93 DegreesC Cafe

I went for a little "me time" early this month. I thought that it was quite a lovely trip made with me, myself and I. It's been a while since I went out by myself. I used to not mind going shopping or doing things by myself when I was in Aussie, but I rarely get the chance to do so now that I'm back in Singapore and surrounded by people I know.

93 DegreesC Cafe

Black sesame chiffon cake

And here's another black sesame sweet treat. I still have some more leftover black sesame paste, and I'm thinking of what other black sesame goodies I can make with it...Possibilities are endless but I have something in mind already. Let's cross fingers and hope that when I attempt it, it will turn out fine.

 Black sesame chiffon cake

お弁当 (Homemade bento lunches)

I've started bringing my own lunches again to work at least once a week since February. While not all of them are 100% healthy (one of my latest bentos was katsudon), at least I get to control what I put in my body as I try to include at least two different vegetables in every meal.

Here's some visuals of my lunch boxes for the past four months taken with my iPhone 4S. :D

 Bento - Inarizushi topped with buttered corn and crab mayo, hijiki carrot salad, sesame mixed cucumbers, leftover bulgogi chicken and ajitsuke tamago.

PAUL Bakery (takeaway)

Ooooh, managed to catch a breather. I'm 'sort of' over the extremely busy period at work already, gonna make use of this time to try to upload more of my super backlog of photos that date back to my April Taiwan trip! Wish me luck.

In the meantime, here's some tasty pastries I had (yes, a few months back) form PAUL's Bakery. Yet another big name in the pastries world, PAUL's Bakery, had opened a flagship store in the middle of town early 2012. I've visited it twice already, both times to get takeaways as the queue for dining in was really long and the place was super packed.

PAUL pastries

Beef and vegetables stew

I've been busy. Well, I'm in a tired state majority of the time as I havn't been having enough sleep for quite a while.

The weather lately has been erratic, considering that Singapore is (or is it still?) a tropical country with a hot and humid climate - especially in the mid-year months where it should be summer. However, I feel that there has been more than the usual expected rainfall as compared to the past years. Global warming?

One of those weekends when it was raining, it so happened that I was making some beef and vegetables stew. Such perfect weather to enjoy the hot stew.

 Beef and vegetables stew

Black sesame orange choux puffs

I've been on a black sesame desserts spiel lately. This is just going to be the first of a couple of black sesame desserts to come. I've always loved Japanese flavours such as matcha and black sesame (kuro goma 黒ごま) and somehow I've not yet baked as much black sesame goodies as matcha ones as I felt that the key to good black sesame flavour always start with black sesame paste (instead of just plain black sesame seeds, or powder). And I rarely have black sesame paste in my pantry, compared to say, black sesame seeds. So armed with a bottle of black sesame paste, i set about to rectify that!

 Black sesame orange choux puffs (黒ゴマオレンジ シュークリーム)

Privé (revisited)

My girlpals and I, we've been friends for ten years already. Not to sound cliché, but my my, time really flies by. For our tenth anniversary to celebrate our friendship, you know, we had such big dreams. We were going to book ourselves a hotel room, and spend our time chillin' out and doing girly stuff. Guess what. As usual, plans took forever to formulate, and time was a tickin', so we resort to scrapping our pretty plan, and just meeting up for brunch instead. What can I say? After ten years of friendship, some things just really never change, does it? :)

Brie-licious Burger