Bali for a loving April

Hello everyone, 

It's me NT coming back here again after... a long while. Me and NP have been crazily busy with school works. I started to realize how hard it is to chase this career of a designer. Don't ever roll your eyes when you hear too much of ranting from a design student, they do tell the truth ha ha. And time is too precious for us to post blog entries here more often. 

However, my boyfriend just came to Singapore and had stayed here with me for a month. He totally bought me a break from this hectic student life. I was over the moon because this is the longest time we have a chance to stay together... so excuse me if this post is way too sentimental and... corny hihi. 

I had planned for this trip for quite long ago. We chose Bali for our biding desire to all of those nice beaches in the world. And Bali didn't disappoint us at all. Our first trip turned out beyond my expectation. 

We arrived at noon and were so hungry that we started the trip with a seek for seafood restaurant. There is a lot of seafood restaurants that arrange tables on the beach in Jimbaran. We luckily managed to reach there before the sunset. The sky was marvelous. The band played some classic songs that we favorite. It was such a good retreat after a 3-hour flight from Singapore. 

We spent only 3 days 2 nights in Bali it was so short I feel so regret we didn't have time to stay longer. We usually went to the beach at noon and spent the morning to go to the mountain. Kitamani is the mountainous region here, around 70 km away from our villa. The sky lake Batuk lies next to a volcano and several other mountains with the tops covered with cloud. This view really took our breath a little. I thought I want to stay right here forever…

Craftsmanship in Bali is very well developed. We saw a lot of shops selling craft stuffs for home decoration. I fell so hard for their good taste in making ornaments from wood, sea shell, stone and so on. I also found myself being inspired again with their elegant oriental style. 

Indonesian are all friendly and helpful. We lost our way back to the villa once late at night which made us really panic. Yet there was a nice Indonesian man led us home safe and sound. My boyfriend got helped a lot in his plan to surprise me with flowers and candles by our villa's staffs. They seemed to be ever more excited than my boyfriend himself while preparing all of those romantic stuffs. Imagine you came home after a fun but tiring day chasing the roads on a motorbike (my butt hurt so bad ><), you found yourself surrounded with flowers and candles. And the boy of your heart was standing there (all awkward haha) with a rose in hand and then… you found his gesture so funny that you laughed out loud. How would you feel? At that moment, I feel like I was the happiest girl in the world. 

Summer is coming really soon everywhere I guess. I hope you all will have a wonderful summer ahead. Don't forget to take some time to travel. A trip like this has refreshed my mind very much and makes me enjoy life to the fullest.

Have a nice weekend! 

Love, 

NT 

San Francisco tidbits

Whew... 

NT is gonna jump on her toes and dance around celebrating this post from me she's been waiting for SO LONG (haha right NT?). Well here I am, madly catching up with schoolworks and stuck in a whirlwind of things happening around.. life is nothing but a cluster of ups and downs, haha but I still wanna share with you guys some pictures of me & San Francisco..I haven't been hanging out a lot, but whenever I do I capture. It's been all kinds of weather here: rainy, windy, foggy, sunny, can't really predict much, moody just like how I am these days. Most of these pictures were taken during the summer because ever since I started Fall semester I haven't really had time anymore.. Don't get me wrong, I'm in love with my life lately and have been in the kitchen a lot. I still have a bunch of recipes to share, just need to get them neat and posted, so stay tuned for our upcoming posts :) 

Air show was good and.. loud! 

 The street where I go to school everyday. 

There's always a light at the end of the tunnel..

 Me, lavender & the sea. 

Eating mango in the sun. 

As you guys can see I enjoy the sun and the weather in SF a lot, it's always fun to be out breathing lungful of fresh breezes. 

This guy sang "Too Close" amazingly good! 

We'll get some new recipes and other good stuff posted very soon :) 

Love, 

NP. 

Exquisite Vietnamese Phở

It's me again, NT :)

Since Singapore's still a typical Asian country, I'm much luckier than a lot of other expatriate students out there who are struggling to find Vietnamese restaurants around their surroundings. Yet still, having Vietnamese dishes here in Singapore definitely cannot give you the special feeling as when having them at my own hometown. For that reason, I decided to give it a try making Phở myself for the first time and the result turned out beyond my expectation.

For the recipe, I follow Gocbep's. This is one of our favorite cookery blog. I think this recipe is detailed enough for even beginners. But I didn't cook Phở Gà, I chose beef instead. For beef you can just follow the same steps but the time for cooking must be much longer.

Here is some of the spices I used for the soup: Onion, ginger, ground cloves, coriander seeds, cinnamon, chinese five spice and lemongrass (not shown in pictures)

I hope you can make your own version of Phở. Or else, do serve yourself a bow of Phở for Vietnamese's sake ha ha. 

Happy cooking and eating! 

NT