What I ate today: healthy edition Day 2

Sundays are sort of like our cheat days, but not really, we wake up half an hour later for our walk, and choose an easier exercise for the day, we chose tae bo. What hasn't changed about sundays is the food. It's always good.

After having holidays for 5 months, my food intake increased exponentially. In university I had 3 meals a day and one snack during physiology or biochemistry,now that i'm home I have more snack times, and not the best kind of snacks to be honest, but my sister and I are really trying to change that situation.

For breakfast yesterday I consumed my all time favourite cereal that just came back on the market after years. Its called Chocolate Pillows. It was called Chocolatey Squares before. Now when I love a cereal, I really get hooked on to it. I remember the last cereal I loved was Frosty Stars, and it had marshmallows in it which were space themed! I ate that cereal for over 8 months straight and at times, twice a day, till I could no longer find it in the shops. So I am looking forward to my time with this cereal. They're pretty much square puffs with chocolate in the center, and the chocolate melts in the most scrumptious way in hot milk.

                                      

My sister had oats with some freshly cut strawberries and cinnamon sprinkled on top, and a cup of steaming raspberry green tea. A good power kick for the morning.

She had a couple of eggs as a snack later on.

Lunch was out and we ended up at gymkhanna. My sister had some hot and sour chicken soup for starters which she said was even better than Ching's soup (I talked about this soup in my udon post) ! so i'll be trying that next time.

I had a masala papad/papadum. I love these. It's super thin,crispy and disc shaped. It can be made of different flours, and then it's covered with some salad and chaat masala. delicious!

We also had some lovely vegetable spring rolls.

Butter chicken and naan arrived for the main course.

For snacks yesterday we had some muffins, and lemonade. We make lemonade with a bit of cumin.

Hopefully we can keep up the exercise!

                                                                   -Priya-

What I Ate

Hello! Long time, no see. I thought i'd sweeten things up a bit here by drawing what I ate last Sunday.

The hot chocolate was from Tiramisu (obviously), the butter chicken and naan from Khazanna. I absolutely love the gravy of their chicken, once I start, I just can't stop! The cake was from cake city, it was surprisingly good, I've had some pretty dry cakes and some extremely sweet cakes from there, but this was good. The tea is from the London Fruit and Herb company. I've been crushing on their tea for quite a while now! My favorite being apple and cinnamon, and the best thing is they are caffeine free. I'll probably do a blog post on their tea soon. I hope you all have a great week ahead!

                                                                            -Priya-

Udon, the way I like it.

Hello folks! It's obviously been a while(as pointed out by my sister on multiple occasions).
 Udon is a thick wheat flour noodle, it is japanese, but i'm sort of a Rachael Ray in the kitchen, I just prefer a 10 minutes limit rather than a 30 minutes limit.
I use udon in hot and sour soup. As someone who prefers foods to drinks, I always have something to chew on with my liquids, in this case udon.
I boil the udon with some salt till it's soft and can fold in on itself.

While the udon boils I prepare the hot and sour soup, which is a packet soup from a company called Ching's, it is the only packaged soup I consume willingly.
I cut a few carrots and spring beans which I boil too, sometimes I sprinkle some herbs on top, and voila, a healthy lunch in less than 10 minutes!

                 
                                                                           -Priya-

Tiramisu treasures

When I was a child, my mum had to man handle me to drink my cup of milk, as some of you may know, not much has changed in that department! Everything about milk revolts me, the taste, the texture, the smell, the color, it all triggers my instincts to projectile vomit.

Recently while grocery shopping, I came across a branch of Tiramisu,which is a bakery, dessert bar and coffee house all in one!

I was so impressed that I decided to go to a larger branch today.

I ordered the hot chocolate (I know...i'm surprised I did so too!), and boy oh boy, wasn't I in for a treat! This would definitely rank on my list of best life decisions.

They give the option of having it with or without whipped cream, and I obviously chose with.

The cream perfectly complements the chocolate, and elevates the taste beautifully! The chocolate is thicker than any other hot chocolate I've tried. The viscosity of it was perfect enough to be scooped out with a spoon and also to be drunk. It's an absolutely delectable drink which is priced well enough for my student pocket.

It is the perfect dreamy hot chocolate for me, and I definitely recommend a visit.
                                                                          -Priya-

Breakfast Bowl

I'm on holiday, which to be honest means an increase in my intake of junk food with about zero exercise. I've experienced what that kind of lifestyle can do in my last holidays, so trying to break the trend i'm trying to eat healthy, which leads me to making my own food. This also keeps me more active, so that I don't sit around all day catching up with tv shows and movies.
I made a healthier breakfast that's quick, easy and gives me enough energy to start the day.

It's pretty simple if you want to try it out ,some vanilla yoghurt, half an apple which I chopped with my superb knife skills(sort of like a ninja), half a handful of macadamia nuts(though I prefer almonds), and bran flakes(because my mum bought them and no one wants to eat them...they're sort of tolerable in yoghurt). Banana is always nice to add, but I ran out of them. 

I feel happier when I eat healthier, so hopefully I manage to keep up with this.

                                                                   -Priya-

The Corner Affair

I wrote this post before and deleted it in my delirious state at about midnight. I'm going to re-write it, because it was technically my first post.
            Last week was my grandmas 77th birthday, so to celebrate her still looking 20 years young my family and I decided to hit up a coffee shop/restaurant nearby called The Corner Affair.

It's rather a shabby looking place from the outside but the decor inside is beautiful. It had a nice chilled out vibe, which is always welcome in our hectic lives. 

    

             

           After we settled down we took a look at the menu, which I personally found overpriced and highly limiting. A menu that consisted of 3 types of cakes and about 6 types of hot drinks gave me quite the shock to me. Out of a lack of options and my dislike for milk , I opted for the watermelon and basil juice. Sounds enticing right? Oh, but do not be fooled! This juice was for lack of a better term, disgusting. It was pretty much stale watermelon juice diluted in water. Any hope of saving that drink was tossed out the window the moment water was involved. Oh, did the menu mention basil? That's right, it did. There was no basil in sight! No basil! The sole reason I bought this juice was to give my taste buds a sensation they has not had before but, no basil, not even a random leaf floating astray in the juice, not even as a decoration piece, nothing.            

           I think that they need to be more honest with themselves and rename the drink as flavored water, It was pretty much water with a hint of stale watermelon, or even better, take it off their menu. 

I now know that if I ever want watermelon juice, I can make it for myself and guess what, I can actually afford to add a few leaves of basil from the garden.

If anything could be more disappointing than their juice, (which I don't think is a long list of things with the standard of their drinks), it's their service. 

An impatient waitress tapping her pen and sighing to serve the other waiting non-existant customers did not improve my take on the place. As a first time customer I generally want to go through the menu, to see what I would like to order, but according to her the order should be on our finger tips. It's fine if the waitress is in a hurry to serve other people, but considering we were the only ones in the place she didn't have to be so pushy.

After finally placing an order, which she got wrong while re-reading it because of her haste to serve all the people seated in the restaurant, we waited. 

I got my disappointment of a juice, and after I was done with it, my mum went to check on the coffees, after asking the waitress if it was ready she replied with "we haven't started". She was busy hanging around with another waiter chatting and laughing, which by all means, go ahead and do, but at least be professional enough to do so after the customers have got their drinks. My mum obviously cancelled the order and we headed over to java.(my sister has reviewed that).

I feel that when a customer pays for over priced food or drinks, the least the restaurant can do is deliver on quality. This experience was one I would not like to re-live, and keeping true to at least it's slogan, my view on the restaurant did truly change there. 

                                                                   -Priya-