I’ve been entering competitions left, right and centre as of lately and I’ve struck a bit of luck. Quite strange seeing that I’ve never won anything before in the past and have won 2 in the past month. A couple of weeks ago I won a 4Gb SD card for my camera and this week my name got pulled out of the draw for the Harbourlife ticket ballot. Woo Hoo! 2 reserve tickets – don’t need to stress out on the release date anymore.

Can’t wait to see Stanton and Bag Raiders. How excitement!

I eat a lot of Extra mints so when I went to Campbells this week I thought it would be worthwhile stocking up. I was also hoping to grab a case of Vitamin water, but they didn’t have any in stock. Probably a good thing cause I do like having teeth and if I were to drink a case of Vitamin water, I don’t know how many teeth I’d have left.

We did a quick dash to My Little Cupcake in Neutral Bay today which is conveniently located just minutes from my office. It’s this tiny shop that you would probably drive right by without noticing because it’s squashed in between two apartment blocks.

As soon as you enter the shop your lungs are filled with the aroma of freshly baked cupcakes and you seriously start to drool. The shop also has a limit to the amount of cupcake each person can order over the counter, otherwise there’s not enough to go around.

Do they taste as good as they look? They sure do! They’re utterly amazing and not overly sweet. I had to remember to share, otherwise I could have devoured the whole box.

Dare I say, these are the best cupcakes I’ve ever had…

Just as I was about to leave work yesterday the sky decided to open up and pour buckets. It only lasted about 10 minutes, but boy did it put on a show. The day had started out really nice so I didn’t bring an umbrella, but lucky for me, a lot of clients forget to take home their umbrellas. If yesterday is any indication of what the weather will be like this month, I’m scared.

I’m really starting to enjoy baking nowadays, and my friends and family are reaping the benefits.

I went for my trusty Bill’s cookbook and found this banana maple turnover cake. It actually turned out better than I expected. There was a moment of disaster and disappointment when I opened the oven door at the due time and it was still liquid, so we left it in for an extra 20 minutes. Phew…

It’s funny, now that we’ve been baking for a while we now know exactly what goes into cakes – a whole lot of butter and sugar. So when G came over and saw the cake, her first question was “How much butter’s in it?” Sometimes I think it’s best if I don’t answer that question.

Instead of going out and battling the father’s day crowd we decided to stay home and cook up a feast. I think my parents are starting to trust my cooking now, at first I think they were a bit skeptical and would watch everything I did, now they’re no where to be seen when I’m cooking. Awesome.

On the menu last night was lemon and rosemary crumbed lamb rack served with roasted tomatoes and chips. I was a bit nervous doing a roast lamb – never tried it before. But it turned out perfectly and we were all very pleased with the result. Mum cracked open a beautiful bottle of Margaret River Shiraz which matched the food perfectly.

Being in the mood to try something different we decided to go out for dinner on Friday night, we usually end up at Anna’s place chucking something on the barbie after the pub so it was a nice change. I think Jess wasn’t quite prepared for the change as she spend the majority of the time in the gutter, or sitting in my car feeling sick. Poor Jess, the food was so good!

We went to a tapas parlour in Bondi called Flying Squirrel. The food was seriously amazing, it was like there was a party in my mouth. A top favourite of the night were the Zucchini flowers. It adds a whole new level of functionality to flowers, they look good and taste even better. A definite must try!

Jess only managed to take a bit of these before she ran out the door feeling sick (not because of the food, just general sickness). So lucky us, we swooped in and got an extra mouthful of the delicious flowers each. Score!

As you can see the garlic prawns came with a ton of sauce. I know the picture doesn’t look great, but trust me it tastes amazing. I was tempted to pick up the bowl and lap up the sauce, but thought it inappropriate.

The salt and pepper squid served a challenge to cut and eat. I think we ended up spilling a lot of water on the table as we fought to cut the suckers into bite sized chunks. But once they were in our mouth, it was worth the effort. And the minted yoghurt dipped sauce, I wanted to lap that up too.

We finished off with chicken wings, for some reason we always end up eating wings on a Friday night. Anna was a bit disappointed, not because they weren’t yummy (because they were), but because she thought we ordered spicy chicken wings. Think she was confused with the Eastern, where we started the night.

All in all, great night out (expect for Jess)! I think we’re going make it a habit to try a new place every month. Can’t wait till next month, maybe we’ll do Mexican.

I was lucky enough to get invited to Google again today. I love going to their office, it’s such a refreshing work space full of primary colours (and food). I was there for a marketing event that covered all things Adwords, Analytics, Optimiser, Insights and more. Very fascinating stuff.

After the event we were invited to join the team for lunch in the Google cafe and if you know me, you know I love food … and google. I sure was one happy camper!

At lunch you just grab a plate and help yourself to whatever you please. They have everything, heaps of fresh fruit and veggies, gourmet salads, breads, sushi, hot food, dessert and more.

As you can see from the picture above I went with the mini burger, some salad and veggies, and prawn cocktail. It wasn’t until I sat down and took a bite of my burger that I realised it was actually kangaroo meat. Unexpected, but still delicious.

I was tempted to stack more food on my plate, but I figured I should control myself as I’d like another invite back at some stage.

Besides the usually damage to your legs, back, neck and arms; my camera copped a bit of damage from the weekend snowboard trip.

I carried my camera around in my backpack thinking it would be safe. But seeing that it rained all day Saturday and we got totally drenched, my camera didn’t stand a chance. It still works fine and the pictures turn out okay, but I can’t say the same for the LCD screen. Think I should get a new camera?

Also in my backpack was a packet of Tic Tacs, they didn’t stand a chance either. I wasn’t brave enough to drink it to see if it was still good, so I thought it best to throw it away.

We headed to Perisher over the weekend with Charles and the boys from ASM and it was a nice change not to have to drive. The drive down was a 3 car convoy met with sights of fire fighters doing back-burning along the freeway; a nasty splattering of kangaroo road kill; and a cute fat wombat crossing the road slowly in front of us. Charles had to do some quick thinking and quickly swerved to avoid colliding into the fatty. Luckily Charles was driving, because I don’t think any of us would have known what to do. Phew.

Day 1 – wet wet wet
We jam packed Anna’s new Mercedes a190 with a total of 5 people and 5 snowboards (with bindings) and we were off.

The weather forecast for the day was rain, but we were hoping it would hold off. As we were lining up to get our first chair lift for the day, we were second from the front when they closed the lifts due to an electrical storm in the area and didn’t open it for sometime. The rest of the day followed the same suit, everywhere we went ended with a closed chair lift or closed T-bar, leaving us absolutely drenched to the core, alone and stranded at Pretty Valley.

We had to walk all the way back to Front Valley in the freezing rain / snow / hail / electrical storm. I swear lightning struck meters away from where we were walking. By the time we got back to Front Valley half of our crew had enough of being cold and wet so they headed home.

G and I, unsatisfied with the day, decided to stay and cross our fingers for good weather. We spent about 1/2 an hour in the bathrooms using the hand dryers to dry our clothes and stay warm, then headed back to Perisher Front Valley at 4pm.

A change in luck
When we arrived at Front Valley we saw the most amazing sight ever – the chair lifts were back open – AND the rain had stopped. Also, because there was such a long and heavy downpour, most people (including half of our own crew) had left for the day, so we pretty much had the whole mountain to ourselves.

Because it was such crappy weather all day with most (if not all) the chair lifts closed, Perisher let everyone to do night-skiing for free if you had a pass for the day.

Snowboarding under the night’s sky was very cool indeed. It’s even more fun after a shot of Agwa and Mother, and a Jim Beam and coke (Yes, I like Jim Beam so sue me).

Day 2 – Ice Ice Baby
Because of all the rain on Saturday, Sunday was very icy and extra cold. I’ll let the picture tell you how cold it was.

We saw quite a few injured people along the way, include one of our crew. Nevertheless there was no rain, so we ventured on and got a pretty good day’s worth of practice (and injuries to match). A must-do trail at Perisher is Pretty Valley, not only is it a nice long run but when you reach the bottom you can order yourself one of these awesome hot chocolates. Yum!