Cooking Crusade

I was quite chuffed to be invited to the annual Sydney Food Bloggers Picnic 2012, hosted by two lovely food bloggers, chocolatesuze and grabyourfork.
It was my first food bloggers event so I was rather excited to go along! A week ahead, I baked and froze a batch of my favorite brownies to take along.

I drove to Centennial Park and promptly got lost finding the right picnic spot for a good ten minutes, before finally making some kind of a U Turn and heading in the right direction. Fortunately I found a good park pretty soon after spotting what I hoped was the Sydney Food Bloggers Picnic group. Grabbing my camera and ziplock (couldn’t find a container!) bag of brownies, I headed nervously headed towards the group, holding my handbag in a bit of a death grip. I don’t really go out to big groups of people who I don’t really know so it was definitely a couple of firsts for me in one day!

Everyone laid out masses of delicious looking food and pinned on their name tags (my name and blog name on a tag, yay!!).

Everyone got to mingle and put faces to blogs and twitter accounts

Finally, lunch was announced by chocolatesuze!

A congregation of food bloggers – everyone got to snapping before we started eating!

Beautiful looking paella from Lex from iheartsaturdays.com

More gorgeous looking paella from Ramen Raff

Gorgeous berry marshmallows – not sure who made these but they were scrumptious!!!

Delicious meatballs with feta and a tzaziki dipping sauce by spoonfulsofgoodness

Gorgeously green mini pandan cupcakes by Lay from www.layskitchenexplorations.blogspot.com

Muppy’s absolutely delicious salted caramel tarts with gorgeous piping

coconut and pandan maracons

sugar puffi’s fairy bread!

Some more delicious tidbits

The brownies i brought

Everyone got to nibbling and some chatting!

Gaby from lateraleating and Muppy.

Me and Muppy

Me and Chanel from Cats Love Cooking

Wendy from obesebaby, Lay from layskitchenexplorations, Lucy from beyondbourkestreet and me

Food got eaten!


I went back to get some of these, but they were gone

Lucy from beyondbourkestreet‘s browned butter apple pound cake with maple cream cheese frosting

I snapped a couple more pictures before the big main group pic by Simon from theheartoffood.com

The lovely Tim and Christina from thewayitcrumbles

Wendy (obesebaby), Lucy (beyondbourkestreet) and me

Me and the talented Simon from theheartoffood

Me and April from polkadotsandchopsticks

Me and Suze (chocolatesuze)

Me and Betty (sugarpuffi)

Group pic from Simon from theheartoffood

It was so lovely to meet everyone and finally get to put some faces to blogs as well as sample some of everyone’s scrumptious treats. Looking forward to the next one!

Special thanks again to chocolatesuze and grabyourfork for organising everything

You can check out all the rest of the pictures I took (yes, there are more! hehe) on my Facebook page by clicking here.

You can also check out the recipe/method for my favorite brownie recipe I took to the picnic by clicking here .

Hope you are all having a fab week!
xoxo
Christine

Do you guys have a family favorite Chinese restaurant? I think everyone has one. Its kind of a tradition, isn’t it?

I’ve been going to the Golden Singapura since I was knee high to a grass hopper. A family fave, we still occasionally frequent this place, although I have to admit, less frequently in the recent years, mostly because my Mum is less of a fan of takeaway foods these days. (She’s become a staunch vegan in the last year or so.)

Ever since I started dating my fiance, we discovered a new place close to his family’s home which has quickly become a favorite. Even though it’s not close to his place or mine, whenever we visit his family, we love visiting this place!

I still remember the first time I ever visited Eastern City Chinese restaurant – we were with some friends from Mike’s church who frequently there and after that first time, we were hooked. We had many Sunday night dinners which quickly through the years turned into countless family and birthday dinners.

Oh Eastern City Chinese restaurant, I heart you!

Here are some recent pics of a yummy dinner there recently Pics are a teensy bit dark, sorry bout that peeps!

Honey chicken

Peking Style Beef Strips – Amazing! We order this every time we come..

Mike’s brother’s fave, Mongolian Lamb

Salt and pepper tofu

The chef always makes these amazing little carrot carvings with the dishes – so much detail!!

Who could forget dessert?
Deep fried ice cream with caramel sauce

Vanilla Ice Cream with Lychees

My absolute fave dishes have to be:
Peking style beef strips
Sweet and sour fish
Pan fried snake beans (we generally ask for these without pork, but they do come with them by default)

Eastern City Chinese restaurant is located at:
7 Hillcrest Road
Pennant Hills NSW 2120
Phone number: (02) 9875 1411

They’re also a stone’s throw from the Pennant Hills Train Station if you’re traveling by public transport and as a side note, they also do takeaway!

If you’re in the area, definitely give this one a try!

xoxo
Christine

sorry i haven’t been around much lately guys! i’ve been trying super hard to exercise a lot and eat really well to shape up for the wedding at the moment and its seriously taken all of my concentration. i mostly go to work, drive an hour, get to the gym, exercise like crazy and go home and eat food, watch a couple episodes of The Office and then its bed time and the whole thing starts again, hehe.

so not much time for blogging i’m afraid! but that doesn’t mean i’ve taken an absence from food or food photography so I thought i’d do another pic-post of some of the things i’ve been whipping up lately (although i mostly do not have the energy to do an entire post for each item!)

thank you for watching.

Choc chip cookies (yes, you may notice some of these foods aren’t exactly in my ‘diet’ category… cough.)
these were great straight out of the oven but i apparently messed up the amount of flour in them resulting in 1 hour later, rock hard cookies…. whoops. back to the drawing board! couldn’t resist posting this pic tho because they still look good here! hehe.

Vanilla cupcakes decorated with a cream cheese frosting swirl, fondant cut outs and sprinkles. man i love how fun decorating is!

A chocolate mudcake frosted with milk chocolate ganache and decorated with white fondant heart cut outs and strawberries. i love how easy it is to put together pretty designs without very much effort at all.

Lemon cupcakes with a lemon zesty glaze – my first somewhat failed attempt at food styling, lol.

We had Dyan’s first birthday without us on September 19, so a couple of our friends got together. I made this white chocolate (her favorite) cake for it.

You can check out the rest of the cake pics here.

Hope everyone’s having a great week!

Loooove and hugs!
xoxo
Christine