beef Cheek.



Joe had the Steak Sandwich.
Honestly, this is the best steak sandwich I have ever tasted.
I love it because it's easy to eat, the steak was cooked perfectly, and the flavour just blend nicely.
I never order steak sandwich for myself before because it is too clumsy and troublesome to eat. Most of the time, the bread was too thick that you have to separate it and spread everything out to eat it. But this one just eat it as it is! Clean and YUM! It was quite a light meal too.



My Beef Cheek was delicious! Tender meat, crunchy veges and thick and creamy gravy at the bottom.



It's so yum, I nearly licked the plate. Nah.. just joking. But the yum part is true.
To me, it's more like a dinner meal than lunch because it was quite heavy.

I will go back there to try the breakfast menu and dinner if I get the chance. :)

After our brunch, walking along Beaufort Street, walk passed the Lawley's bakery shop and our eyes got glued to the pastry that they are selling. Without any hesitation, we both walked in and choose something nice for ourselves.



I got the Lemon Tart, which was lovely. Love the acidity of the lemon curd and the sweetness of the pastry! It made me hungry again!



The Chocolate Cheesecake was nice too! It's light and creamy.
Most importantly, it tasted fresh. Joe really loved it!

We have tried and seen some really gross ones before in the cafe or even in the McCafe. It looks plastic and taste really unpleasant.

We were really happy with our meals and definitely have to try more restaurants on Beaufort Street! It's never ending!

Brunch @ [CNR] James + Lake

I was craving to have breakfast one day last week (yes.. i cheated on my diet day plan..Shh!)

So, I dragged a friend of mine to have breakfast with me at the [CNR] James + Lake Cafe.

That's actually a cool name isn't it? Corner of James and Lake. It is literally at the corner of James St and Lake St in Northbridge.

When I got in, I instantly in love with the interior.
Very hip, cool and definitely a place to chill out.

Anyway, we both shared a seafood and veges chowder and French Toast with berries compote.

I was pretty happy to see the two nicely presented dishes. Looks appetizing and makes you just wanna dig in. Unfortunately, I find the chowder was a bit too salty to my liking after a few spoons and I was quite dissapointed with the french toast too.. it's just a bit soggy and the berries doesn't blend well with it. Maybe I'm just being too picky or something..

But I really love that place.. maybe I should try something else the next time. :)

[Photog] finally... SLR...

I finally got the SLR camera after years of thinking and researching.

I know... i know.. it's just a freaking camera..why do I need to take so long to think.. but u know.. I took so long is just because I want to know what's suitable for me, whats good for me and what is the best price range for me. I don't want to get something that is not suitable and doesn't take the photos I wanted. and $$ doesn't fall down for me for some reason. :P

Finally, I've made up my mind going for the Canon SLR and a good quality basic lens. That's the best way to start with. A normal camera SLR body but invest on a good quality lens.

Sometimes people do ask me why do you need a SLR camera? It's expensive, it's huge and heavy to lug around. Actually what they are trying to say is, you are not professional photographer, why waste the money? Of course, there are a lot of people who supported me! Really appreciate them a lot. At least, they let me know that I should go for it and I can be better at it too. Never know!

I know I'm no pro but I'm a person who loves taking photo of everything, especially expressions of people and snapping photos of things that I want to remember. Using the normal camera makes it difficult for me to capture these moments unless I uses flash. I hate using flash. I hate the 2D flat looking photo. I have to photoshop most of my photos to make it prettier. I have took so much photos, trying ways to take better photos and I think I can take my photo taking skills to the next level instead of staying at the same place til I die.

Yes, it is time to level up and use a camera that can do whatever I want it to do.

Which is.. Capture the moments.

Let me give you some example. Well, I got no "human" models here, so the best way to test my skills camera is to take our lovely darlings at home.

Karzan & Floppy

First example:

Karzan and Floppy sniffing at each other.

I can never take this photo with my G9 because they both move so fast, I couldn't capture it.

But when I did, the photo is blur.

No more farkin worries now! I can take whatever I want now.

The second thing that I always wanted to capture is Karzan's one eye blinking skill. He always blink one eye, and come on... you can never capture that with normal camera alright! Either you use the flash that make them blink both eyes or make them blink like they are on drugs.

Look at how fast this camera performed! I have no regrets on choosing the camera and lens. Best camera n lens ever!

Of course I didn't ask them to do all this for me, I have to wait for the right moment and took tons of photo before I could get the photos that I wanted. Be a photographer is hard work man. hahaha

Anyway, the rest is just some shots of them posing.

Including me..

I love my camera although it's a real heavy piece of thing.

Welcome to your new family Mister Fifty Dee.

Diet Day 5

Yay!!! Finally!! My hardwork!

iPhone 4 Vs HTC evo

farking funny I tell you! Love it!!




I don't care!
I don't care!
I don't care!

HAhahahahah

Jumbo Cupcakes

I have done something very insane just now.
In the middle of the night, went to my cousin's house and baked the biggest cupcake in our life.
I bought this silicon mold few weeks ago and decided to give it a go.
It wasn't a success because it didn't turn out well. Erm... the cupcake look abit like circus tent in the horrible way. Firstly I forgot to grease the silicon mold, secondly I got no instructions/recipe at all to bake this thing. I had to search around and ask people about it.



But anyway, the cupcake is edible though :P taste quite nice because we uses the recipe from Masterchef. Basically use the normal cupcake recipe (12serve) and just pour it into the mold, 1/3 for the base and nearly full for the top. Remember to grease them. -_-" or else u will end up looking like mine...





Anyway, we have decided to make the lemon curd as the filling in the middle of the jumbo cupcake so that it won't be too dry while eating it. Love lemon curd! Love spreading it onto the biscuit.



Anyway, the normal cupcake turns out well! Look!



Taste really yummy and moist!



As for the Jumbo one... we had to bake for about 60 minutes. We were getting really tired that time.. ahahah it was 11.30pm when the cake is cooked.

Anyway, after the messing around with the cupcake, icing and cleaning the kitchen, we finally finished up the cake! 25x bigger than the normal one! How to eat? I don't know... I havent cut it yet!



A bit disappointed with the look of it, but I know it taste as good as the normal cupcake.
Since I know how to make it now, I hope I can bake it nicely the next time with a well planned decorations!
....and not on a tired night!

Diet Day 4

I love it!

Something interesting - the Blogging World.

Have you guys heard about an incident for demanding free food by a food blogger LadyIronchef in Singapore recently?
If not, check it out here.

He is one of the best food blogger in Singapore and finally, his website is up and running again. You can read his explaination here.

The best and the most interesting one to read is actually this one here from Xiaxue (top blogger in Singapore).
You gotto love the blogging community ey!?

:)

Diet Day 3

Even ants also bully me..

Diet Day 2

Halucinating

Diet Day 1

Fail.

Kate Rodrigues in Bunnings Belmont

Yes, it's something about Masterchef again.
You can so tell I'm a huge Masterchef fan, I can be like those stalkers too if I want to.
Went to see Kate from Masterchef Season 1 in Bunnings for a cooking demonstration.
Saw her at Mundaring Truffle Festival, but didn't get to take a photo with her, so I was quite happy that I can see her again.



She was demonstrating on how to cook a nice and tender lamb backstrap with a bed of salad.
It's a very simple dish and the meat was really tender and juicy. I love nice tasting simple dish because I hate complicated recipes. I will go insane whenever I try to follow a difficult recipe.





Not sure if you watch season 1 masterchef, she had this chocolate ganache that won the food critics over. It's a recipe that she has never given away before, but she gave in and showed us how to make it. I was excited and I am so gona make this at home! it's so easy! No baking required and taste so good. I feel like having one now! :P



Hope to see u again Kate and thanks for giving out our simple, easy and yummy choc ganache recipe!