Annie, one of the flatmates and I went to Portobello Market last weekend to let go some of the stress of the first week of school. I forgot to take photos since I was too busy being hungry and drooling at the food. I didn't buy anything from the mushroom stand as I know I won't cook them when back at home, but it was nice seeing all the familiar mushrooms that I loved having when I was back in Taiwan. You don't normally see shitake mushrooms in Waitrose or Tescos. 

I absolutely love the fruit stands in the market as well. Oh my! Not only are they significantly cheaper than chain supermarkets, they are also huge and gorgeous. I have a slight obsession with strawberries and I might have polished off the two boxes I bought in less than 24 hours. 

 

After being flirted with the abundance amount of food, the three of us finally decided it was probably time to go get some food. We ended up going to GBK and boy oh boy, was it good. I had The Taxidriver. I know, it sounds shady and weird if you go Joey-style. But it's a delicious burger that has a huge onion ring in it. Like Beyonce said, if you like it, then definitely put a ring on it. Bad joke, I know. It's just deliciously good, okay? Trust me on that. And don't even get me started on the Rosemary Chips/Fries! I haven't been able to stop thinking about this burger place since last week and thankfully, the flat is planning a dinner date this week at GBK. Yay! 

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 Midweek, through the rut of studying, I managed to loop Annie in for a youtube video. We thought it would take an hour max, but between trying to figure out why my camera will automatically stop recording after 10ish seconds and laughing over nonsense, it took us nearly a whole afternoon to record the 15 minute clip. The original footage was over 45 minutes and there were blooper moments that were pure gold. Actually about 2/3 of what I edited out were hilarious moments that had me in fits of laughter during editing. We'll see if I ever decide to release the innuendo and bad jokes riddled blooper clip. Shameless self-plug here, if you haven't checked out the video and subscribed yet, then I'd love it if you clicked here. Also leave me comments below for future video ideas.

Masterchef Annie up-ed her game this Friday when she took a stab at risotto. It was also that day do you understand where the term 'cheap labour' comes from. When I found Annie in the kitchen, she had already been stirring for a near half hour before I took over. Adding in the stock and cheese, and a half hour later, I was exhausted. It was like dragging a reluctant horse across the river. It was then did we decide to call in the reinforcements, read: one of the flatmates. I was a bit overzealous with grating cheese into the pot and might have resulted in him breaking a sweat and wondering if he'd been better off ordering Domino's. But to be fair, he was all "yes, more!" and encouraging when I was grating the cheese. That said, maybe it was the labour we put in, but zomg, was the risotto delicious. 

And oh yeah, we managed to break our sink. Good thing we have two sinks, otherwise we probably would have ended up with a stack of dishes that had to be washed in the bathroom over the weekend. 

(I'm really proud of this outfit - it's so much more stylish than my usual top+jeans outfit)

If you follow me on twitter, then you've probably seen my tweets about being possessive and hurt over spoons. Let me explain. The flat and Annie went out to celebrate one of flatmates birthday at a Korean restaurant at Tottenham Court Road. It was amazingly good. We were all pretty full, but the night wouldn't be right without the afterparty. I had already baked a chocolate cake that afternoon, but on the way back home, I suddenly remembered that we didn't have birthday candles. One of the flatmates and I literally, ran down the bus just as the doors were closing and left the others bemused as to why we were racing to get off a couple stops too early. We stopped at Tesco's and also might have picked up some gin and tonic to add to the champagne/beer collection we already had back in the flat. The cake was delicious (as always, I'm a brilliant baker, if you haven't noticed already) and then we decided to play cards. It started off with several rounds of intense Uno (I don't know how we managed to make that game intense, but that shows you the happiness and energy that was buzzing that night). I feel like I should clarify and say that we didn't really drink too much that night. At least, all of us were pretty sober. Loosened up a bit, maybe, but definitely sober. 

Anyway, we decided to switch the game up and play Spoons. In short, people have to sit around in a table and pass off a card to the next person, all the while trying to get a hand of the same number in all four patterns. When you do, you snatch a spoon and everyone else follows, the poor guy who didn't manage to get hold of the utensil then has to drink. It sounds stupid. I thought it'd be a stupid game. But with the yells of "quick! quick! quick!" and "where's my card?!", it was a pretty heated up game. At one point, people were flying across tables to snatch spoons and I was in a tug-of-war with the flatmate regarding a spoon. I never thought I'd get possessive over a spoon. It's actually a pretty fun game, but you should note that there's a 90% chance you'll walk out with bruises and/or slight cuts. Oh, and word of advice, don't choose the corner seat unless you want to end up bruising your ribs.