Musashi Japanese restaurant

My family and I love Japanese food. I particularly love bentos, where I can sample a little of each yummy portion! There are excellent and reasonably priced Japanese food in Auckland, and when my sister visited us from Kuala Lumpur, we just had to take her to our favourite Japanese restaurant.

As you can see from the photos above, each set meal comes with appetisers, salad, miso soup, sushi, a main dish and dessert. Depending on the main dish ordered, you get to cook it yourself!

As usual, our meal was really delicious and satisfying. I wouldn't hesitate recommending this restaurant to anyone visiting Auckland!

Restaurant information:
Address: 212 Kitchener Road, Milford, Northshore City
Days opened: Tues - Sun
Price: $15 for a set lunch; more spendy for dinner

I've graduated!

Yay!

 Last Wednesday, I finally received the certificates for my double degree. I'm finally a Commerce and Law graduate! 

 It was a really exhausting day, but I had fun celebrating it with my family and friends. We took lots of photos at Albert Park, around the university campus and my family and I also had studio photos taken.

Here's a photo of me, jumping with joy ;):

PicMonkey

Have you heard of PicMonkey? It's a photo editing website and it is the successor of Picnik.

Here's an article on PicMonkey that you can read: Article 

I really like the features available on PicMonkey. I think it is easier to use than Picnik and there is no need to register to use the features. All you need to do is to upload the photo, edit it and then save it back to your local drive. Your photos are never publicly available and you retain the copyright to your image. All in all, I feel pretty safe using this website. 

I've done a couple experiments on PicMonkey and here are the results:

My adorable niece in "Cross Process"

Pastry in "Polaroid"

Old Bank Arcade (Wellington city) in 'Tranquil'

Grandpa in "Lomo"

Matryoshka dolls in "Urbane"

Chinese cake in "Urbane"

Ice cream in "intrepid"

I really love the results. It's one of the ways I can take advantage of the special effects for photos without needing to buy a smartphone and downloading Instagram. After all, I only have a Sony Ericsson brick phone!

Origami crane bouquet

Do you love origami? Check out Fossil's how-to origami crane bouquet!

Crane bouquet

It's so pretty :)

Moore Pastries!

You may have figured out by now that I have a weakness for sweet things and anything baked. Wellington is like bakery central. There are specialised bakeries such as Simply Paris (as mentioned in the previous post) and there are supermarkets with bakery departments that dish out fresh baked goods everyday. Some are good and some are not. I'm learning which are the best!

When I get tired from work, I like to cheer myself up by buying something for dessert :D. Bad, I know :(.

But they taste so goooood.

Here are some eye candy:

Apple cinnamon doughnut with cream from New World Metro.
This was quite disappointing as it was a little chewy.

Chocolate danish from a Cuba St bakery.
It was pretty good, even after I left it a little too long in the oven. Whoops.

Bacon and cheese ciabatta from New World Metro.
I wanted to take the chance to try the savouries even though the doughnut was not that great. The ciabatta was definitely better than the doughnut, but I will probably not get it again.

Mixed Berrry Danish from Moore Wilson's.
This was reallllyyyy good. I've always been a little apprehensive of ordering desserts with berries as they can be quite sour. But this was great as there was also custard which was just the right level of sweetness. 

So yummy that another photo is justified ;)

To market, to market

One of the disadvantages of living in the city is that groceries are expensive. But the great thing about Wellington is that there are great markets right in the city. Last Sunday, I visited a market at Waitangi Park where there were many vendors selling cheap groceries. Everything looked really fresh, and I am looking forward to visiting it every weekend to stock up on veggies and fruits.

Another smaller market at Chaffers Dock Building was filled with vendors selling gourmet and specialty food. One vendor attracted my attention - Simply Paris! I have a great weakness for pastries and anything that is baked, so their wonderful array of ciabatta, french loaves, danishes left me drooling. 

So my lunch for that day was almond pain au chocolat, toast & avocado and juice:

Almond pain au chocolat, NZD 4.50

The lady behind the table was also very nice. She gave me one of the bigger pastries as well ;).