Good Food and Graduations.

Today has been absolutely wonderful. My sister graduated with her law degree after what feels like an eternity at university (for her) and many days and nights filled with stress and tears, as well as great achievements. I am so proud of her. Seeing her glide across that stage and accept her degree has filled me with much inspiration and determination to get through the next year so that I too can experience the tremendous relief and excitement of being a graduate.

The day has been filled with many lovely things. There have been flowers...

Giving my sister flowers on her graduation (although common practice at graduation ceremonies) was actually the product of a personal joke that my sister and I have shared for a couple of years now. My dad was the one who ended up organising the flowers, and I must give credit where credit is due and say that he made an awesome selection. Unknowingly, by picking the arrangement that struck him as the nicest, he managed to select my sister's favourite flowers - pink roses and gerberas.

This second bunch of flowers was a surprise from a relative who happened to be at the ceremony attending as a guest of another graduate.

Then there was the celebratory dinner and OH-MY-GOSH it was absolutely fabulous!! The highlight of the day (well, second highlight, after the actual graduation ceremony of course). My sister requested that we dine at Sepia, and I'll be forever grateful for her decision.

Sepia recently received 2 Hats in the SMH Good Food Guide Awards 2011, and Head Chef Martin Benn was named 'Chef of the Year 2011'. So, as you can imagine we were incredibly excited to see what Sepia had in store for us - and let me just say the experience did not disappoint!

As we approached the restuarant the doors swung open and one of the lovely owners greeted us (by name, might I add). This set the tone for what seemed to be a promising evening and dining experience ahead. The menu is full of wonderful and delicious sounding options, so we opted to go for the set Spring Menu, which consists of 4 courses. It seemed like a good way to sample the various offerings without having to go with the degustation - which required a leisurely several hours that we simply did not have.

We began with an amuse bouche (which I can't recall entirely but was a seafood emulsion of sorts). This was followed by the first course, which featured poached Ocean Trout and was soooo good. Probably my favourite course (aside from dessert). Next was a Spanner Crab and Buckwheat Risotto with a Mustard Butter and Shellfish Essence - which my dad and sister argue was the best course (again, aside from dessert). The third course consisted of Poached Coral Trout, Marron, Onion Cream, White Asparagus and Beetroot-infused Trout Roe - and I'll admit I couldn't bring myself to eat the roe. Just the idea of caviar makes me feel a bit queasy.

Undoubtedly, the best part of the dinner was dessert (well, for me dessert is ALWAYS the best part of any dinner). First we had THE MOST delicious pre-dessert, which was a creme brulee of sorts with corn and other tasty elements (at this point I had stopped paying attention to the waiter who explained exactly but I was too distracted, excitedly waiting to dig into it). Then there was dessert...

I had this 'Chocolate Forest' which consisted of soft chocolate, lavender cream, a sour cherry sorbet and licorice...and it was DIVINE!

This was the other dessert on offer, which was something to do with a Mandarin or something. Once again, I wasn't paying attention because as soon as I saw my 'Chocolate Forest' everything else seemed unimportant.

What made the experience so great was the fact that everyone at Sepia is so incredibly nice, knowledgeable and accommodating. My sister with her 101 allergies was so at home here, they made her special meals including this absolutely delicious dessert (it was sooo good! Possibly the best out of the three desserts at our table.)

It was a wonderful Strawberry concoction of some sort. Can't remember the specifics (again, distracted by the chocolate) but it sure looked and tasted great.

These were the delectable Petit Fours that accompanied our tea and coffee. The Pistachio Macaroons were to die for!!

All in all, Sepia lives up to the hype and more than deserves all the accolades and awards it has received. Definitely one of the best fine-dining experiences I've had - making it the perfect way to end a pretty perfect day :)

The 30 Day Sugar Free Challenge.

Okay so the family's naturopath has challenged all the subscribers to her newsletter to participate in the 30 Day Sugar Free Challenge. After reading about the challenge I've decided it is the perfect way to tackle my to-do list item #2 - become more healthier.

It seems there are many benefits of eliminating sugar from your diet. The ones that I'm hoping to achieve are - feeling more energetic, improving my concentration, becoming less irritable, reducing my seemingly constant headaches, reducing anxiety, improving my immune system and achieving a better skin complexion. There are heaps of other benefits which are equally important, but the ones I've listed are the ones I think would provide an major improvement in my life at the moment.

The Challenge

For 30 Days (any 30 day period before the 15th of November) I will be:

- Avoiding ALL added sugar (i.e. putting sugar in breakfast cereals, tea and coffee)

- Avoiding ALL obvious sugar (i.e. jams, biscuits, cakes and chocolates)

- Avoiding dried fruit and grapes.

Basically, the challenge means going 'cold turkey' with absolutely no sugar whatsoever - including artificial sweeteners as they apparently just aid cravings for sugar. In order to ensure my blood sugar levels stay steady I will have to ensure I consume protein with every meal. This apparently will also help to reduce cravings.

Now I will not be starting the challenge immediately as the family is going out for a rather extravagant celebratory dinner tomorrow evening. So, I may begin on or after the weekend. Either way I will report my progress here.

Wish me luck!

Tuesday.

Today was a pretty wonderful day. Ended up spending the afternoon with one of my best friends - the lovely S. Together we hunted down 3D blu-ray movies (which I have just been told was really great) and I was lent even more books from S's amazing collection. Honestly, until you see her shelves that are jam-packed full of books you cannot completely comprehend how great this collection of books truly is.

What made the day even better was making some progress on my to-do list, namely item #1 - planning a holiday. I have narrowed down my options to:

a) LA/NYC - I love the US, so it is inevitable that these two great cities will always be at the top of my potential-holiday-destination list;

b) Maui - this has been inspired by my sister's want for an island holiday; or

c) Singapore - a tried a tested holiday destination in my family. We always have fun (well aside from the time I got sick) and they now have a Universal Studios (yay!).

Good News!

I have just been informed of some wonderful news that has literally made my week.

It seems Starbucks Australia has FINALLY brought out Earl Grey Tea Lattes. I cannot describe how happy this makes me. I literally lived on the stuff during my time in NYC. Since returning to Sydney I've been settling for the Starbucks English Breakfast Tea Latte, which sadly just does not quite live up to the greatness of the Earl Grey one.

Here's hoping it tastes similar to those that I consumed during my time overseas. I'm not expecting it to be exactly the same because there simply is no comparison to sitting inside a Starbucks cafe (in one of the greatest cities in the world!), sipping an Earl Grey Tea Latte and watching the snow fall outside. Bliss.

To-Do List

I haven't had much time to blog this week, with my days having been consumed by researching colour trade marks (fascinating I know). Like most people I've found myself wanting to escape from the mid-semester assessment period - so, short of tearing all the hair off my head in frustration, I've begun thinking and planning about things I'd like to do/change in my life. As a result I've come up with a list, it's not very big but by putting it in writing and sharing it with you all there's a faint chance that I may actually complete it.

A's To Do List:

1. Plan a holiday.

I've decided that I want to get away from the craziness that can be my life and commit to planning one holiday a year. Since I've already been on an adventure to the US earlier this year, this is more a goal for 2011.

2. Become more healthier.

Between the tonne of uni work I am faced with and the odd hours of work I've noticed that I've developed some really bad and unhealthy habits over the past couple of years. I have a tendency to gravitate towards junk food in order to cope with stress, and often skip meals because my work hours often coincide with meal times. As a result I've decided that I'm going to start to exercise more often than I currently do, and resume eating healthily.

As I work towards making over my lifestyle I'll be posting any new, great healthy food finds I stumble across.

3. Make an entire three-course meal from each copy of Bon Appetit Magazine I have acquired over the past couple of years.

Okay so this may be a slight contradiction to the previous item on my to-do list but as a lover of good, delicious food I was thinking it might be fun to set myself a goal and make the most of my subscription to my favourite food magazine. Over the years I have grabbed my Bon Appetit magazines the minute they arrive on my doorstep, and obsessively pored over and marked up all the recipes that I'd love to try. Of course laziness and time constraints often get the better of me. So by making a meal for my family (maybe once a week or fortnight or month - I'm still undecided) maybe, just maybe, I'll finally get around to trying out all the recipes I've salivated over.

Key Lime Pie

This is the Key Lime Pie that my sister made last week.

It was taken to a dinner party we attended on Friday night, and I have to say it is better than all the other sweet treats we consumed that day. I could have eaten the entire pie all by myself, but alas I had to share.

Since I didn't include it in my previous post, and the fact that it is so incredibly delicious (and my new favourite dessert) I thought it deserved it's own post.

Morning Tea...

...was a success! The cakes were delicious. Okay, well I'm skeptical about my chocolate cake. My family loved it but they're my family so they always love everything I make.

This morning I woke up early and returned to the kitchen to finish the cakes.

Unfortunately I ran out of icing sugar so had to skip icing the sides of the Carrot Cake. Needless to say I am not entirely happy about this. In addition to the cakes, we had a super sweet dessert called Gulab Jamun. It's a popular dessert from the Indian Subcontinent, and is a dough that is fried (a bit like donuts) and then put into a sugar syrup. It is so, so sweet, but so incredibly delicious! My mother is a master at making these, I definitely do not have the patience for the process.

Despite being absolutely exhausted from yesterday, I decided to make little cheesy puffs since the morning tea spread was severely lacking in savoury food. They were an absolute hit for something that took less than 15 minutes to pull together. But then again who doesn't love cheese and pastry.

(NB: I did in fact make more than this!)

We were only expecting cousin R and her mum to join us for morning tea, but in a surprising turn of events another couple of relatives dropped by. In an even stranger turn of events my mother had set an extra couple of places at the table for "no reason at all" other than to have some spare plates and cutlery should we need them. It all worked out well, lots of sugar was consumed (well, on my part anyway) and entertaining conversations were had.

I've had a couple of hours to relax a bit, and now another guest has arrived for afternoon tea. The beauty, of course, is that there is such an excess of food that no extra work is required :P