I can’t believe how quickly the weekend has come and gone, and I can’t believe I’ve been in Italy almost 6 weeks!

I’ve confirmed my onward travel plans from here, which unfortunately do not involve going home to Brunei as previously planned. I’m flying to New York instead, for two months, including my birthday!

I haven’t had a birthday at home in a loonnggg time, but I can’t complain about spending it in New York with NYBoy instead. He always goes beyond spoiling me for any special occassion.

I had a skype interview with Rag & Bone in New York on Friday evening, and they’ll be confirming the internship dates (which would have included NY Fashion Week!) and details early next week. The same Friday evening it was finally confirmed that I won’t be able to afford the expedited J1 visa cost (1100 euros) and so won’t be going to work there despite having gotten the job offer.

Whaaaatt a letdown.

I am so disappointed, it would have been an amazing opportunity, and do I even have to mention again – NY FASHION WEEK?

I’m going to keep trying to find a cheaper J1 visa sponsor, that can expedite it, for slightly cheaper – but it isn’t likely. Having a really hard time letting this one go!

And to make my weekend that much worse. I think I’m coming down with something. My throat’s sore, my head hurts and I’m trying desperately to reverse my downward spiraling health by eating lots of fruit and veg, and drinking lots and lots of water and hot honey lemon tea.

The past week in brief:

I made a big black bow hair accessory to jazz up my work clothes (so people don’t notice I am seriously running out of things to wear here!)

I love my new dress from Urban Outfitters, but I need a pair of sheer tights to go under it because it is definitely not knee-length as described!

Steak for dinner was a much needed break from the cheap pasta I cook every night for dinner.

And so was this whole fish baked in salt, a recipe I found at NYMag.

Cracking the salt crust open was the best part because I got to whack it with a wooden spoon.

Today I tried out the Sprinkles strawberry cupcake recipe! [click for recipe]

They were so fluffy, and a very light pink shade, very cute! I had to use Crisco in place of butter, because I didn’t have any in the fridge and I’m trying to save up for Italy, so this means cutting back on spending wherever possible!

Thankfully, I had a giant tub of Crisco in my cupboard from Thanksgiving when I had a couple of orders for pumpkin pie and apple pie… You can’t sell a pie and not make the crust yourself, it’s cheating!

I doubled the cake recipe, but used regular quantities for the frosting because I always find I have way too much frosting left over from baking? Hence the tiny swirl of frosting as opposed to my usual crazy mound of sugary cream.

The cake itself only had a VERY slight strawberry taste, but the frosting tasted like strawberry yoghurt with extra sugar! VERY yummy. Invited a few friends over for chicken & seafood fajita’s and nacho’s, and to test run the cupcakes, they were a hit. We even had a little drama at the end with people fighting over who got to take them home, always a good sign!

My exams are now over.

My final Arabic exam for this year went much better than I expected, it was my first three hour exam and I didn’t know what to expect! All my other exams so far at university have been two hours at most, because two hours is enough to write two essays. Our three hour Arabic exam involved an essay and 5 translation pieces with 5 short compositions to be written in Arabic.

I have the tiniest handwriting, so even though we were told 30-40 words in Arabic would be sufficient, when I had done that much it was only about three lines… which looked a bit pathetic. So I ended up writing double for each composition, just to make it look nice… and by the time I got to my essay, my hand was aching and my handwriting was barely legible.

But at least my exams are over! Now while NYBoy studies for his final exam on irregular warfare (what is that?!), I bake cake and quietly catalog his boxes of stamps according to their values.

Italy in about a week! YAY!

I was craving this so much. My mom keeps promising to send me the household recipe for it, but keeps forgetting! So I googled it, and found a recipe on the Singapore Tourism Board website.

It turned out really well! I made a few minor adjustments;

- Used my hand blender to finely mince the garlic, ginger and chili for the chili dip

- Doubled the amount of ginger I put into the chicken before placing it in boiling water

- Used garlic paste rather than finely chopped garlic for the rice, I didn’t want people to be getting mouthfuls of garlic chunks in their rice

and I served it with some broccoli stir-fried with garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce and a little bit of apple juice… I made up the stir fry bit because I forgot the broccoli until the last minute, and it’s customary for me to force the boys in this house to eat their veg.

Invited a couple of friends over for dinner, and it was just enough for 6 people (with seconds!).

Tonight it’s home made pizza’s, maybe?

I baked over forty cupcakes today!

And they went very quickly…

Sidra & I.

WHAT A GOODLOOKING MAN.

Sidra, Naz & I.

Is that done yet?

Me and my little sister Naz (who’s up for a week from Plymouth)

HI FOOD.

MMMMMM…

I used this recipe (a clone Cinnabon recipe!), but didn’t have a breadmaker so used one of the reviewer’s comments as a guideline, and made it by hand!

I’ve never made bread before, I think it turned out pretty good! But I could use a little more practice with the rolling and I wish I had some dental floss to cut the rolls (as recommended in the recipe reviews). The frosting was SO yummy! One of the reviewers recommended doubling it, but I used single recipe quantities and I had more than enough for my 12 rolls! It’s a vanilla cream cheese frosting. SO GOOD!

They only lasted one day because NYBoy & I had one each to accompany our afternoon tea and then I had friends over to sample them, and they proved to be pretty popular.

Will DEFINITELY make these again!

Boyfriend-approved.

I have hardly eaten all day!! I had a caesar chicken sandwich before my slot at the Careers Center, to sort out THE BEST INTERNSHIP EVER! (that I don’t want to talk about, until I have flights and accommodation booked, and am going for sure) And I was sorting through the photos I took in New York, when I found this:

I used Pioneer Woman’s recipe. And I definitely back her claim that it is the best chocolate sheet cake in the world.

I’m practically drooling.

NYBoy & I’s relationship turned one on the 28th of March, which was the day before he left to New York last year! And we found out the day before that, that we would be going to New York (together!) the day after our anniversary!

So on the Saturday night we went to the Old Course restaurant at the Rusacks Hotel on the scores for dinner. We got a really good table overlooking the golf course, and we were the only people in that part of the restaurant for most of our meal, which was really nice!

We ordered the exact same starters and entrees, I suppose we go together so well because we’re so alike, even in terms of our food preferences? The duck terrine to start and shetland salmon with parsley mash as a main. The only thing we differed on was dessert. NYBoy is obsessed with white chocolate.

So he got the white chocolate cheesecake.

And I got the banana honey parfait with passionfruit sauce.

Personally, I liked mine more, it was DELISH.

Then we stayed up all night packing and talking, like we did when we got together last year. I napped while NYBoy kept an eye on the time and vice versa, so we wouldn’t miss our cab at 8 in the morning to Edinburgh airport!

Our flight to New York was SO last minute. When we looked up easter break flights in January, they were at around USD$1000, when we bought the tickets two days before the departure date, we got them for USD$450, return and including all taxes.

There are some really crazy flight deals out there!

I’m assuming the whole credit crunch crisis really is affecting the sale of luxury items, like holidays abroad.

So I’ve been in New York since Sunday afternoon.

* We’ve been chilling at home
* We drove through the Hamptons and up to Montauk point yesterday for the fun of it (and because it was a really sunny day)
* Bought Coldstone ice cream cupcakes
* Watched American Idol live on TV and not a day late like in the UK…. I’m loving it.

The one major downside to this very spontaneous trip – I don’t have ANY money saved up for shopping because I was SO sure I was going to be in St Andrews all break That doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying just being in a proper home and not a student house, and just chilling with NYBoy’s family – but being in New York, KNOWING I have access to a million clothes stores and not being able to shop?!

Painful.

I get Martha Stewart “Cookie of the Day” emails in my inbox everyday, and I’d been dying to try these (also these, but where can I find matcha in St A’s?). Have been sick for a while, and since I can’t go out without shivering and feeling like absolute death, I got NYBoy to bring over some ingredients so I could bake at home and keep myself busy.

I only had snowflake shaped cookie cutters (from NYBoy’s mom over Christmas!) so I made them in snowflake shapes rather than circles!

BEFORE BAKING

AFTER BAKING

They tasted sooo good. NYBoy said the cookie tasted like a waffle because it was so maple syrup-y. I wish I had maple extract on hand to use, but St Andrews is a tiny town, so I made do with vanilla extract. I use the best vanilla extract I can find for my baking, it makes a huge difference.

The semi-regular house dinner, originally uploaded by *Hannah.

Roast beef with baked sweet potato and carrots. No recipes used, we made it up as we went along, and it was soooo good.