Stalk my noms: Dessert House Green Tea Ice Cream with Red Beans

Mmmm My fav combo Green Tea & Red Beans

I think I was the last Chinese in the area to find out about Dessert Story opening in Doncaster Westfield! I have never tried this but I keep seeing this Dessert Story popping up on Instagram. I finally stumbled on it and it is right outside Coles and ANZ Bank. 

The funny thing is, the Chinese words mean "Dessert House" but I am not sure why they are called Dessert Story, perhaps it is because there is already a Dessert House in the CBD/Chinatown. 

So I had a shock of my life when this arrived on my table. Lucky I only ordered one thing. Also lucky as it is $10. $10!!! There was a huge pile of ice cream infront of me and I nearly freaked out. When I started eating the ice cream, I realised it was a light fluffy shaved ice texture. Which sort of was weird yet pleasant at the same time. D did not touch it at all but Pickles hoed in like it was Christmas, desperately fishing for ice cream and taking out the red beans. 

I think I will get something else next time... looking forward to taro balls or something really Chinese next time.

Stalk my Weekend: bubbles shopping spa

This weekend was uber exciting for me. I had taken off Friday AND Monday. Yeah like seriously 4 day weekend. Woohoo...

One the sad note, our Nespresso is busted and the replacement machine did not come in time. Seriously - this is why you pay so much for your machines. You get one loan machine sent to you while they take yours away to fix. They will not loan frothers but still!!! Ok George Clooney should also deliver said replacement but Star Track Express will do.

So on Friday, I hustled the boys out the door to childcare (this reminds me I have not paid her yet!) and got myself to my 8.45am. Yes people 8.45am appointment at Sanctum Body Therapy. They are an exclusive La Clinica product beauty spa. I had the Signature Treatment and it was amazing. Look what I received on my way out? I thought it was a discount card but when I opened it later, it was a giftcard for the same treatment that I had. I thought I could cry!

Gift card for another treatment!

I also had lunch with my BFF on Victoria St. Who can say no to Calamari, spicy Tom Kha soup and rice? Mmmm rice.

THEN.. some more shopping at Doncaster. As if I had not spent enough. I bought some Nespresso crealto pods. We needed pods but really I wanted a coffee and did not want to pay for one. C'mon... i wanted to try the limited edition pod alright? And I did buy pods.. 90 of them pods. And with no machine!

Got pods, no machine that works!

Then it was time to update the Country Road work pants situation. I had been scraping the bottom of the barrel with work pants. Nothing much really takes my fancy and I had to go back to Country Road. As these black pants do not ever go on sale, I just had to buy them at full price. The good news is inflation did not hit them either. $99 and the striped Tshirt was $39.95.

Country Road work clothes haul

I totally forgot that I had a $20 Myer gift card so guess what?! I had to buy a yellow dress from Target. It was only $49 but I do not normally buy Target clothes unless they are on sale. I thought why not, there is my size which is hard to find in Target and I had a gift card. I am undecided on it. Let me know if I should keep or return!

Target Yellow Dress Keep or Return?

Yesterday the boys had to recover from their colds. I actually managed to get a home visiting doctor to see Daniel as he was coughing so hard. But on Saturday, we turned on the bubble machine. I have to admit I also secretly love the old bubble machine. How cute is the hippo!

Bubble Machine Fun

It was time to fight the ironing pile that was growing so high. I had been wearing the same old same old to work - the non-ironing required dresses and I was wondering if people were noticing. HAHHA

Sunday night fun

Stalk my Noms: Ramen Ya Paramount Centre Bourke St

Ramen set with Gyoza

You know when you have a noodle craving (that would be me everyday) and nothing quite hits the spot except for Ramen? There are faux ramen and real ramen. Faux is when the place is runned by Chinese and the staff are yelling in Cantonese or most likely Chinese these days. I'm looking at you Ajisen. My colleague calls Ajisen tasty, I call it a MSG hell. I am not one who hates MSG, I am Chink.. i eat MSG. But I walked away from Ajisen about to cry from MSG overload after lunch. I don't remember it being that bad from when they opened a few years ago.

Salivating over Ramen

OMG about to cry... gyoza and ramen. Double whammy! This is the standard soup stock and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. The noodles is $10 and you add $4 for green tea and gyoza/salad. Both Mick and I stupidly tried to drink the tea with the strainer still on. HAHAHAH I was like WTH man, I want to drink my tea but it's filled with leaves and rice. Until we realised... oopppssss you lift the top level up. Oohhhhhh...

Bento Box set

D and Pickles shared a crispy chicken bento box. Check that out... Pickles pretty much drank one bottle of orange juice and refused to eat anything other than a few pieces of chicken. D pretty much only wanted rice except we had to dig the sesame seeds out and did not want chicken. This is when I decided no drinks before the food arrives for the boys anymore.

Balls.. just balls with squid

When I was still living in Singapore a friend of a friend started the chain of these squid balls with his Japanese business partner. It was a huge hit... and actually they still exist. Which is a big deal in fickle minded Singapore. In fact a few other people started their own ball versions. I can never resist ordering these takoyaki balls if they are on the menu. And if you look at what I had, I clearly did not need it! And actually I did not finish it. The texture of the balls were not as nice as my teenage memory of what I ate in Singapore, it was a little hard or maybe I was too stuffed to eat anymore!

Stalk my Noms: Trunk Restaurant Melbourne

Minute Steak with Onion Rings

We had gone to Trunk previously for a team lunch. But I do believe that the menu has grown since a year ago. Last time I was there I had a pasta. But this time I ordered a minute steak with onion rings.

The steak was fantastic. Seriously so good. The onion rings were really hard though. I had some trouble cutting into them. In the end I grabbed it and started munching into it but had to leave some of the onion ring behind (felt bad!).

The tiramisu (sorry no pic as we inhaled it so quickly) that I shared with a colleague was amazing. I also managed to steal a spoonful of sticky date pudding. Honestly order the sticky date pudding. It is sweet but gosh it is good!

Got milk!

I used to stand in line at the supermarkets and wonder who on earth would buy those 3litre bottles of milk.
Well.. points thumbs to self. I do now.

I cannot remember the exact moment when our household started going through 3litres in like 2 days. Picture this image of Pickles standing at the fridge door in desperation YELLING at us. AHHHH AHHHHHH And sometimes he yells MILKKKKKKKK. And everyone thinks he is an angel.

Everyone knows I am a big bargain hunter. It is called tightness so that I can afford those designzerz goodiez. :) But I made a conscious effort to pick up non-Woolworth/Safeway or non-Coles branded milk today. $1 a litre yay for us consumers and we are now used to paying that much. But I had guilt the other day about anti-competitiveness and about the dairy farmers. So think of the farmers people!

Oh hai I has milk

FYI Home Brand milk froths really badly in the Nespresso frother if anyone is interested. Aldi brand is good but not Home Brand!

So I bought Pura and honestly if you have a look at the shelves there is one "level" of this brand now and not much else. Which is not a good sign as a consumer that wants choice.

The Anti-Freezer Meal Lunch

Ok I am going to come out and say it. I don't often have freezer meals - as you can tell from my posts. I would say the most is 2/3 a month? Actually maybe less than that. I cannot bear to have another one for a long time.

So today I went out to get chicken and some casserole meat from the butcher. This butcher is conveniently next to a fruit and veg store and .... quite possibly the best takeaway charcoal chicken shop in the surrounding 15kms from my house. Actually make it 20kms. I totally resisted getting a salad and chip quarter chicken. Believe me it was hard as I really and I mean really love this store.

You know when you have bits and pieces of things left in the kitchen and pantry? And you know that it will end up in the bin if you do not eat it? Yeah that was my dilemma today. So I grabbed everything and put this together. This took less than the 6mins to nuke the freezer meal.

My let's throw all the leftovers together lunch

Half a multigrain bagel, toasted with butter and cream cheese (no low fat in this house). 2 slices of smoked salmon, a quarter of an avocado, some free range ham and 2 little yummy bocconcini balls. Bocconcini is underrated in my opinion. I have to say that the bagel was still incredibly yummy and not stale. I love the Beans and Bagel shop on Johnston St.

Stalk my weekend: Hurro Kitty, Sun, Retro Californian bungalow

Packaging is fun to play with

Guess what the boys found on Saturday morning. Oh I am going to play with packaging. They loved it. They called it snow and Pickles was pretending he was a crane making crane noises and lifting and dropping the protective packaging up and down. Hilarious! ... not that hilarious when it comes to cleaning up. Mick moved it all outside the back door.... which only means that they found it the next day again. Oh my goodness....

Oh look what is that? SUN!

How good was the weather on the weekend? It meant that we could go out and have some fun. This is D wanting to push his Dad who almost knocked him over at one point. Anyway that swing without the protective chain is the scene of the crime where I may or may not have failed to catch Pickles when he fell over backwards a week ago - head first. He has never asked to go back on that swing again.

Retrolicious bathroom

There was a retrolicious California bungalow house that was open for inspection when we were at the playground. I told Mick I wanted to go have a look. It had the most beautiful facade and a gorgeous porch.. hello PORCH. I told him that he had to go have a look at the bathroom. Check out that bathroom! It would have been the height of sophistication in the 1950s. Pink and grey throughout, even the sink and vanity was this colour scheme. And no, we are not looking for a new house. But this one is on the market for auction advertised at $1.1-$1.2M if anyone is interested.

Oh hai Kitty! I eated it!

I actually went out this weekend too people! Yeah like OUT in the night. Like I did Chap Laps! LOL more like I was stuck in 11pm traffic on Chapel Street outside Jam Factory. Check out BFF K's Hello Kitty party. I had forgotten what Chapel Street near the Toorak Road side looked like these days. Hello where did all those fancy high rise apartments on Toorak Road come from? And did you know that there is an Urban by Target store open near Jam Factory now? Came back and had such a bad night as the boys kept crying and wanted to wake up at 4am. Poor Mick and his wrecked/tired Fathers' Day. I did a bagel run with the boys the next morning so that he could have a bit of sleep. This is lucky that we had Faux Fathers' Day last week.