Vodafone Cupcakes

Let me tell you about a few things I love:

Freebies, I adore freebies, I will generally take anything thats on offer even if I am sure I dont want it.
Cupcakes, I dont think its the taste so much as I find them adorable. Despite rarely eating a cupcake due to my boring diet I have several cupcake cook books and frequent cupcake stores just to look..!
And lastly, miniature things. I find anything in mini form delightful, I also am quite fascinated by things that are much bigger than normal.

So you can imagine how happy I was today to get these:

(excuse the dodgy photography)
From http://www.thecupcakebakery.com/, courtesy of vodafone and work, free, mini, cupcakes!

I wont be eating them, but couldnt be happier anyway! And a special someone will be even more happy than me when he gets to eat them for dessert...!

The great pie search....

I went to America last year, and as I was still strictly dieting did not partake in many treats.

Upon returning my biggest regret is that I didnt try...

....pumpkin pie!

So can anyone tell me where in the sydney/inner west area I can find some??

I intend on making them for christmas however I would like to try some first or else who knows how mine will turn out! haha....

Fishy Ice Cream!

I love asian grocers.

I have no idea why, I love exploring all food stores really but asian grocers are a particular favourite.

I often look a bit out of place as I am staring at all the weird and wonderful food in amazement, and usually leave without buying anything, not only this but I am often the only caucasian person in the store.

A new asian supermarket opened near my house so I decided to go exploring.. and I spied this:

Fish shaped wafer filled with vanilla ice cream and red bean!! HAHA!

I had to have it, firstly I looove red bean (I tried it for the first time a few months ago inside a mini mooncake that I bought because it was cute, and have been an addict ever since. ) and secondly... its so cute!

He looks so sad??

the inside:

Taste wise it was not amazing.

The wafer was dry and tasteless, the red bean couldnt compete with the coldness or amount of ice cream, but it wasnt bad, well worth the $1.20 for such a cute thing.

My First Macaron. =)

I was a bit naughty this weekend, which I feel bad about cause I have a terribly delicious and unhealthy weekend planned next week.But I did alot of jogging so its ok.. anyway onto the interesting stuff.

..... I have a confession. Until this weekend I had never eaten a macaron...I have seen so many enticing pitcures on various food blogs.. and heard so many wonderful reviews I decided that next time I saw some I would have to try them.

So this weekend I found myself at the rocks.

The first thing I saw at the rocks was this massive boat:

(its crazy...You could see what they were watching on the gigantic television screen on the boat from across the water!!)

Then while walking around the markets I spied a lady holding a tiny box with 3 macarons in it....

I had to hunt them down!

So I saw a patisserie and checked inside... success!!!

I bought 3 Macarons... rosewater and buttercream, salted caramel, and olive oil and white chocolate ganache. ($10 per 100g)

I cant believe it took me this long to try these! They were delicious! The crisp shell, moist sweet inside... yum....

The rose one was amazing, will definately be trying more of those. The caramel was nice but slightly too bitter for my taste, the bitterness somehow didnt balance well with the amount of sugar, but it wasnt bad, the olive oil and white chocolate was a bit of a let down, the macaron itself was nice but the white chocolate ganache had a bit of a.. fake taste.

So overall, I am definately a newly converted Macaron lover, but will obviously need to do alot more 'research' i.e eat lots more.(I have been promised a trip to Adriano Zumbos in balmain for my birthday which is coming up so I will probably have to give in to temtaion and try quite a few then!)

The Macarons were followed by a dinner not worth mentioning (lets just say the reason I for what I though to be a very good value nicoise salad was that it contained a tin of that horrible mushy sandwich tuna....)

Part Two

Alright so I don't actually believe myself worthy of the title of a fully fledged foodie, so I do use the term loosley.. but the things is, once I started dieting, and started analyzing everything I ate I really started to appreciate every bite of food.

Now that I had to think so carefully about what I was eating I found myself very aware of the look of the meal, the flavours of the meal and really making sure I enjoyed evey bite.

In fact I became a little obsessed. I would find myself walking into supermarkets and bakeries just to gaze at the beautiful and strange things to eat (I particularly love doing this at asian grocers).
I would look through menus online even if I wasnt planning to eat there. I bought mountains of cook books. I also developed a love of the many cupcake bakeries popping up all over sydney (even though to this day I have only eaten one)

I started to think I was going a little mad after people started to get fed up with me detoruing past cake displays and the like.

Then one day my boyfriend advised he wanted to go out for chinese dumplings, he had heard that ashfield was the best place to get dumplings.
I found his request a bit strange as he had never shown any inclination towards dumpling eating before but none the less I was happy to scour the internet for reviews of ashfields chinese shops.

And from her review of one of these I discovered not quite nigella, whose blog I have been stalking ever since.

After my revelation about the existance of food bloggers I stopped thinking I was going a little mad, and decided that even if no one is going to read it I would get past my fear of online social networks (yes, I know its rather sad for a 22 year old...) and make a blog.

I dont expect this to be read by many (if any) but as my family and friends do not really care in the slightest about food, and are no doubt sick of me talking about it, at the very least I can get it off my chest on here!

The Story So Far

Ok so, to explain where this blog came from theres really 2 parts to the story.

The first part is the healthy part.
About a year or 2 ago, I did not love food, I loved eating. I didnt really care if it tasted nice or if I was full, I just ate and ate, I was of course rather large, and rather miserable.

Then I met my lovely boyfriend, and became very happy. So happy in face I finally got motivated to do something I had been wanting to do for such a long time... I started looking after myself and being healthy.

I started just by making healthier choices, salad instead of chips that sort of thing... but I would always convince myself, 'oh, go on, you have been so healthy all day, just one little piece of cake for dessert..' and soon would find myself eating everything in sight.

From this I learnt I am an all or nothing type of girl... I can easily say no to all 'naughty' (aka delicious) foods, but cannot stop myself at just a little bit.

Once I figured this out my diet became easy and the weight fell off.
I learnt as much as I could about health and nutrition and my normal diet does not include sugar, fats or oils, or processed food. Its also worth mentioning I dont eat red meat or chicken, and I count calories.. rather strictly.

I bet you think that sounds rather dull.? Certainly not behaviour worthy of a foodie title?
You may be right.. but there is more to the story....