In 2020, I…

We all started 2020 with the usual new year hope. We wish we have a better year, better luck, yada yada yada. We all heard that there’s a virus in China but we didn’t dare to think that it would spread all across the world. I, for one, hoped it would be contained, like the MERS or SARS virus. Well, it didn’t.

So 2020 was…special. In a way. It was tough, but here we are at the very end of the year!

This blog is not updated, pretty much because of the COVID situation. I didn’t go to a lot of places this year due to, duh, the virus. And even if I did, I’m hesitant to post it because I know I’m supposed to just stay at home, so I ended up not posting it. There are also no TV Series review posted because in the middle of all the things that’s happening, I would like stability and not surprises. So for the first time in forever, I don’t really watch new series. I spent the last 8 months rewatching old ones, particularly Criminal Minds lol. Have I ever said that it’s my ultimate favorite series?

Well anyway, here’s a recap of my 2020, beginning with…dalgona. Remember dalgona? Remember the first few months of quarantine when we all actually enjoyed stay at home and made beaten coffee with milk and lots of sugar? Here’s mine below. Not too foamy because I’m just impatient.

My husband and I made some ‘experimental’ food. In our defense, we were trying to broaden our cooking skill 😉 Do you guys have this street food seller in your elementary school that sells eggs made in pan with 7 hollows? Well we bought the pan:

Because my husband remembered his childhood and wanted this snackies. Meanwhile, me (and my brother) never tried one because our mother was paranoid and says no to all street vendor around our elementary school. So we bought it. And boy did it needs numerous, numerous cleaning upon arrival to get rid of the dirt. For a first timer, I think it tastes like….egg. So definitely need to add more flour/water/totole to the egg 😀

Speaking of childhood snacks, do you guys also bought ‘telor gulung’ around your school? Btw, how do I explain it in English, is it beaten eggs swirled around wooden skewers? I think it kinda is. Anyway, for the same reason above, I never had one. So we made one, and we put sausage in the skewers to begin with. Now this one, is really, really delicious!

I also made some chocolate chip cookies! I like both chewy and crunchy chocolate chips, so I’m always torn on which to make when I make this cookies. This one, turns out to be right in the middle of chewy and crunchy in terms on consistency.

My husband made the weirdest request sometimes. For his birthday, I asked what should I bake him, and he said he want a jumbo roll cake. I was intrigued and it sounds feasible and I thought it would look really cool. Well you can see my attempt at it in the picture below, which, because of my lack of baking skills, become a layered-flower cake.

I had some left-over fried noodle and had previously made and stored ‘gepuk’ (sweet and spicy beef) and ‘perkedel’ (mashed-potato patties). Sooo, I made ‘nasi uduk’ (steamed rice cooked in coconut milk dish) in the rice cooker, only I switched the coconut milk with fiber creme.

But this one below, takes the trophy of the best food we attempted to make this year. This is shrimp baked in butter with parsley, black pepper, and parmesan cheese. This is just sooo good. The butter melts gives all the flavour and together with parsley cancels out the smell in the shrimp. The parmesan adds some salty and sweetness, and the black pepper is just the best black pepper we ever tasted. If you guys are in search of black pepper, buy this one from East Java & Co. It’s a whole black pepper, but the bottle itself comes with integrated grinder. This is so good, that when I made a stir-fried beef black pepper only with this one, it beats the ready to cook black pepper sauce we bought from a famous restaurant. We never look back and are now on our third bottle.

We tried this pizza place called….Pizza Place lol. It really is called ‘Pizza Place’, located in Dago, next to the famous Timbel Dago. It’s a thin-crust pizza, and the restaurant is designed like the ones in New York that we see in movies. The pizza itself is good and it’s generous in sauce and tasted authentic. We just had a little bad luck where the bottom of one of our pizza was a little burnt. But give this a try!

We had Indian fusion food from Spice Affair, in Sukajadi, near PVJ. This is not the first time I had Indian food, but this is so far the best one I had. The taste feels like it’s already adjusted to our sense that made it sooo good. The butter chicken is good, and the nasi basmati is just heaven-sent. It’s more to the pricier side, so we’ll probably have this again for special occasions.

Tasted the best donuts I ever bought at Luber Ground in Braga! They have various menu, from hamburgers to pizza to donuts. But this donuts for me is just what makes me come back. I’m the kind of person who do not like overly-soft donuts. And this one is just big, fluffy, chewy, and still soft. And did I mention it’s big?

Had a little more time to do DIY projects, from macrame pot holder, to hand-sanitizer holder, to bag charms:

We painted our door list black, just because we want to.

Bought an aquarium for goldfish…that we left in my in-law’s house in Bogor lol.

Watched one of my best friend got married….via zoom meeting! She’s prepared for her wedding from last year and had to unravel everything because of the pandemic situation. This wedding actually took place in her house with only their immediate family.

Started biking (like everyone else lol) but stopped because…of me. I’m just afraid of riding bikes in big streets with all the cars and motorbikes. And what I’m scared of the most is crossing the street! I thought I’d beat the fear the more I bike, but no. I’m still so scared still. So leave me biking at empty housing complex street and I’ll just be so happy.

We went on a staycation to Anyer. It’s a small one-bedroom villa with a pool and kitchen in it. The place is so good and cozy. It rained, and we watched the rain pours to the pool from the bedroom with a cup of hot tea! The kind of leisure we wanted to have. But because we were afraid, and for precaution, we did not go anywhere else even though the beach is just a walk away. And we probably emptied out our Saniter surface disinfectant there, spraying all the surfaces, and pillows, and bed. Lol. But we’ll be back once this pandemic ends, hopefully.

I bought a loaaad of handphone stands lol. Because it’s so cheap and I need one in each table at the house!

Bought this lame but useful reusable straw bracelet from Starbucks. It’s useful because I need straws all the time and this one would form a bracelet when being kept, so it doesn’t take a lot of space in the bag. But lame because when used it doesn’t stand straight, lol.

We have our new favorite tea! This one is from Marks & Spencer and tasted so good because it has a hint of lemon taste in it, not just the smell. For those of you who doesn’t know, M&S actually sells food & snacks too. Aside from this tea, I recommend trying out their chocolate-chip cookies! This tea is about IDR 50k for 20 tea bags.

Befriended this cat that now lives in our carport. He’s cute but slapping my dog is one of his hobbies lol. Thanks to my numerous Shopee orders, he would always have cardboxes he can lie in or scratch!

Decorated our first-ever Christmas ornament! Not a tree because we don’t have the space and because my dog will chew all things she can reach. But here’s our Christmas wreath! Which reminds me that I have to take it off and keep it safe for next year.

We went on an ‘easy’ trek in Sentul! Thankfully we started so early that there’s not that many people. The weather was so nice and the water is actually blue in color! I thought all the photos people had there were photoshopped. But it’s actually blue when we see it in person. Here’s a photo of us in Curug Benjol:

This is from yesterday, we went succulent hunting to Lembang! I’m a newbie in taking care of succulent but I’ve watched tons of videos that I can’t wait anymore to get one. I did have two last year, but I was unprepared and was under-researched, so they sadly rot. So I hope I did enough research this time and my babies would grow healthily now! This place is called Lina Kaktus Lembang, which sells from as cheap as IDR 5k to premium ones which price point starts from IDR 500k. They can also handle your request for souvenirs! Check out their Instagram. P.S.: it might not be easy to park your car there, so if you’re from Bandung, you might want to go there with motorbike first.

That’s all I can dig out of the photos in my handphone. I really wanted to make the 2020 in a cup of coffee like I did last year (check my 2019 in Cups of Coffee post for reference!) But my husband and I only drink coffee occasionally and recreationally, which means mostly only at times we are out and about. But we’re not much out this year, so I’m afraid it would just be pictures of Dalgona from the start of quarantine lol.

I whole-heartedly hope next year we’ll have all the choices we had last year that we don’t this year like go out without worry, meet up without worry, or even go out without mask. At least I hope we’ll start heading that direction with this vaccines! And I hope we all got to do what we all love next year and be happy and not lost any of our close friends and relatives.

Stay safe and healthy and follow the health protocol anywhere you go. And…peace out, 2020 (in a few hours)!