November 6, 2011

This week in brief

Agnes food roundup

This week has been awesome. Not only did I had Monday and Tuesday off (thank you, Melbourne Cup), I managed to fulfill a cake craving by baking this molasses cake with cream cheese icing, and in addition: Alastair is finally home. Huzzah! 😀

I spent Monday baking, baking, baking. As well as the molasses cake, I also finally used my Cupcake Central cupcake mix that I had received a couple of months ago. I took the cupcakes along to karaoke that night, but unfortunately they got confiscated at the door. DOH. (I got them back at the end of the night.)

I didn’t eat any of the cupcakes, but Thanh said they were almost as good as the ones that Cupcake Central bake in store – very impressive for a mix.

Despite the fact that my cupcakes were confiscated and I couldn’t peddle them out to my fellow karaoke singers, we still had a fun time. A hardcore group of us hung around until closing time, singing until our throats were hoarse.

Tuesday was Melbourne Cup day. I had to get out of bed after only 5 hours sleep so I could get ready for a picnic that Maz and Daz had organised. The day before I had prepared a big pot of pulled pork, as well as a batch of brioche dough. In the morning, all I needed to do was pop the brioche in the oven and make some coleslaw. Well, it sounded easy. It took me ages to get prepared.

When I finally arrived at the picnic (I was an hour and a half late… but seriously who starts a picnic at 11am?) I put together my picnic dish of mini pulled pork brioche burgers. So cute. 😀

After eating and feasting, it was time for Kubb. You may remember we played Kubb at the Anzac Day picnic, and we split into two teams with the same allegiances as last time. It was even more competitive and cut throat on this occasion… and to my eternal surprise I turned out to be pretty good. Bro and I pretty much carried the team, taking us to overall victory. (Mazza, if you’re reading this: you know it’s true. Bahaha.)

After a game of Kubb, we stopped so we could listen to the main Melbourne Cup race for our sweeps. Guess what though? No one had brought a radio… so we were forced to use our iphones and the ABC radio app to play the race coverage. The phones weren’t loud enough, so Bro had the brilliant idea of putting the phone into a cup to amplify the sound. It worked really well, except for the first 5 minutes before I realised I had put my phone into the cup the wrong way… no, of course I didn’t complain that it wasn’t working… didn’t do that at all.

On Wednesday it was back to work. I often eat eggs for breakfast when I’m at work – here’s one of my microwave omelettes topped with fresh diced tomato, bathed in the morning sun.

And finally, last night I hosted an epic curry feast. Big thanks to Bianca for coming over early and cooking a couple of dishes.

I made: pork vindaloo, chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, daal, cauliflower rice, and basmati rice.

Bianca made aloo gobi, chicken peratal, naan, and pulut hitam.

It was a truly epic and delicious feast because not only did we have all that, but Kat brought two sides: a carrot salad and a delicious eggplant dish. The other Kat made a pineapple and prawn curry. Adrian brought along a jar of mango chutney for the curries. I-Hua brought cupcakes and gingerbread cookies. April made her pandan cake. And Thanh just showed up and stuffed his face. 😉

Well, that was my week: baking and curry making! How was yours?