Birthday Fun - Part 1

I remember celebrating my birthday here in London last year and it was a very emotional time. Not only was I away from home, family and close friends, I also didn't have many friends over here at the time. Luckily, my adopted parents, Jake and Audrey and adopted big sister, Wern Yi, made up for the 'homesickness' I was feeling :) So this year was very different. I can't believe I've been here for nearly over a year and a half. Looking back, I have achieved so much more than I planned including meeting some amazing people who have become some of my dearest friends. I often try to think of ways of how I can pack them up in my suitcase and take them home with me :) For my birthday, Jake and Audrey took me to Gordon Ramsey's hotel restaurant, York and Albany. I still haven't figured out how to use my camera to take good photos in dimmed light so I don't have any nice photos of the food we ate. Unfortunately, I wasn't actually impressed with the food we ate. It could be because we ordered from a set menu as Audrey got a voucher from lastminute.com which was 25pounds for a three course meal. When I looked around at what people around me were eating, it looked a lot nicer :(

Welcome Dan and Lydia!

Met up with Dan and Lydia on the weekend at The Breakfast Club. It was so strange to meet up with them in London but I was excited to see some familiar faces from home.

My breakfast: apple and cinnamon french toast Lydia's breakfast: 'Green eggs and ham' - scrambled eggs with chives, ham and cream cheese and a side of wedges Dan's breakky: The Full Monty - bacon, sausage, black pudding?, eggs, hashbrowns, mushroom, beans, tomato

Pancake Tuesday

Pancake Tuesday meant pancakes for lunch, pancakes for dinner and pancakes for dessert :) At school, nearly every class decided to make pancakes and when there are left overs, it gets taken to the staffroom for us teachers to gobble up! Food that goes into the staffroom never comes out! :P Audrey, Jake and I had also decided to make pancakes that night. We made savoury ones for dinner and sweet ones for dessert.

The savoury fillings: spinach, cheese, chirizo sausage, mushroom, tomato and onion.

:)

Jake tucking into it.

Our sweet toppings: ice cream, berries, banana, lemon, butter, nutella, sugar, honey.

How many combinations can you think of? :P

Yum, yum, yum!

All Night Long

Happy happy birthday Anna :)

The 5th of March... definitely a night/morning to remember :D

The celebrations started off at a place called Fifty Five Bar and Lounge in Camden where I met the gang after they had taken advantage of Happy Hour (as you can tell by their red faces :P)

Dinner (at 9:30pm - 11pm) was at a little Japanese Restaurant (still in Camden) called Asakusa. It quite popular as we soon found out when Anna underbook. She booked for 10 but we ended up with 15 people and there were no spare chairs around. Let's just say we had a very intimate and cosy dinner together :P

I was intending to go home after dinner but Anna (by this point slightly more than just tipsy) wouldn't let me go home and I gave in seeing as it WAS her birthday :) So onto Electric Ballroom (no dad, there was no ballroom dancing here whatsoever! :P) I'm not a huge clubber but this club was sooooo much fun! It played the oldies and the goodies that everyone knew the lyrics too. People was singing (and shouting) at the top of their lungs (including myself :P) and dancing like they just didn't care.

Thank you Anna for an amazing night. I'm glad I stayed out!

Be At One

After the disappointing Chinese New Year celebrations at Trafalgar Square, we decided to have an early dinner and drinks. We made our way to a pub called Be At One near China Town.

Gary looks happy now... but this was before Kum decided to let his drink slip out of his hand and all over Gary. Gary was not impressed! :P

That night I was introduced to one of my now favourite cocktails - it has a different name depending on where you order it but I know it consists of Baileys, cookies and cream... and other stuff that makes it very yummy :) It's like a milkshake!

CNY - London Family Dinner #2

Audrey, Jake and I have decided that we need to spend more quality time together as a 'family' because during the weekdays we are all quite busy and hardly see each other. So monthly dinners are organised in turns. It was Jake's turn so he organised our CNY dinner.

He found this amazing chinese restaurant called Sichuan Folk Chinese Restaurant near Brick Lane. It's quite new, 3 months old, but the reviews online were all fantastic. We had to try it for ourselves and we were definitely not disappointed. The food was authentic and tasted amazing! The service was quick and the owner always checked to see whether we were enjoying our meal. Price wise - reasonable :)

This was our dessert - Pumpkin Pies? Yeah, I wasn't sure about it at first as a dessert but apparently is a traditional Sichuan dessert. It was recommended by the owner (who took a liking to Audrey and I :P) and surprisingly was quite nice. The outside it similar texture to a hasbrown but on the inside it had something like glutinous rice (like kuay) and it was sweet with a hint of pumpkin. It was unusually quite yummy :)

Full and satisfied :)

My adopted parents :)

CNY - London Family Dinner #1

One of the things I miss about not being back in Melbourne is celebrating Chinese New Year with my family. My parents have kept a few traditions when it comes to CNY, such as buying new clothes to wear, cleaning the house on the eve, giving red packets, visiting close family friends etc and of course having a family dinner. So this year I wanted to keep those traditions alive and managed to do all of the above (I gave red packets to my children) and even add cleaning my classroom at school! :)

As for the 'family' dinner, Anna and her housemates kindly invited me out to Golden Pagoda in China Town to spend CNY night with them.

Shredded duck

Salt and Pepper squid

My third 'family': Seb, Kym, Kum

Shonny, Long, Anna

Dessert at the restaurant wasn't fantastic so we decided to go to Patisserie Valerie where they sell amazing cakes, pastries, biscuits, gelati and macaroons! I have always walked past it but never thought to try it. I didn't know what I was missing out!

And look what was staring at me in the front window...

Potential croquenbouche with blue white chocolate decoration wedding cake? :P