Feelin a bit "Conservative"



Conservative dentistry!!!! My first restoration....still not on a real patient yet. Probably will be Very Afraid when the time comes to see one. I think I did a pretty good job on this tooth. What did I do on this tooth...lets see...

-prepare the cavity (high speed handpiece, diamond bur)
-remove carious bits (slow speed handpiece, round bur)
-"condition" it (Ketac cavity Conditioner)
-Line it with Glass Ionomer Cement (Fuji IX)
-Acid etch whole tooth
-Line with Singlebond (2 layers)
-Restore with Composite resin incrementally (light cure it)
-Pit and fissure sealant...(light cure again)

YEAHHHH... tooth is restored! Doesn't sound that hard huh?? Hmm...maybe not. Its almost exam time so all I can think of is uni stuff.... Will load more interesting things soon.

3 whole Oranges were sacrificed...

Dessert time!!! This is a different version of the last sticky date pudding I made. Presenting..... 'date and almond cakes with orange syrup'.....

Recipe (Serves 4)
1/2 cup plain (all-purpose) flour
3/4 cup almond meal* (ground almonds)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup roughly chopped pitted dates
75g butter, melted
2 Tbs milk
1 egg

orange syrup
1/2 cup caster sugar (thats a lot of sugar....reduce it to
1/2 cup orange juice ( i used freshly squeezed juice)
2 Tbs finely grated orange rind (this was hard to achieve....maybe its just me)

Method:
Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius. Place flour, almond meal, baking powder, sugar and dates in a bowl and combine. Add butter, milk and egg and mix and combine. Then spoon mixture into greased 1 cup capacity muffin tins and bake for 25 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

While cakes are cooking, make the orange syrup. Place the sugar, orange juice (i squeezed them from fresh orange) and orange rind in a saucepan and stir over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Simmer 5-7 minutes or until slightly thickened.

Spoon warm syrup over the warm cakes and serve with thick (double) cream....

Can dogs Pray? Pray for an ice-cream Bar?

Once upon a time in Faraway Land...there lived a dog called Muffin. He sleeps 23 hours a day, only interested in food that is not found in his bowl, thinks he is the King and barks at dogs which are much much bigger than him... he is my apartment's guardian angel. I love how he jumps about frantically everyday when I come home after a long day.....welcoming me home. Suddenly a lonely quiet nite at home alone doesn't seem that quiet anymore with Muffin snuggled around your ankle while you watch Sunday nite's Grey's Anatomy...his warm belly keeping my icy toes warm....can't imagine my life without a dog...

Is this the way to 'Eating Healthier'?

(Will my bum look smaller after eating this?)


Some munchies during my study period...compliments of my naturopath friend who works at Vitamin Me. She reckons the choc chip bar is the 'Next Big Thing' and is better than Uncle Toby's bars. Apprently its lower in sugar...etc etc... You know I am no expert in health food and I usually just eat whatever my eyes can see....But I'll have to say for something that is suppose to be 'healthy', it taste kinda nice! Its rather chewy! I like it. I think it retails for AUD 2.50 per bar.

The bottled water was also from that shop. Its bottled Water For Women! I like the marketing on that! Its even got Water for Travel etc etc. The water is special cos its gently infused with 8 flower essences and it tastes just like Water! HmmmMMm..

Its been a while...

I've been busy preparing for my anatomy flag race exam the past week and its finally over today. It was a hard exam........ok...lets not dwell in the past now. Should always look forward and smile...everything will be better.

Even though I haven't been blogging...I have still continued to snap pictures of yummy places to go and a few things that I've been up to lately.

I've decided to load the pictures in the order I found them in my camera. So first one up is Joe's lunchbox! I cooked some Korean Spicy Pork Belly...Everything has to be sliced up/julienned?? in Korean cooking. So I had to do the carrots, onion, capsicum.....Eat it with steamed rice, and some seasoned seaweed... yum yum.

Becco Fantastico (7.5/10)

Becco

11-25 Crossley St, Melbourne
(03) 96633000
2 chef hats in The Age good food guide

This dinner was worth waiting for. We called to book sometime during the week and the best they could offer was 9.30pm with a possible wait. We got there at 10 pm, no waiting...and got seated rite away.The place wasn't packed....but very noisy as most of the diners were very happy people (probably intoxicated by that hour).

Entree was the "BESTEST" dish I've had so far (out of the few places I've been to recently). Its crispy prawn wrapped in some stringy pasta bits (i think) served on a bed of tangy salad (avocado, cucumber...etc etc). I gotta say, this dish made me eat avocado! I usually do not touch that green thing as they taste kinda nasty..... but this dish on its own is worth 8/10 on its own. I love it and recommend all future Becco-ers to try it. A must try!

This is the "Van's-Must-Try Dish"

Snapper and Creme Brulee

For mains, Joe had the snapper while I had the spaghettini with pippis. The picture came out really really blur so i decided to skip it. They were yummy but not something worth crying for. Dessert was a leatherwood honey creme brulee serced with blueberries and raspberries. I gulped down this dessert pretty quickly and got a piece of the sugar stuck in my throat. I should've crunched the sugar bits more before eating it but i was too hungry..... Sorry throat.

A must try for lovely Italian food.....

Feeling Soupy

Miss my mum's cooking. Can't believe mum chose Korea over her kids! She decided to go sight-seeing with her friend instead of coming over to feed her starving children. Mum!!!! How could you do this to us? Hehhee... oh well. Mum needs a holiday too and I'll be seeing her at the end of June. As long as she remembers to buy us lots of pressies then we're even.

Ok, back to food....I went through my pantry and found some dried beancurd (think mum bought them awhile ago), then I remembered I did set aside some "soup-bones" last week....SOUP TIME SOUP TIME!!! Its going to be dried beancurd, red date and bone soup tonight. I haven't had those chinese boiled soup for ages! Usually its just ABC soup for me. For those who do not know what ABC soup is, it is basically everyhing you can find in your fridge mixed together. Sounds disgusting but the combination requires some skill too.

Usual ABC ingredients: (Vegetarian)
Carrots
Tomatoes
Big brown onion
Potatoes
(will boil the above ingredients for 30-45 mins, then remove from heat and stir in spoonfuls of miso paste, and add a dash of dashi granules)

Dried Beancurd soup:
Dried beancurd (soak it in water until soft, then add it in the soup after it has been boiling for and hour or so)
Red dates (deseeded)
Soup bones (can be chicken or pork)
(the bones and dates are boiled together for as long as you want....to release the flavour within....yummm....then add the softened dried beancurd into the soup and let it boil again for 10 mins or so....do not let it boil too long....because the beancurd will shatter).

I will upload the picture of the soup a bit later....cos I was too hungry tonight so i didn't take any pictures.

Pears are in season.....so PEAR it up!!!!! Some like it squishy soft, some like it firm. I like them in between....so just let them ripen at room temperature instead of shoving it in the fridge. Believe me....cos I said so.....

Coffee or Sea?

Photo: Jason South @ www.theage.com.au 24/04/07

The weather this week is about 4 degrees celcius above average and I'm not complaining at all. Usually I'm the Queen of Complaining....this and that....always "sighing". But not this week because all is good..

a) Weather is good

b) ANZAC day on Wednesday = a public holiday in the middle of the week

c) I finally get something out of Tuesday dissection classes (except the bit where I had to witness my friends sawing someone's head into half...right in the middle. Chrystella, if you're reading this, hope we didn't inhale too much bone particles and no nightmares)

The above picture with the man floating in the sea was taken from www.theage.com.au website. I just thought that guy looks sooooo relaxed and our Melbourne beaches are looking pretty cystal clear during this horrible drought we're facing. I wish it was me...but I'll probably be wearing sunnies and sitting on a float with a BIG umbrella over my head. No no to sun damaged skin.