red velvet

Camera: LC-A+, film: Fujifilm 200 push processed to 800

On the weekend, we made a batch of red velvet cupcakes. It was a wee bit burnt on some, but the sweet icing made up for it. Yum! This is the recipe we used, if you'd like to try for yourself.

a quaint little Japanese cafe

camera: LC-A+, film: can't remember, but it was cross-processed

One of the places I had to go to when I was in Japan (*sigh* how I miss it) was the charming little Hattifnatt cafe. I had it written in my must-go-to list ever since seeing it in Spaces magazine and Hello Sandwich. The entrance door is only 150cm high, the wooden staircase are tiny, the ceilings are pretty low, so there'a bit of ducking in to do (but not to the point of it being claustrophobically tight), and the decor uses a lot of timber and colourful murals. It felt like entering a child's playhouse, or better yet - the house of the 7 dwarves or the 3 bears (if they ever decide to open a cafe in a Japanese suburb)! Unfortunately this was one of those awkward times when not knowing a word of Japanese was very challenging. Yet somehow I managed to order a piece of cake and iced tea from their fabric-covered book menu, and learnt from observation that to get the staff's attention, we had to tug on a wooden handle in the middle of the room that didn't make a sound (the kitchen was downstairs), and when we were done, we had to bring the wooden spoon with the painted number on it that was on our table (obviously our table number) down to the cashier downstairs. Quaint and foreign - it was quite the experience!

These photos were my first experiment with cross-processing (which kind of fit the theme of trying something different!). If you'd like to see better photos and descriptions of the cafe, hop over to Hello Sandwich!

burger mania

Camera: LC-A+, film: Kodak 400TX Black and White

One of the best meals I had in Japan was at Burger Mania. The burger was mouth watering, the onion rings were the best I've had in my life, and it may have been the first time I've had burgers served with a pot of tea!

much love monday

love: making pizza with a pal on the weekend. Of course I had to make mine in a shape of heart! Then I can say "You can have a pizza my heart!" *giggles* I am lame :)

what are you loving?

Much Love Monday is a weekly blog post series, intended to start off each week with some positivity instead of the typical Monday blues!  
To join in Much Love Monday, simply do a blog post that includes a picture of a heart and mention something you love. Then leave a link of your blog post in the space below, by clicking on the "Add your link" button. If for any reason you can't add your link, please put it in the comments instead.

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a chocolate house and childhood besties

One of the highlights from my trip home last week was catching up with my best friends from childhood (we've known each other since Primary school and junior high, so it's been a good 10+ years now!), and we made a trip to a local chocolate shop/factory in Jogja. It's called Monggo, and they make the finest chocolate from Indonesian cocoa beans. They taste SO good, and I ended up buying so many! The dark chocolate are to die for, I tell you.

The place was really nice, and hardly looked like a chocolate factory at all. It was more like a cozy little house, and it was decorated with bits of our Javanese culture - and nothing's more Javanese than our Batik and Wayang puppets. The word for chocolate in Indonesian, "cokelat", also means the colour brown, which I also notice is the dominant colour tone of the place. Nice and earthy. There's something nice about getting in touch with my own culture, and seeing familiar sights that I hardly see when I'm living abroad... and to appreciate that with the friends I grew up with years ago, was just lovely.

You will notice that this is one of the very rare posts where I am actually showing my face. I'm the one in the brown polka dot skirt, by the way.

august break day #12

camera: Olympus OM-10, Film: (don't remember)

It's the end of the week! Did you have a good one? Looking forward to the weekend? Yep. Me too.  Go and treat yourself to something nice. Like a macaron. Or two.

august break day #6

Camera: Holga 120 GCFN, with a 35mm adapter. Film: AGFA 400 ISO

Happy weekend loves!

hot pot

So this was our seafood hot pot feast. It was pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself! We ate loads of food and were so full, but man was it good. Oh, and yes, we did buy and tried out a couple of those hot chocolate drinks - purely out of curiousity and hilarity. After a whole process of reading the instructions over and over, pushing a button, waiting, shaking (the can, not ourselves), waiting some more, and lots of laughing (yeah, we are easily amused) - we had ourselves some sweet hot chocolate! It tasted alright actually, despite being too watery, we think a couple of marshmallows could make it better (hey, if they can figure out how to make a self-heating can, surely they can figure out how to include a marshmallow in there! Too much to ask? Fine.)

Good food, good friends, and a self heating can of hot chocolate... a recipe for an awesome winter weekend, if you ask me ;)

See you on Much Love Monday!

richmond

Some friends and I cooked up an awesome hot pot/ steamboat lunch yesterday. So in the morning, we hopped on the tram to Victoria St, Richmond to shop for all the ingredients we needed first: seafood, meat balls, vegies, mushroom galore! I don't go there very often, so it was pretty interesting exploring what they had. Personally, there's something about these kind of Asian stores that offer some comfortable familiarity - like when I found those Chinese bread sticks that I used to have in Indonesia (we call them "cakwe"), and they are SO yummy! At the same time, there's also something completely unusual that catches us off guard, like those hot chocolate drinks... in a CAN! There are actually SELF-HEATING hot chocolate in a CAN. Yes, I am so blown away that cap letters are necessary! I have never seen/heard of such a thing before! Apparently you have to flip the can upside down, push a button, wait 20 seconds, steam comes out, then you shake it, wait 3 minutes, and suddenly you have a can of hot chocolate. Yep, no joke.

Next post: photos of our hot pot in the afternoon, and will also let you know how we went with the hot chocolate ;)

chocolate high tea

I was invited by Nuffnang to a Food and Fashion Blogger Chocolate High Tea this weekend at the Langham Hotel's ARIA restaurant. I was quick to accept the invitation after reading the keyword: Chocolate! I was also excited because I've never been to any kind of blogger meet-up before. So it was great to meet other Melbourne based bloggers out there, who were all really lovely by the way. It's kind of refreshing to introduce myself as a "blogger", because I don't usually talk about even having a blog to most people.

As for the chocolate, it was absolutely divine! I wish I could have sampled each and every one of the amazing delicacies, but there were so many to choose from that it was just impossible! Mind you, what you see in the picture of my little plate may not seem much, but that was my second helping already! I seriously should've just skipped breakfast that morning. A couple of the highlights for me would be the white chocolate strawberry mouse tarts and the amazing chocolate souffles. I won't go into much detail, but you can see more photos and better descriptions at Sarah Cooks (see if you can spot me there!) and Mel: Hot or Not. I also want to thank Joyce for the first 2 and last photo that I used in this post. That's another nice thing about going to an event with professional bloggers - they take professional photos (which they don't mind sharing!)!

Thank you to Nuffnang and Langham's ARIA restaurant for the fun event.