Chocolate banana loaf

Chocolate banana loaf 

Have been looking at the recipe for this on my fridge for quite a while. Decided to try it out today.

This turned out quite well, no burnt tops and uncooked insides :) I was quite pleased...hehehe! I made mine almost entirely with organic ingredients too.

Here is the recipe. It is rather quick and simple.

Ingredients:
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 large ripe bananas)
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten lightly
1/4 cup extra light olive oil
1/4 cup milk
2/3 cup self-raising flour
2/3 cup wholemeal self-raising flour
3/4 cup coarsely chopped toasted walnuts
1/4 cup finely chopped dark eating chocolate

Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease 14 cm x 21cm loaf pan, line base and long sides with baking paper.

Combine banana and sugar in large bowl, stir in egg, oil and milk.

Add remaining ingredients and stir until combined.

Spread mixture into prepared pan and bake uncovered in oven for about 1 hour. Stand bread in pan for 5 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool for 5 minutes.

Chinese New Year in Melbourne

After a yum cha lunch with Charli and Johnny today, we all took a walk down Little Bourke Street where all the action was happening. There were lots of people!


Walking down Chinatown 

There was a dragon/lion dance happening at the junction of Little Bourke Street and Russell Street. Firecrackers added to the atmosphere. Being in Singapore my whole life, I have never actually seen real firecrackers going off because they are banned for safety reasons. They are really loud! Couldn't really stand the loud noise without covering my ears. So the pictures of the Dragon & Lion dances were taken by Darlink because I couldn't possibly be taking pictures with my hands on my ears :P


Chinese New Year in Melbourne 

Look at more pictures in my flickr box on the left under "My Pictures"!

CNY eve

Chinese New Year here does not of course have the pomp and gaiety that I am used to in Singapore (although now I can hear firecrackers going off in Chinatown). I cooked dinner, we had Charli over and we watched a DVD after that. Thought of going out to take a look at what might be happening in Chinatown but decided that we will go there tomorrow instead. Stay tuned for pics of events that I spot tomorrow!


Happy New Year! 

A rainy day today

Really foggy views 

It rained and drizzled for most of today which was a nice change from the hot and dry days. The rains helped to put out some bushfires as well. It was so wet that there seemed to be fog hanging over the city in the afternoon.

Sleeping pets

Sleeping pets 

Spotted all of them snoozing at the same time...hehehe!

New shoes for the new year!

Passed by Camper at lunchtime today and saw that they were having further reductions! Darlink was not with me but when he heard, he wanted to go there immediately. I thought it would be better to go after work. In any case, it was a good thing we did because we were in the shop at 6.10pm and the prices had just dropped to $100 for all the shoes after 6pm. What great timing! :)

We got a cute pair of matching shoes! I must have worn the entire value out of my last pair of Camper shoes so they are really good buys.


New shoes! 

I couldn't help getting these too - I had my eye on them for a while...


Pink suede shoes 

Hazy days

Hazy days 

Noticed the air looks rather hazy these days and even more so today. Must be the effect of the smoke coming from the many bushfires around Victoria :(

A pet pig

Always thought I would like to have a pet pig except that it is not a practical idea in reality at all :)

Busy time & hot weather update

This week has not been fantastic for me. Firstly I had a new record of working until 11pm :( Working late here is not like in Singapore where you can just catch a cab easily and go home. I stay too near to work to catch a cab home (what an irony) and it is not safe to walk home alone so had to have Darlink come out and pick me :)

Tomorrow is a public holiday but I will still have to drop in at the office for a few hours at least. Then again, might as well since it is slated to be another scorcher anyway.

Hot weather here is terrible, not only is it bad for people, it is doing great damage to some nice places. National parks are burning up and so are sheep, cows and property. It is sad reading about the fire that is blazing at the Grampians, how people have to evacuate their houses to escape fires and poor sheep that have to be put down because they are scorched.

On another note, Poppi (the panda blob that is in my Tag friends window) is hungry! I don't know where to find food for it! Where is the chicken that gives out food??

Another blazing hot day

The temperature these few days has been building up again - it is now 40 degrees with gusty winds and it will get hotter still! Can't really go anywhere in this heat so we are hanging around at home. Even Bobbi bunny seems to be sticking to the toilet bowl and doesn't want to leave the bathroom much :)


It's too hot! 

Giant strawberries!

Giant strawberries! 

Saw these beautiful and huge strawberries at Safeway today and I couldn't help buying them. These are really large. They are almost the size of plums. I even measured them - the biggest was about 4.5cm in diameter! Hehehe!

Shared some with Bobbi bunny. It's really funny watching her eat strawberries (it works for apples too). She smacks her lips after eating which is so cute but I cannot catch a picture of it, which is a pity.

Busy time

It's a rather busy time for me these days at work. Worked until 8.30pm today which is the record for me so far since I got here. I am sure that will be beaten in the next few days though since I have a deadline on Friday :(

Pets

We had quite a bit of fun playing catching with Bobbi last night. She now gets to run around in the bathroom (where she likes to lie down next to the toilet bowl - because it is cold I guess :)) but then she will try and sneak out by pushing the door open and running around under the dining table legs where it is difficult to get her back.


Hiding where we cannot get her 

Play time then consists of us trying to chase her back to the bathroom and her trying to sneak out when we are not looking ;) It's so funny seeing her cheeky look when she looks at us before dashing out. When she gets tired, she would just lounge next to the "cool spot" again.

On my other pet, it has grown larger again with the help of my constant blogging :) Blobby now walks on 2 legs! Hehehe!

How not to kill a spider

Just heard on the radio that a guy actually broke his leg while kicking at a spider. One of those weird and unfortunate things for all parties involved...

A new pet!

A new pet! 

Hooray! Now my Tag Friend has a pet too! Met Mrs Cocco today and I got an egg which hatched into a blob of panda (now called Poppi). :)

Watched a play - a first here!

We just came back from watching A Couple of Blaguards at the Comedy Theatre with Charli.

The play was quite good and the 2 actors performed really well. On the whole, it was entertaining but it was not the laugh-out-loud kind of funny.

The weird thing we noticed as soon as we got to the theatre was that the average age of the people there was about 55-60! The 3 of us were the only Asians and probably the youngest people. The lady who sat next to Charli actually jokingly asked her if she was Irish :S.

A busier than usual Saturday

Somehow we mostly spend weekends in the city. Today however, we went to the market first and then went to Bridge Road (for Macro Wholefoods!) and Smith Street as well (we actually just went there on Monday too but Darlink was looking for tennis shoes this time). Seemed to be a fair bit of travelling around compared to the usual.

Got some nice stuff from Macro Wholefoods - notice that I generally spend more money buying food-related stuff than any other category of items these days...And I really like going here :)

Some stuff I got

Organic love - its a tea 

Couldn't help getting this when I saw the combination of herbs in this tea. I actually saw it the last time I came here and I have been thinking about it. It is made up of anise, savory, coriander, liquorice, verbena, cloves, parsley, pineapple and sunflowers. It tastes real nice with honey! And who can resist the words coriander, pineapple and sunflowers (well, not me)! Hmmm....these should be on my Favourite Food Words list as well.


Going to try some sprouting! 

Thought I would try growing some vegetables on my own! This should be easy, they are sprouts after all and I am putting them indoors. I haven't had much luck with my plants so far...the erratic weather really does not help. They either get scorched or frozen.

Bobbi bunny again!

A Bobbi bunny pic for the new year! 

Realised that Bobbi bunny has not graced the pages of my blog since the start of the new year so here is one to "beautify" my blog :)

A long time ago

I was at work yesterday when it occurred to me that I spend my entire day sitting in front of the computer. So do lots of other people. Some time back - like maybe 12 years ago, many people did not really use the computer at work. I remember because that was my first holiday job in an office and there was only one computer that had Windows on it. I would play around with it when I had the chance. I can't imagine how that would be like now working manually using what...foolscap pads?? How would we consolidate hundreds of companies? If we had to send the computer for repair or something, we would just have nothing to do.

Blog pets and the like

It seems I have found myself in the world of blog pets and avatars that travel to other blogs...:P Now I am busy "travelling" around and visiting other blogs, teleporting here and there. It is taking up a lot of time - something that I am lack of actually. Sigh! But it is fun!

Blobby has grown bigger!

Grown bigger! 

Heehee! I noticed that Blobby has grown a little larger. Now it looks like a lamb...How cute!


Yawning 

Garden update

Flower - close up 


Flower bed - Aren't the colours striking? 

Passed by Parliament Gardens on Sunday and we noted that the flower beds change colour. I guess they must replant them with flowers of different colours occasionally. This was rather striking, hence the photos. The earlier garden photos are here.


An interesting multi-burst shot by Darlink 


And another one... 

Sleeping time

Blobby sleeping 

Heehee! I caught a shot of Blobby (the blog pet you will see in the left hand column) sleeping! :) Like I don't have enough things to keep me occupied, now I have a pet living in my blog too :P

Eye catching?

Weird advertising 

Seen this ad a couple of times but this time I got a shot of it from the tram we were in. Can't figure if the upside-down words are supposed to catch attention or were they some printing error. If you were really interested, it would take a bit of time to try and read the upside-down details...weird...


Upside-down statue 

This one is even harder to understand. I haven't been able to read the plaque near the statue which might say why this is upside-down so the mystery remains...