Bad Taste Night and Dalgas Ave gathering

Slept over at wl's place on Friday. A late night of sparkletini, half moon lemon cake and daidee.

Saturday was a day of first experiences. Hah. I hate to only be able to put this across as just 2 sentences but, thanks a. For the company and clearing up the mess I made. Heartfelt. =) Anyway, we made our way to Baren at about 11pm in name of Bad Taste Night only to daidee the night away once more. Somehow I felt daidee was much better that day. Haha.

Woke up considerably early on Sunday morning only to knock out in the afternoon for a good 4 hours while the others helped yj to move shelves from a's room. Made dinner (after what seems like a long time) and pudding that night. Until now the pudding hasn't solidified. Hmm.. Something's wrong. Gossip girl-ed the night away.

Had the first Dalgas Ave gathering yesterday. After settling banking and grocery in town, we headed to b's place to get an early start at about 3pm. Yet we still ended up hogging the kitchen all the way to 6pm plus. B's herbal chicken soup, wl's keropok with salsa and cheese dip, yj's chawanmushi, a's pavlova and my rosti. The potato grating swelled the veins in my arms. Looked as though I was steriods. Haha. The fare was good as usual, albeit a tad excessive and guilt inducing. Haha. The rest sat around to play daidee while I did my research after dinner. Left b's place at 1130pm plus. On a side note, if it wasn't for the wind and it's chill, it would have been a really beautiful night with the sky and its pretty stars.

To Legoland this Saturday. Then while the rest of the world party their lives away at Social Club, we'd be having Snog. gathering 2 cum mooncake festival celebration. Desserts are on me this time round and of course that spells another of my cooking escapades. This time it's snow skinned mooncake.

Can't wait. Mooncake and chinese tea ftw! Haha. =))

Snog gathering and Pub quiz

Had our very first second Snog. gathering yesterday. Ok. Second to be more accurate since the others came to my room last Friday. This time b joined us and we were each going to make a few dishes for our feast together at a's place. After the dreadful exam talk (where we all fell asleep and Lasse confirmed that we couldn't take OT exam any other time or through any other format. Sigh.) it was bus 3 back to Snog to prepare.

Gathered in a's kitchen. Diced, chopped, washed, peeled, coated, decorated, boiled, fried, mixed and waited before wl arrived with her ngohiang. Fast forward walking to, fro, to, fro, bringing all the food bowl by bowl, plate by plate to a's room. Lemon chicken, wanton soup, noodles, ngohiang, chocolate mousse and the wine. The table could barely fit all our dishes. Snap snap, flash flash. Flurry of phototaking followed before we tucked in. Chomp chomp, yum yum. After main course, we got out the chilled wine from the freezer, struggled to get it open then battled to remove the screwed up (literally and figuratively) cork from the corkscrew cause it was some tough plastic rubber material. Dessert was served with Merlot-Rose and strawberry "porridge". Haha. Nothing was more satisfying than good old Asian fare, great dessert and wine in fantastic company.

Headed to Baren, a pub at the laundry block, for pub quiz. Supposedly some game for the Danes. Not sure about the other parts of the activity but by the time we reached at 9pm plus, only the "identify that tune" segment remained. Got some drinks, stood around blocking the passageway, talked and took more photos. A while later, we went out to take a couple of failure jump shots. I think it was too cold and everyone's reaction was lagged. Haha. There were many pretty stars up there that night. Got a table after one of our toilet breaks and yj accompanied me back to my room to grab the cards before we began daideeing at the pub. Hours later, the lack of sleep due to the 3 plus hours of shut eye I managed before the 8am lesson that morning caught up with me. Not to mention the terrible pain from the ulcers. Went back to sleep at 2am plus.

Wantons

Tried our hand at making wantons today for our gathering on Thursday. Took a whooping 4+ hours to mix and knead the dough, roll them out and stuff them. Superbly tiring. It was 9+pm by time we got them done.

Dough fun before leaving it to set; attempted to make a 3D Mickey head only to have its ears roll off and my hands reacting too slowly to escape the shutter. Mickey's head kept sagging too so we just did a 2D one in the end.

Had the wantons for dinner. Aesthetically pleasing but the cornflour ruined the soup. Cooking the wantons separately should do the trick on Thursday!

But before that, two very long days.

Drinks

My assortment of drinks; Chocolate milk, fresh milk, apple juice, ribena, water, tea, hot cocoa and the latest purchase, white wine.

I should stop buying drinks. Yes, I will.

Over the weekend

A, wl and yj stayed over in my room on friday night. Daidee and bridge-d into the wee hours before we called it a day as wl was nodding off.

Had a fitful sleep for about 5 hours (4 of us curled in my bed) before wl's 8am alarm. She had a date with 2 of her floormates to Bilka to shop for red wine for their gathering. In the end, a, yj n I decided to crash their shopping trip to check out Bilka. Caught about 2 more hours of sleep before waking up again to meet the rest at 11am at wl's block.

Met Ole and Ali (wl's 2 floormates) then waited around in their kitchen before setting out on our trip. Snuck up bus 12 and then 25 to get to our destination. Other than the fact that it was really far, it was great that it had many big shops. Big shops meaning large shops. Imagine a bunch of flat warehouse look-a-like buildings. There were a couple of pet shops, furniture shops and even a Toys R Us. Went to a second hand shop called Shoppit for Ole to get mosquito net which he intended to use for their Greek dress up theme. Then it was on to Bilka. It was not unlike Giant and really huge. Probably more than ten times the size of the Netto in our neighbourhood. And of course there was a wider selection. (But they still didn't have my fresh Mackeral.) Bought a couple of remaining ingredients for my lemon tarts before making our way back to Snog.. We have to go back there again soon. Round 2, to do a proper examination of all the stuff they have there!

Lastly, about Sunday. Today. Did my share of kitchen duty; cleaning the table, counter tops, ovens, stoves, microwave and sinks. Left the laundry of kitchen towels and vaccuuming of the hallway to J. (I think we were suppose to do it together. I do feel a bit guilty. But of all days, he didn't appear in the kitchen, hence I just went ahead.) Sides, I've been emptying the rubbish the whole week. Totally no help from his side, other than him teaching me how to spray clean the oven. Seriously. Ok. I should stop feeling guilty since I did relatively much more work. -_- The only reason I'm not feeling THAT disgruntled is because I left him to do the things I didn't want to. Hah. On a side note, this afternoon a helpful floormate helped fit in the trash bags when I went downstairs to empty the trash. =) It wasn't even my dearest kitchen duty buddy. =.=

Had kitchen meeting at 6pm in the evening. Met everyone on the floor for the first time. Only 1 unfamiliar face. I gave a one line introduction of Pablo and I to the rest of the floor before giving a general overview of kitchen duties and the 50kr fee per month. After that the others were given an opportunity to air any 'grievances' like people leaving coffee filters in the coffee machine and the meeting was over, all in half an hour. L brought out the Danish fare she whipped up awhile later. Asparagus and chicken soup in a tartlet, lemon meringue and K's cinnamon rolls, this time with icing on top. Everything was delicious! I think I ate more than everyone else at the table. 4 tartlets when the average was 2 and 4 scoops of lemon meringue when the norm was about 3. Haha. They were really good! Everyone sat around and rambled in Danish (other than the occasional translation by I in English for us 2 who didn't understand) between the different 'courses'. I felt a tad restless. Washing up was an amusing affair. Like a production line; some washing, some drying, some placing the tableware back into the drawers and cupboard, some wiping and rearranging the tables and of course some slacking and watching telly in the living room. Headed back to the room after that.

No photos for the weekend as the Danish would have thought I was nuts if I went around taking pictures. Haha.

Bazaar Vest 2

Took a bus to Bazaar Vest after school today to stock up on our fruits supply. Went back to the same stall with the nice owner.

I got 1 lemon and 6 apples free. Haha.

Stocked up on baking ingredients too. Whee! =)

Fishballs

I want to make fishballs.

I am going to make fishballs.

Making fishballs.

(3 hours spent skinning and processing the fish, smacking the fish paste against the sides of the bowl to get the 'boing', squeezing them out ball by ball and finally washing up the whole load of utensils. All the while reeking more and more like a fish.)

Made fishballs!

Microwaved one to have a taste of it. It wasn't bad per se. It just tasted too literal. Like a fish. What happened to the 'boing' I was expecting after the 300 rounds of smacking?! Bah.

Lesson of the day: Red snappers do not taste like mackerals.

Maybe there will be take 2. If I can find a mackeral. Haha.

Frying nuts

Had the sudden urge to fry the cashew nuts we bought some time back, hence I suggested it after dinner.

It was an epic failure of immeasurable proportions. And yes, I blame it on the recipe. What boil in water for 1 minute and fry for 5 minutes. The amount of charred nuts I consumed tonight just shortened my lifespan by 20 years.

Lesson of the day: Trust your gut instincts. Remove nuts from heat even if your guts disagrees with the recipe. Your gut is usually right.

Shadow fun

More shadow fun in the evening. Haha.

Weather check

This gave me more of a reality check. Made me realise that the temperature was going to keep dropping.

Second week of school

Spent the whole Wednesday afternoon printing notes and photocopying the textbook. Credits to b. The rest of us just zapped her copy. Haha. This brings to mind the 3 part mini-series aptly titled 'the stupidest things I've done this week'.

Monday; Realising 50m from Snog. that I forgot to bring my laptop battery.
Tuesday; Realising that the spilt tea from Monday morning [which I (thought) I cleaned up] had caused a paper box to stick (literally and seriously) to the countertop and I had to spend 15 minutes scratching it out.
Wednesday; Printing 5 copies of the same chapter of the corporate finance textbook.

Urgh.

Thursday is drawing to an end. Nothing could possibly happen in the remaining hour and 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure.

Finally got down to washing my sneakers.

Time to start studying (using the self declared day off tomorrow). I forgot the implication of that s word.

10 litres of chocolate milk for the next 4 months!! =)

Mimi

Mimi's finally in Oulu!! =D

Laundry

Hand washed clothes at 256am.

Baking

Yj and I tried to bake today. But first we had to translate the the danish instructions into english and that meant I had to type it out online. Alt shift to danish, fn num lk for the number pad, alt fn 0230 for æ, alt shift back to english until we reached another danish character and the cycle repeated itself.

æ ALT + 0230 or 145
å ALT + 0229 or 134
œ ALT + 0156
ø ALT + 0248

Æ ALT + 0198 or 146
Å ALT + 0197 or 143
ΠALT + 0140
Ø ALT + 0216

In the end we gave up and decided to type all the normal alphabets before ctrl c, ctrl v-ing in all the special characters.


This was it in danish:

"Tænd/sett ovnen på 175°C. Hæld posens indhold og 1½ dl milk i en skål/bolle. tilsæt 50g smeltet eller ½ dl flydnde margerine fx Becel. Rør til dejen/røren er jævn.

Hæld dejen/røren i en smurt sandkage eller brødform. Bag/stek kagen midt i ovnen ca. 30 minutes. Lad kagen køle af i formen på en rist.

Hæld glasurmixen og 1.5 spsk. Vand i en gryde or kjele og lad det koge op under omrøring. Lad det koge 1 minute. Lad glasuren køle af i ca. 2 minutes. Rør af og til. smør glasuren på den godt afkølede kage. Lad glasuren stivne inden or før kagen skæres i ca. 12 browniesstykker."


And this was what resulted from several sites...

This was the translation from the Lazy site:

"Turn on sett the oven at 175C. Tilt the bag contend and milk to a cheers/bun. admixture 50g fused or ½ cup float margerine fx Becel. Piping to dejen / moving is dejen / moving to a smurt sandkage or brødform. At the back or stek the cake in the middle of the oven ca. 30 minute. Lazy the cake chill to the shape at a glasurmixen and spsk. Water to a pot or kjele and lazy that cook up amid omr øring. Lazy that cook 1 minute. Lazy glass wool chill to ca. 2 minute. Piping on and off. butter glass wool at the good afk ølede cake. Lazy glass wool freezer by or ante the cake skæres to ca. browniesstykker."

(Lets Lazy that glass wool freezer! Hahaha!)


And from the site that couldn't make up its mind:

"... Pour glasurmixen and 1.5 tbsp. Water in a saucepan or kjell and let it boil up while stirring. Let it boil 1 minute. Let the glaze cool for approx. 2 minutes. Tubes and then. butter glaze on the cooled cake well. Let glaze harden before or until the cake is cut into approx. 12 browniesstykker."

(Hmmm.. so is it before or until? Haha.)


Finally, the best translation, albeit not without its own entertainment value:

"Light/seen the oven on 175°C. Pour the bag's contents and 1½ dl milk in a bowl/bun. Add ½ cup flatfish margarine e.g. Becel to 50g melted or. Touch to the dough/touching are even.

Pour the dough/touching in an oiled sponge cake or bread form. Bake or stek the cake in the middle of the oven about 30 minutes. Let the cake cool off in the form on a grid.

Pour icing-mixening and 1.5 tablespoons of water in a pot or groove and let it boil up while stirring. Let it boil 1 minute. Let the icing cool off for about 2 minutes'. Touch from time to time."

(HAHA. Enough said.)


Anyway, we did up the mix but the ovening process didn't go very well. It took almost 2 hours because I didn't know what the signs on the oven dials meant until Line (a Danish floormate) told me. >.< !

Took a break, made dinner then continued with the icing. It was a real saving grace. Haha.

Till now we still have no idea what browniesstykker is. Really hilarious affair. Haha!