Sadness and Happiness in The End of 2012

Hi there! Haven't post anything within this month.. I could say that I had a very hard time this month but still as written in the post title, I also got another happy time..

First thing came up in this month is brokenheart, yeahh love problem and I broken up with my boy, no he's not my boy, he's my man.. As my friend said, walking all alone is easy but walking all alone after having someone to walk together would feel like you're abandoned by the world.. I feel really really really sad but I won't write down our problem here.. :) The second thing and the only happy thing happened this month is my dad's birthday.. Well I have to admit that lately I'm getting away from my dad, we got so many different thought about anyhting and it makes me feel like don't wanna come back home every weekend.. :'( He's also getting busier than before so we almost not meet each other for a month.. But then he came back home from his business trip right on his birthday so we have a family dinner on that night at Gandy Steak, HayamWuruk.

The Ceiling that always amazed me everytime I saw it

Favorite authentic butter bread as appetizer

Not much photos for this time.. This place always reminds me about my childhood.. This is the first steak I've eaten from my childhood and being my favourite one until now.. Even my mom tell me that when she was about giving birth of me, the thing she wanna ate is Gandy Steak's Beef Picatta and after she eaten it, I was born.. hahaha.. One of my favourite thing here is the butter bread, everytime we came we'll be served a fresh from the oven butter bread with a pack of butter.. Then, we always ordered Beef Picatta for our steak but that night I ordered Steak ala Gandy (sorry I didn't take the photo of the steak hehe).. The thing I love about this steak is the gravy, I couldn't find the same gravy as I have here.. Besides, they also served with mushroom and pickled onion :)

After that dinner my dad decided to buy a chocolate cake for himself but it's too late, the bakery was closed and he said he'll buy it the day after.. Why it must be a chocolate cake? Because that's the only cake he like.. hahahaha.. And oh, since we're chinese people, we usually celebrate birthday with eating noodles as a symbol of long life, so we eat it for lunch in the day after my dad's birthday.. Then, for dinner we went to Emporium Pluit because my dad change his mind and decided to buy mille crepes for his birthday cake.. :p
We went to Chef' Table by Din Tai Fung and we ate the typical chinese cuisine plus Xiao Long Bao dumplings..

Chinese Tea

Xiao Long Bao dumplings

Hadramout - Special Arabian Lunch

Yeah yeah.. This is the first time I try an Arabian Cuisine.. I went to Hadramaout Restaurant near Mangarai, with some friends (Yogi, Calvin, Rahmat, Siska, and Andre).. We went to a same faculty with different major.. Lately we chat a lot about food and culinary things, and also any other things that sometimes made me crazy. How could we chat among each other? First of all, Yogi asked me if I know any place where sold Arabian food in Jakarta.. Then I remember a person (my mentor in my intership program) have told me a nice arabian restaurant, named Abunawas. After that, I recommended it to Yogi, as he also asked by Calvin to search any arabian restaurant. Since then, Yogi invited me to join their small chat group in LINE messenger and made a plan to go to Abunawas. But then I read Bondan Winarno's review about arabian restaurant and he said Hadramout is a good one, so we decided to go to Hadramout Restaurant.

We planned to leave our campus at 11a.m. but because some of us were late, we start our journey at 11.40 a.m.. Hmmm.. At the beginning of the journey we really want to listen to any music that could make us sing along, then Calvin asked Andre to play any music from his phone and Andre played 60's and 70's song -___-'

While listening to some oldies song, Rahmat take out 2 kinds of chocolate that he bought in Singapore (if I'm not mistaken). Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate and Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate. It's all taste great! Here's some pics of them

Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate

Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate

We got some traffic jams on our way because we past several Mosques which are conducting Friday Prayers, but it was not really bad and we arrived at the restaurant after about an hour of journey.

restaurant's billboard

Interrior decoration

Room No. 9

The Menu

Siska - Calvin - Andre

Rahmat - Yogi

Rahmat - Yogi - Me - Siska

Yup! We didn't sit on a chair with dinning table, we sat on a carpet! They divided the restaurant to some cubicles like this. That is the uniqueness of this restaurant, they set the interior decoration so we could experience an arabian atmosphere. :)

We ordered some special arabian food and snacks. The first food served is Maamoul, which is Bakpia looked alike with different ingredients and different kind of filling. Lol. The waitress told us that this maamoul was imported from United Arab Emirates. Maamoul was filled with black dates, and it was not as sweet as I thought before. haha

Maamoul

Second, Hadramout Sweet. When we saw it on the menu, Hadramout Sweet was pictured as a small piece of sweet cake, but when it arrived we could see it as a pudding, obviously. When I try to eat it, I can clearly taste it as a caramel pudding with Marie Biscuits on it. -__-'

Hadramout Sweet

For the beverages we ordered Arabic Pot Tea with Moroccan Tea. Besides tea bag, they also use mint leaves and it's all served in a pot plus arabian signature tea sets.  

Moroccan Tea

 Here's another food we ate. Arabic bread with Homous, Mix Grill (chicken & lamb meat kebab), and Tabouleh. At last Ramadhan month, I read many articles about how Arabian people break fasting, and I found that they usually eat Homous for break fasting, so I want to try to eat it. Homous was made of some kinds of nuts and olive oil. It's appetizing! 

Arabic Bread and Homous

Then our mix grill came and all of us just laugh at the shape! Yes, I know what you're thinking about! :D
At the beginning we also feel like don't want to eat them, but after tasting it, we found it great because it's contains many spices that make it tasty. Then, we try to eat the kebab with bread + homous.

Mix Grill

Tadaaa! Arab Bread + Homous + Kebab

After eating the kebab, we still have one more arab bread, so Yogi and Rahmat decided to order Tabouleh to be eaten with the bread :)

Tabouleh

The Bill

A day before, Andre said he want to go for karaoke after this lunch, Yogi said he want to go to The National Library, I said I want to go home earlier because I wanna bought a birthday cake for my mom, but all of us not really sure about what are we going to do after lunch. Then, we just go around the area and Calvin suggest me to buy AJ Bakery's Cake, but it's too far away at Kelapa Gading.. After going nowhere, almost for one and a half hour, we have Calvin driving towards Kelapa Gading area and he really wanna go to AJ Bakery to buy Pizza Bread.. Calvin said the cakes there is good too, but I wasn't really interested with the cake display.. Then, Rahmat suggest me to buy Maison Annalita Cake's Ice Cream Taart so we went there and I got the cake.. Vanilla - Choco Ice cream with chocolate cake.. :)

The Cake

My lovely pretty mom :)

I can't wait to have another fun time with them, maybe we should go somewhere to eat Indian Cuisine, Chinese, or try any other arabian restaurant and many more :)

Super Happy Halloween!!

Yup! This is the first Halloween celebration in my life, actually I wasn't really celebrating it, but my college's gym did it.. I'm a bit frightened at the beginning, but I found it fun.. People who got make up in their faces are the gym staffs, they did great right??

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!! :)

Something Western

Because of so many things happened, I became super lazy to do my final project, so I choose to blog.. haha

About a week ago I got really bored and I decided to read David Lebovitz's website. Actually I don't really know who is he but I like his posts so much! He posted so many kinds of French food either it is the recipe or review about French restaurant. They all looked really delicous, altough they are not familiar for me. After that I thought I really want to have any kind of western food. One of the greatest western restaurant around my campus is The Harvest, so I decided to go there with Joshua the day after.

Actually The Harvest was well-known for the cake product, but for Depok branch they sell many kinds of dine-in menu.

For beverages, we ordered Ice Lemon Tea. There was so many things to drink that looked really nice, but I need something cold and fresh, since it was really hot that day. And I think Joshua felt the same. haha

Ice Lemon Tea

For the appetizer, I got Nicoise Salad. The dressing look really thick and creamy, but it was not overwhelming at all. :)

Nicoise Salad

For the side dishes, I ordered sautee mushrooms and mashed potato. I didn't know why I really want to eat mushrooms at that time. haha. 

Sautee Mushrooms

Mashed Potato

Joshua ordered Penne Pasta w/ seafood and at the end he decided to order The Harvest's Strawberry Cheesecake which been the most favorite cheesecake for him. :p

Penne w/ Seafood

Sliced Strawberry Cheesecake

Before we go, I came inside the cake shop and look around the display cabinet. Then I found some interesting macarons and I bought 3 of them; banana, blueberry, and pistachio flavor. :)

Macarons

I was really happy that day for having great lunch after reading a great website about food. It felt like I really hungry for many days but then I could eat something super! :)))))

Lawson Station Part 2

Blogpost kali ini edisi khusus bahasa Indonesia boleh ya? :)

Beberapa hari belakangan ini sering terlintas di pikiran saya untuk mencoba makanan di beberapa tempat, khususnya di sekitar Depok, dimana kampus saya berada. Di suatu siang menjelang sore, tiba-tiba rasa lapar menghantui, karena memang belum makan siang sama sekali. Setelah berputar-putar sedikit di jalan Margonda, saya menemukan gerai Lawson Station dan memutuskan untuk masuk ke sana.

Menu yang ingin saya coba saat itu adalah Oden, karena menurut rekomendasi beberapa teman rasanya unik dan rendah kalori. :) Kemudian saya memesan beberapa varian oden yang terlihat cukup menarik yaitu sandwich tofu, edamame ball, dan cheesy star.

Kemudian saya memesan curry don-nya karena saya sangat suka dengan masakan kari jepang dan penasaran seperti apa rasa curry don di Lawson.

Oden

Edamame Ball

Untuk keseluruhan oden, menurut saya cukup enak dan akan terasa menyenangkan jika dimakan ketika sedang hujan, karena kuahnya sangat menghangatkan. Dan dari ketiga varian oden yang saya makan ini, menurut saya cheesy star paling terasa isinya, yang lainnya agak hambar tapi justru sehat.

Curry don sendiri rasanya sebenarnya standar, tapi ada yang terasa aneh dengan wortel dan bumbu kari-nya. Ketika dimakan, wortel-nya terasa terlalu kering dan bumbu karinya terasa agak lengket di lidah. Tapi secara keseluruhan masih acceptable kok.

Curry Don

Merasa kurang puas dengan apa yang saya pesan, sebelum pulang saya kembali melihat-lihat produk yang dijual Lawson dan saya tertarik untuk mencoba dorayaki, mochi dan salah satu udon instan yang dijual di sana. Saya membeli Dorayaki dengan isian kacang merah dan mochi rasa black forest. Ternyata rasanya sangat enak terutama untuk mochi-nya, karena benar-benar terasa seperti kue black forest sesungguhnya (walaupun menurut saya krim-nya terlalu banyak).

Ogura Dorayaki

Bagian dalam Mochi

Setelah memakan semuanya, beberapa hari kemudian saya memutuskan untuk memasak udon instan ini, dan ternyata rasanya enak karena aroma khas rumput laut dan seafood-nya.

NongShim Instant Udon

Isi dari kemasan

Tada!! Hasil masakan saya :)

Untuk harga produk yang dijual di sana tergolong menengah, dan untuk makanan menurut saya cukup terjangkau. Sekian postingan kali ini, sampai jumpa di post selanjutnya :)

Family Lunch Time - Nan Xiang

Hi everyone!

Long time no see (see who?) hahaha

I've got so many food photos but I have no time to post it here, since I'm on my final year in University and doing a final project. :'(

Today's post is about the menu that my family likes to eat when we go out to some typical chinese restaurants. Because there are so many of them, I'll post it in another post with the same title but different sub-title. hahaha

Still fresh on my mind how we had this great family lunch time in Nan Xiang, Mall Taman Anggrek. My dad just passed by this restaurant and found out that they was having many credit cards promo, so my dad asked us to eat our lunch here.

For the appetizer, we had one of the most popular chinese cuisine named Wu Xiang Rou. My mom told me that it took a lot of time to cook this, so the spices could get into the meat. Some restaurants served it dry, but the rest of them served it like this. The unique thing about Nan Xiang's Wu Xiang Rou is they served it with yellow tofu, and it's good! :)

Wu Xiang Rou (Five Spice Beef)

For the side dishes we ordered Shrimp with Nan Xiang Special Sauce, Broccoli (no photo because nothing special with it haha), Tofu cooked in Black Bean Paste, and Fried Duck. I really like the shrimp, because of the authentic sauce. The tofu is too salty for me, but the duck is really satisfying. :9

Shrimp w/ Nan Xiang Special Sauce

Tofu Cooked in Black Bean Paste

Fried Duck

 For the fried duck, they served it with some small mantou (chinese steam bun) and peking duck special sauce. It's mouthwatering, isn't it??

After we ate all of the menu, we prefer went to Chatime (a bubble tea stall) to bought our drinks. Actually we ordered 4 but I only took a picture of this two hahaha. They are Pearl Milk Tea and Hazelnut Choco Milk Peark, another two drinks is Blended Matcha w/ Red Bean and Grass Jelly in Fresh Milk.

So many things I want to share with all of you, but yeah I have to admit that I got to do my final project and some tasks from some subjects (due to mid test haha) that I took this semester. Wish me luck! :D