After a disasterous test on Friday I had to do something to take my mind off things.

What better way than to bake something new, easy and hopefully yummy.

So I tried Lemon Meringue Tarts. I saw the recipe in this month’s Woolworth’s free monthly magazine. Looked easy enough. And definitely looked good. But they suggested using ‘Woolworth’s shortcrust pastry tartlet cases’ which were ready prepared…  Well, I had all the ingredients, so i wasn’t going to go out to buy tarlet cases… I have a recipe book! Which is totally awesome and has recipes for all the basic stuff such as shortcrust pastry. So I followed that recipe instead and made my own tartlet cases.

So here are the ready made tartlet cases. OK so they’re kind of ugly… but whatever. I didnt actually follow instructions to put baking paper over the top with rice on it (so the center doesn’t bulge up which i figured out AFTER i baked them cuz before that i was like what..!?? what for!? so ya… it was too much work anyway. And since these were so small, it wasn’t really necessary~ ok enuff rambling back to the main story.) I cant figure out how to make it all nice and smooth though. Maybe using a rolling pin would help

Here’s the lemon tart filling

And here’s the meringue!

And here’s the finished combined product ready to be baked.

You can probably see a couple of really weird looking meringue on the tarts, but i thought i should try make it spiky since well… it browns better? But then i thought they didnt look so nice so i stuck with little blobs.

Looks so cute right??? (ok sorry. Enough SSing…)

Baking…

And the final product.

Was a little runny when this was taken. It was still warm and I was too excited to wait for it to cool. But the next day the inside was a bit more solid. I don’t know if that’s a good thing… I’ve never had lemon meringue tarts before…

Overall I thought it was a bit sour. My lemon was one heck of a juicy lemon. I considered cutting down the amount of water I had to add to the lemon custard. And I thought maybe I should add a bit more sugar, but it was my first time making it I didn’t want to mess around with the recipe too much :S But then again ‘one lemon’ in the recipe is quite ambiguous.

Ayway, I had some left over meringue so I just baked them… low temperature, long time… I remembered this from the time we tried making pavlova at home with mum.

I could have made a little pavlova i guess but then I ndded cream and a bunch of other stuff to put together and i really couldn’t be bothered. My brother seemed to like these little meringues by itself anyway so i just baked them and they got eaten up!

On a completely non-related topic, here’s some other food I indulged in this weekend…

I went out for a movie later that evening then Marina picked Conie and I up and we headed to Brace Girdle. WHeee! finally made it there.

Here’s my strawberry indulgence… I really have no idea what its called but that sounds acceptable The chocolate was SO GOOD i took a spoon and scraped out every single bit from the tub even after my strawberries had finished. ><

Here are the darlings…

Then last night I went to the Casino to try the $5 roast of the day that I’ve heard so many people talk about for such a long time but never been there!

Here it is.

$5. Pretty worth it?

It was GOOD. The roast of the day was Veal. The meat was very tender. There was apple sauce and/or gravy, and it was served with beans, carrots (which were surprisingly sweet and Yummy. If you know me well you’ll know I DONT LIKE CARROTS but i ate every single one of them on my plate) And roast potatoes which were very tasty too although the outside skin was a wee bit tough.

I wont tell you what TIME i had this meal because if I did you’ll be shocked and tell me that’s why I’m gaining weight.

So I’ll just leave it at that

Anyway, thanks to all who made my weekend off so far one of my bestest. And no alcohol or dancing involved! hahaha.

Dinner tonight at Hog’s Breath with YinLu- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Spending the evening with them was like looking through the glassy barrier of their little bubble. I was thrown into the midst of their happy little lives. 4 boys. 4 best friends. Apparently there are 5 of them but I still haven’t met the fifth. Reminds me of my primary school days when we were the sailor Moon, Venus, Mercury,  Mars and Jupiter…  There was an ‘us’. And the ‘Us’ involved more than two. It was nice. It was simple. No drama. No complications. Just friends having fun together, sharing things… But that was a long time ago.

What they have, is a ‘now’ bubble. I can just imagine them being friends till they’re all old, telling each other stories about how their family is going along later on in their lives, laughing about the good old days.

I wish I had the same things they do. But like I said, I was just an observer, an outsider having a sneak peek of what it’s like inside that hardy little bubble. I was the poking, proding finger. If I get too close I’d risk popping it… And that wouldn’t be nice…

I need to blow my own bubble. My bubble with my ‘us’ in it. Bubbles don’t pop other bubbles. They float around, they bump and slide against each other, and once a while the bubbles will stick together, or in some cases even combine to form a larger bubble… So bubbles around bubbles are safe. But put a finger around and everything bursts.

I need a bubble.

It was nice chatting with the girls. These gossip sessions are really quite informative.

I have to say though, I used to enjoy ‘girl talk’ a bit more when we’re all on the same boat. When life was simpler and boys were a fun topic. Single girls have more fun…? Girls in relationships seem to have an endess string of problems. But at the same time you can’t deny, people like being in relationships. I guess it’s nice to have someone there you can depend on. Someone there who worries about you, who wants to protect you, who cares about you All The Time.

I’ve had my fair share of single girl fun. Frankly, I’d like a change… but then again that’s not my call is it?

DIE.

My head is continually spinning. I thought after panadol and a good sleep after this morning’s classes (3 hours sounds like a good enough sleep right?) I’d feel better.

But no. No difference. I was better for a bit I guess right after getting up, but after finishing off the last two lectures my head is spinning once again.

‘Finishing off’ lectures here just means I used lots of paper to re-write the entire lecture out. (thank you C for providing me with the last sheet of paper. It was just enough! I can’t believe i forgot to bring more paper to uni…)

Writing everything out again helps in a way that now I know what there is to learn and kind of see how everything links together. But it doesn’t mean I’ve actually LEARNT anything.

So now I’ve got about 13 hours to cram knowledge into my already crammed head.

Pharmacology and me really don’t mix.

I’ve tried liking it.

I’ve tried reading it.

i’ve tried writing notes on it.

All it results in is a very congested, painful and woozy feeling head.

No comprehension at all.

Everything circulates around everything else! SO if you don’t get one part you wont get the other part and so on and you’ll end up in deep shit.

last night’s attempt to sleep early totally failed.

I went home, decided to eat some dinner before sleep (so i fried an egg and had it with a slice of bread). Watched tv for abour 40 mins~ then headed to bed just after 9pm.

Um. Didn’t really sleep. Well my eyes were tired so they were closed… and I felt like my whole body was too tired to move. So physically- definitely ready for sleep. But my brain was too active. It kept on thinking things like: Carbamazepine. OCP. CYP3A4. Morphine. Warfarin. CYP2C9. SNPs and more drug names and crap which i can’t relate to each other in my head.  It’s like seeing all the puzzle pieces but not being able to piece them together.

So after that ‘rest’ (since it wasnt really sleep…) i got up before 11pm and decided I should make better use of my time than that. And I got myself to study Adrenergic pharmaco. i wrote notes… Not sure how much of it i actually know (ok now i think about it, not much… cuz the drug examples venning uses are completely UNHEARD of drugs) so… maybe slightly more organised in a sense that I know what goes in the topic and I know what I need to know. But that’s about it.

But definitely better use of time than ‘trying’ to sleep and not doing much. End up playing cellphone games in bed again…

Wow this rambling was a lot longer than i had expected it to be.

Will take off now~

too sleepy.

going to sleep now.

The whole clan of lecturers are young men (well, a lot of them are). Too bad the clan is now down by one. Bye Joe…