God must be working part time in Starbucks' kitchen,

'cos its chocolate truffle cake tastes like heaven...
It's better than McCafe's chocolate cake, only it's smaller and more expensive :(

Nonetheless.... I'm fully satisfied tonight..... aaaah..... a warm bed would be good :D

Appetite!

Duh...! A couple of days ago the doorman at the library caught me at the entrance and forbade me to go inside because of an empty cup and a donut I brought along inside my library basket. “Kein Becher und kein Essen,” he said firmly. I was indeed planning to use the cup for drinking later on. So I tempted to see how far my luck could go and started to say, “Oh, but it’s empty…,” but then abruptly change my mind after I saw the cold expression on his face “… heuheu… ok, ok, I’ll throw the cup away.” So I threw it in the bin and came back to him, putting the sweetest smile I could make and said, “I will not eat the donut (honestly!).” He looked at me straight in the eyes and with the chill voice replied, “Das ist mir egal, Sie dürfen es NICHT mitbringen!” Hiks… he’s not the man I should try to argue with.

So that was 2 days ago. Today, the girl sitting in front of me chewed her apple noisily. The fact that she’s better in smuggling the food had made her munching sounded extremely louder, which hurt my ears and almost brought me to tears.

Nah… lets bend the topic a little bit.

Tonight I’ll go to a dinner invitation with my usual dinner mates. These are the closest friends I found from my prior master project. Even after the project has ended, we still meet each other once in a while. We mostly have the not-so-rich-student-hang-out-style, where each of us should bring something and share, so that we would have a lot to eat and drink at the dinner. But some of these friends have their own eating rules, which at first always made me confused thinking of what kind of food I shall bring.

One of them is a vegetarian without fish, one is vegetarian with fish, and one can only eat chicken meat and hates all the other meats. These 3 people including me and one other friend REALLY love hot and spicy food. On the other hand, another two friends cannot eat spicy food at all, but they eat (almost) all kind of food. From all these people, five are into Asian food, one is willing to taste the Asian food, and the other is so-so.

After a while, I decided to always bring vegetarian food to the dinner. Sometimes a bit spicy, sometimes just normal food.

And then some months ago this gorgeous guy starts to join into my network. The first time I invited him to my place, I cooked chicken mushroom. It was a bit of a failure since I dropped too much broth powder and it was super salty. But he said it was OK, so I didn't care anymore.

Days after that I made him confess that he actually doesn't like mushroom nor chicken at all. Hahaha… still wonder how he managed to eat what I served at that time. I granted him "Gentleman of the Month" for his big effort. But he also deserves "the Pickiest Guy I Knew" for his strictly limited choice of food. (^^ popcorn if you read this.. :# lol...)

When I finally wanted to let him meet my dinner mates, the confusion struck back. This guy puts ground meat on his every meal. He claimed that he only likes German food, but thank God he actually loves Asian fried rice too. So even though in conclusion I can make fried rice for everybody, it still is not the best solution. Vegetarian fried rice = less satisfaction for the gorgeous guy. Ground meat fried rice = no satisfaction for the vegetarian and the no-meat-unless-chicken mates.

I'm still digging my brain to find what other Asian food I can cook that would fulfill everybody's appetite.

PS: Best greetings to those who think dinner brings happiness ^^

Tripped on the Tripping Trip

I went to Indonesia last semester holiday. It was really a culinary trip. I already gain some weights even when I was still inside the airplane. Olala… I got meals at least 4 times during the 16 hours flight.
On the first flight, the stewardesses served us the last meal on the plane just before we landed, and right after I saw my father who picked me up at the airport, he said, “Let’s go and have some dinner. You must be hungry.” I was like “hihihi….”
As soon as I got to my father’s house I reached the weigh scale and my eyes were almost out of their sockets. 2 kilos more! In just some few hours! OMG, I think the gravity doesn’t really play its role on the weigh scale. You see, my country is exactly on the equator, so I should be less weighed in Indonesia than when I was nearer to the upper pole.
Well yeah, my stomach felt so stuffy when I was on the sky, not only because of the food but also the gas. Oh, I was quite polite not to let it out in front of the strangers, and the public lavatories always kept me from releasing stuffs freely and comfortably. So I was quite miserable at that time. Then I accused the gas of taking part in adding some grams on me.

My country is the paradise of food and snacks. I especially love snacks. So when I got home, I ate everything that I missed, everything that they don’t have in this foreign country. The country that invented black forest, but has no idea of what bolu kukus, lemper, kroket, risoles, pisang bolen, gehu, lumpia semarang, lumpia goreng sambel kacang, pempek, lotek, gado-gado, gudek, tempe mendoan, jagung bakar 5 rasa, martabak, kue pancong, kembang tahu, ronde jahe, nasi campur gardujati, kuo tiek, ketupat sayur, sate padang, bakpao, es sarang burung, batagor, baso tahu, ketan bakar or es kelapa muda are. Ohhh….. there are lots more, I can’t list them all. Anyway, I ate all the things I mentioned (and a lot more, I forget what else I ate) in that 1 month holiday :D
The snacks they have here in Germany are just strawberry pie (hell, they don't have strawberry cheese cake!), Möhren-Kuchen, Butter-Bretzel, Butterkuchen and Spinatstrudel. Yeah, they all taste good, but there are too few choices, so I got bored. It's even hard to find chocolate cake in the bakery. I mean the REAL chocolate cake with all chocolate layers and all chocolate sponge like brownies or so. I remember as one day I really really craved for a chocolate cake, and I strolled down the city to search for it, from one bakery to the others, until my legs went numb, then I gave up. In the end I went to the American's Starbuck and spent almost 4 Euros for one small piece of delicious chocolate truffle cake.

Before I headed to Indo, my friends here already warned me in advance, not to eat too much there and become "double Santi" as I come back. One of these friends always calls me as "Santi, the girl who never stops eating", which is not true! So I needed to prove it to her, that I'm not the one who never stops eating. But I'm not the type of person who can ignore temptations, so I ate everything served before me and just tried not to be overly gluted.
At last, before I got back to Germany, I successfully maintained the extra grams not to reach more than 2 kg (the scale needle kept depressingly swinging right and left).

Then I met the girlwhosayssantithegirlwhoneverstopseating. She observed me from head to toes and finally said, "Aha, new dresses, new style.... good.............. Yeah, you look fatter................ Your haircut looks ugly!" Hahahaha.... great. At least the fat was not the top of the problems.

Then I met my other friends whom I hadn't met for 2 months and they said, "You look skinnier!" Though I was jumping around at heart, I humbly replied, "Oh, really? I added 2 kilos" with a sheepish smile. So they said, ah... maybe your outfit fits you really well.
GREAAAAT.... I thougt. First, I've never been slim nor skinny in my life but they said I looked skinnier. Second, they were the first one in months who thought I lost some weights. Hohoho... I hope they will always leave their glasses at home. Third, my new outfits look incredible!

I'm not the type who likes to go on diet, since whenever I tried to, I usually gain more rather than loosing some. But my eating schedule is a mess, so it kinda helps me to go back to my previous shape. Now I still have one kilo left from the trip.