hot air balloons and brekkie

Ever since my first year in Canberra, I wanted to see the Balloon Spectacular – a festival of hot air balloons that begins at dawn. I figured that I’m probably not going to be in Canberra for the long run so I wanted to make the effort this year to attend the festival. And I did it! Yay!

Waking up at 4am and facing the morning cold was worth every second of the festival. I felt like a child again where anything was possible.

By 7am ish, I was starving so my friend and I went to the new café in Curtin called My Gourmet Delights. I ordered a brown rice veggie pattie which came in a toasted sandwich… unfortunately it was pretty disappointing. The pattie was dry and was akin to eating old brown rice. There were extra carbs from the bread and they didn’t tell me that it came with cheese (which I didn’t feel like eating)... boo… oh well. At least the balloon festival was rewarding!

breakfast pizzas

We must have been super hungry and energetic one morning because we made pizza for breakfast. I remember it being really darn good. Turkish bread with a tomato based and topped with spinach, green capsicum, Jarlsberg cheese, shredded ham and an egg. We popped it in the oven then under the grill to cook the egg and yum. I loved having the half cooked egg as the yolk dispersed among the pizza ingredients and made it ever so moist. You can use whatever bread you want and add whatever toppings you want. If someone gave me the same meal today, I don’t know how I’d fit it in my stomach. It was good back then though!

carrot deliciousness

Somehow, I ended up with 3 x 1 kilo bags of carrots in my fridge. As I have a pet hate for wasting food, I found some interesting carrot recipes on the net and my favourite food blogs.

Carrot cake oatmeal
What? Carrots for breakfast? Well why not? Carrots are as sweet as fruit and fruit is often consumed at breakfast so I figured it could be used as a substitute in my breakfast. Plus, I liked the idea of having carrot cake for breakfast. I used a recipe from Oh She Glows, a healthy vegan blog.

I don't have an amazing abundance of stuff in my pantry, so I used the following ingredients listed in the recipe:

*1 heaped cup of finely grated carrots

*1 cup oat milk plus extra where necessary

*1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 1/8 tsp nutmeg

*1/2 cup oats

*A bite size chunk of banana

*Toppings: raisins, pumpkin seeds, coconut shavings and yoghurt

The method is a one pot simplicity. I soaked all ingredients except the toppings in a bowl overnight as this would speed up the cooking process the next day. The next morning, I put these ingredients in a pot, boiled and simmered away as I would when cooking normal porridge. After around 10 minutes, everything melted together. Excited...

You can add sweeteners to the oatmeal, but I thought it was sweet enough as the carrots and banana were a natural sweetener. Yoghurt added extra creaminess and the pumpkin seeds/coconut gave the meal a crunch. As the oatmeal on its own looks like a mysterious orange glob, the toppings make the porridge look more palatable.

Carrot hummus
I forgot where I got the recipe for carrot hummus, but the end result was pretty delicious. It was the standard hummus recipe with a can of chickpeas, tahini, garlic and lemon juice... plus two slightly boiled carrots and a bit of fresh minced ginger. These are my work snacks for the week :)

tofu pancakes

I took a much-needed day off work to relax, rest and recuperate. Somehow, I spent 6 out of 8 hours of the day cooking. I'm not sure if it was exactly relaxing and I felt slightly hopeless for using up my day on chore-like activities. I probably need more hobbies other than cooking or those that revolve around food. Oh well. Let me embrace it for a moment.

I've read many recipes that include silken tofu in pancakes. Many of these recipes are vegan and tofu is used as an egg/protein substitute and can lighten up the texture of the pancake. However, I wondered whether tofu can be used to complement conventional pancakes that use eggs. Are eggs really necessary in pancakes/tofu pancakes? I tried making both.

My recipe consisted of gluten free self raising flour, oat milk, silken tofu and 1/2 egg for one pancake. I used egg in the batter and pancake shown on the left whereas the batter/pancake on the right has no egg.

Both pancakes are a similar colour to their batter - the egg added a yellow tinge to the left pancake whereas the pancake on the right remained a beige tofu colour. Both pancakes cooked decently. As you can see, the pancake with only tofu broke a bit, but this isn't significant.

I was experimenting with pancake batters so I thought I'd take it a step further and try out different pancake toppings. I microwaved frozen raspberries and added fig jam to it to remove the berries' occasional sourness. I also used rice malt syrup.

The tofu pancake with egg was light and fluffy. The taste of the tofu was noticeable so I probably wouldn't recommend it to tofu haters.

The pancake without egg was a bit more mushy and had the texture of firm porridge. It was less like cake and more like a moist pudding. I still enjoyed it but if you try this, don't expect it to taste like the conventional flour, egg, milk, butter pancake.

I would definitely cook tofu pancakes again. They were also pretty light on the stomach. I prefer the one with egg as I anticipate a cakey texture when I eat pancakes. If I cooked the one without eggs again, I'd cook it for a bit longer on a lower heat. Also, tofu pancakes would probably be fluffier and rise more with wheat flour, rather than gluten free flour.

an amazing breakfast

Last year, I met up with my Texan friend who was visiting Sydney. He was staying at the Park Royal Hotel in Darling Harbour and had a spare pass to the hotel's buffet breakfast. After hanging out with me for a few days, he quickly learnt that I love food so kindly invited me to a free buffet breakfast - it was close to a dream!

Being a health freak, I am cautious and selective of my food. High cholesterol runs in my family so I need to avoid egg yolks, fried stuff, full cream milk and saturated fat (anything the average person would enjoy eating). But this was all catered for at the hotel.

There was a stand-in chef who made and cooked omelettes with any of nine fillings of your choice. I got an egg white omelette with the works. In addition, I got bircher muesli, a fruit juicer machine and fresh fruit. Healthy delicious galore.

big weekend

I love seeing how people’s choice of food reflects what’s going on in their lives.

On the weekend, I graduated from my work grad program, drinks with colleagues, partied and debriefed.

National Portrait Gallery: Graduation

The weekend kicked off with our graduation at the National Portrait Gallery. The ceremony was boring and I grumpy due to lack of sleep. However, the food was a highlight! We had crustfree sandwiches (either with smoked salmon, cream cheese etc or roasted veges etc) and cakes, such as orange and almond meal or chocolate brownies. It was a work event but the socialising aspect of it blurred work into the weekend.

Kingston Hotel: Work drinks/dinner

The grads went to the Kingston Hotel for drinks and a pub dinner after the graduation. As much as I love having dinner with the grads, I hate talking about my work outside of hours. Luckily the topic of food and the psychology of birth order came up. Love it! At Kingos, you’ve got the option of an a-la-carte menu or DIY menu (where you pick some raw meat and BBQ it).

I had a roasted pumpkin and pine nut salad. It was good overall, but it was covered in some heavy oil or dressing which made me feel a bit gluggy afterwards. My friends had a parma, chargrilled vege skewers, goat etc. Typical pub meals - laid back and no fuss.

Kingston Hotel

73 Canberra Avenue  

Griffith ACT 2603

Civic: a drunken night
Some of us headed out to Civic for a Graduate party. Everytime I go out, a person must have a greasy slice of pizza. Comforting convenient food when drunk is needed to soak up the immense amount of liquids consumed.

Pizzazz Cafe: farewell

One of my closest friends was leaving Canberra, so we caught up for brunch as kinda 'the last meal' she'd have in Canberra. She had eggs Benedict with bacon and I had muesli with rhubarb compote, and natural yoghurt. It was presented as a trifle in a clear glass - sophisticated. However, I thought the meal was okay - there was a bit too much yoghurt for my liking and could have done with more muesli. But maybe that's just because I am a cereal/muesli addict. I probably wouldn't order it again.

Pizzazz Cafe

41 Kennedy Street, Kingston 
Kingston, ACT 2604

Tosung Korean BBQ: debrief

A chilled out debrief meal needs to follow every big night out. I went with a close friend to the new Korean BBQ in Manuka. I needed to vent and was drunk (again, whoops) so thankfully, my friend did all the cooking. I probably wasn't craving meat at this stage but apparently one craves meat if they need a boost of energy.

Compared to the Korean BBQs that I would have in Sydney, it was bit small. But the meat was of good quality – what I mean by this is that there was not too much excess fat. The venue was good as the exhaust pipes were moveable, so we could place it near the smelly stove, minimising the heat from scorching our faces and the smokiness penetrating our clothes.

Tosung Korean BBQ

Manuka (old Zeffirellis)

Yuppie?

Earlier in the year, I was enjoying a cafe lunch in Canberra on a sunny weekend. We were talking about our families who owned businesses, gossiping and critiquing the cafe's food. Then one of us dropped the 'yuppie' description upon us. Do I really live in the yuppie culture?

I decided to ask my trusty guides: Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary.

According to one definition in Urban Dictionary, I'd probably be classified as a yuppie: "Acronym for Young Urban Professional... Usually congregate in... Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and a wide variety of vintage clothing boutiques. Includes both moderate Liberals (Majority of yuppies), and moderate Conservatives (smaller group of yuppies), although both the far left and the far right enjoy dissing them."

However, I highly doubt I fall into Wikipedia's definition: "Yuppies are made fun of for their conspicuous personal consumption and obsession over social status among their peers, which is seen as vain and materialistic."

People around me have always associated yuppies with latte-sipping people with toasted focaccias living in the Inner-West of Sydney (the trendy/cool part), or frequenting this area. Maybe Wikipedia/Urban Dictionary need to be amended or maybe the term 'yuppie' is up to individual interpretation or maybe the term is thrown around too easily and it's meaning has become more 'inclusive' of a range of people.

ANYWAY... to farewell one of my good friends who is leaving for New York, we caught up for breakfast at the Kawa Cafe in Surry Hills. It was a balmy Saturday morning, there were tables on the side walk and the food was really good.

We got the Vegan Breakfast, a Salmon toasted sandwich and... *drum rolls* an amazing poached pear and vanilla bean smoothie. The ingredients were fresh and reminded me how good food can be. I can't put it all into words. And plus I'm hungry and tired now, so I'll leave it at that.

FANTASTIC cafe that you could miss if you blinked. Highly recommended :).

Kawa Cafe
348 Crown Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010

And walking around Paddington, we came across a few food stalls - one of my favourite things to stumble upon :)