I stayed in the much sought-after French-themed resort, Colmar Tropicale. The grand castle drawbridge at the entrance of the resort is the biggest attraction, and also not to forget its signature clock tower. Seriously, I was mesmerized when I saw it at the first time.

The minute you walk through the entrance, you’ll find yourself in a small village town. The beautiful buildings in the photo are actually hotel rooms. There are also a few restaurants owned by the resort, but again, don’t expect too much as you’ll probably ended up in disappointment. The place was a bit crowded that day, because it’s a weekend and lots of people were participating in some treasure hunts organized by their companies (a few companies were having company trips there).

These were some of the nice desserts during the buffet dinner, which were pretty small in size and cute! All those barbequed stuffs tasted pretty bad, most of the meats were cold and overcooked and tasteless. The worst thing is that was a rainy night and everybody were expecting some hot and yummy food to warm the night up.

My hotel room was very big, but not very clean as well, especially the bathroom. At first I was really excited at the idea of being able to soak myself in a tub of hot water, as I enjoy this very much but sadly without a tub at my own home. However, as soon as I see the bath tub, I don’t even feel like touching it with my fingers, so not to mention touching it with my body! Actually the whole bathroom has not been cleaned properly; the tiles, the toilet, etc. I guess it’s time for them to keep an eye on the sanitary condition of the hotel rooms, before they receive any complains and more bad comments.

Before going up the steps to the Japanese Tea Garden, there’s this Japanese themed shop that sells tea leaves and other stuffs. I’ve also taken some photographs of the Japanese Tea Garden and other places as well. Guess what? I’ve taken about 450 photos during a 2 days 1 night trip! You can view them from here, well, of course I only selected some of it, haha!

This is the prize that I won from a contest organized by a local beauty magazine, CLEO. It’s a product from Laneige, a popular Korea based cosmetic and skincare line that is still considered quite new over here. So far I still haven’t tried any of their products yet, so I’ll probably post up a review or something later on.

According to the description on the box, this whitening lotion has an SPF 40 UV protection and can also serves as a base makeup with skin correction effect. I only got the product today and still haven’t tested it yet, but it sure comes in handy, as I was planning to get a UV protection lotion that can also be used as a makeup base. Just when I was wondering which brand to get, a fine surprise popped out and saved all my trouble.

Every time when the weather turns colder, I tend to get hungry pretty fast, and tonight is no exception of course. After a hearty dinner of 6-inches sandwich in Subway, again I needed some snacks to fulfill my rather empty stomach, lol. So I cooked this.

This dish is inspired by gnocchi, which is a type of Italian dumpling made from potato. Frankly speaking, it doesn’t quite resemble the beautiful gnocchi, so I named it as “Potato Balls in Black Pepper Sauce” instead. The color of the sauce doesn’t look much like black pepper sauce from the picture, because I added in butter and some tomato cubes. Apart from that, I’ve also thrown in some sausages and gherkins. Okay, the shape does look weird, but so far it tasted delicious. So, don’t judge a potato ball by its shape.

After I finished my last potato ball, it also means I’m another miles further from my dieting plan, since it’s not a guilt-free snack at all! Potatoes, flour, egg… I guess this dish is wholesome enough to be my dinner, so now I’m aware of the fact that it’s not really a snack. Hope I can bear tomorrow’s cold night without the help of any snacks.

This is the avocado and mixed veggies spaghetti that I cooked for dinner two weeks back. Before that, I’ve never tried cooking spaghetti with avocado. In the place where I grew up and now living, avocado is not really a common ingredient to be included in our dishes. So, not to mention adding it into our “publicly accepted” range of spaghettis, which are normally in the white creamy carbonara sauce or tomato puree with mince meat.

The first time I ate avocado was the small slice rolled together with raw salmon in the sushi. It was marvelous and I was totally hooked up by the bit of buttery and nutty flavor. After that, I scarcely have the chance to eat it again while dining outside, as what I’ve mentioned just now, it’s not really “that” common. So when I saw it in the supermarket that day, I just threw it into the shopping cart (even that I haven’t the slightest idea of what to do with it), lol. 

The avocado was left untouched in the fridge for a week, until I finally decided that it’s time to get rid of it, because it’s not as fresh anymore. So it’s either throwing it away or cooking it. At the end, I browsed through some recipes on the Internet, combined different ideas and created this new recipe. All you need is onions, tomatoes, button mushrooms; and of course, the avocado! Basically this recipe is pretty simple and very refreshing during those hot and stuffy days.