Parfois

Sorry friends. I have been absent for too long! Just baking a lot, going out, hanging out, ya know. Summery stuff.

Additionally, I cannot stop listening to this song:



If this upcoming paycheck is bulky enough, I might be adding a new aspect to this blorg.

Ciao!

Of Cups and Cakes

Blog life may suggest otherwise but I swear I do things other than bake.

Chocolate cupcakes with cinnamon glaze and chocolate fudge frosting; coconut lime cupcakes with lime frosting and shaved coconut.

Vegan, naturally.

Dia de las empanadas

Hola!

This past Wednesday as you may be aware was "cinco de mayo". This holiday, much like St. Patrick's day, has become a day of drinking. Since I am not a fan of beer nor bars with 'Mc' beginning their name, I do not participate in many St. Paddy's events, however, as a Spanish major AND huge fan of latin food (and never one to turn durn tequila) thoroughly enjoy cinco de mayo.

My friend Anabell and I have been talking about making empanadas for ages and it turned out that we both had off on cinco de mayo soo we decided to make a day of it, complete with margarita cupcakes and of course, real margaritas. We also were inspired by a co-worker's completely vegan layered mexican dip and whipped one up ourselves. It consisted of refried black beans, tofutti sour cream, home-made guac by Heart City's own Hannah, and the deliciously wonderful daiya cheddar cheese.

Nihonjin no tomodachi desu~~~

Well hello everyone. This week has been absolutely busy. Practically nonstop since Monday. I am sincerely glad I took last Sunday to rest.

Highlights (with some lowlights):

-- Monday: Tigerbeats (I cannot remember if it was memorable, I s'pose not)
-- Tuesday: Laid outside in the grass all day with Jen and ate samosas
-- "Comedy Dreamz" at the Barbary, they seriously played all of my favorite 90's freestyle party jamz for the first hour even my dearest "Two of Hearts"
-- Wednesday: Erika's birthday party at cantina, I managed to bake a beautiful and delicious (if not under photographed) 9inch two layer carrot cake
-- After party at Cesar's and all over Fishtown
-- Thursday: Arrival of my friends Mika and Mariyo from Japan! Cantina happy hour and night train dance parties. Sugoi desu!
-- Friday: Got four-loko'd out. Why didn't anyone warn me? Chipped a tooth, cried on historical landmarks, and saw some nazis get beaten up. Never again (well never say never I s'pose).
-- Saturday: Spent the last few hours before work with nihonjin and then worked and worked.

Today I am finally (sort of) catching a breath but not really as I am working on a paper (two more to go after this!!).

Tomorrow will be nice as I will finally plant some herbs and bake bake bake.

Photos will philter in as I pilfer them.

Don't Underestimate Body Language

Yesterday I felt a bit like this:

My voice was gone but I did not really need to follow Ursula's advice about pretty looks and workin' my rump since I was not wooing a prince (I've already woo-ed someone who looks like Prince). Instead, since I was feeling pretty sick all over, I called out of work and took a day of rest.

I reverted back to my habits of being sick in High School and prescribed the following treatment:

Constant Comment tea. So so tasty.

"Keeping Up Appearances" marathon.

Tres leches cake. Note: This is not an actual photo. I slaved over a two-day period in making a pastel tres leches vegano. Hopefully I'll have a high-res photo of the one I made, but until then, just imagine a deliciously moist sponge cake soaked with a sweet coconut and rum syrup and then topped with a smooth topping with flaked coconut.

Yeah, it's really good. Now I'm off to slice about 30 orders of "1/2 pound smoked turkey and 1/2 pound american cheese" (no joke, it's pretty much what EVERYONE orders, who eats processed lunch meats anymore??)

Slim Vegan Boy on Two Fat Ladies

Last night while perusing the internet, I saw a photograph a great big woman cooking and I was suddenly struck by nostalgia. I am not talking about my mother, I am talking about a cooking show popular in the late nineties called "Two Fat Ladies".

I cannot quite remember what channel it was on, but I have a feeling it was PBS. All I remember is watching it with my mom occasionally while she sipped on "Constant Comment" and I munched on "Lorna Doone's".

The two of them are fantastically entertaining. Of course, their accent is amazing, but it's just them saying "strawburries" that makes them endearing, they are truly intelligent when it comes to talking about food and use phrases like "truly ravishing" and enchanting to describe red currants. I also really like the idea that neither of them seems to be aware of what the other one is making until the cameras are rolling.

Another thing that makes them enjoyable are their little acidic asides about supermarkets, vegetarians, "kids these days", and processed foods.

I cannot eat a bloody thing they make and they loathe vegetarians, but I admire their use of remarkably fresh ingredients (their whipped cream is always so tempting in its provincial clumps) and there's not a single processed food.

Anyways, instead of me babbling on and on about them, why don't you watch a little clip. It's ten minutes long but do not miss a second.



This is sort of a precursor to another corpulent cook (oft described as "Rubenesque") who is very near and dear to my heart... Come back soon!

More Entertaining than the Russian Kind

Biggest Challenge of the Semester

Always and forever, paper writing turns into a SpongeBob episode.

Rise and Shine: Jesus Story

Happy Easter everybody!

Many years ago (probs about 18 of them), I donned a miniature herringbone blazer and khakis and ran around my nana's house asking "Where eggy go?" to my family.

This easter, I'll don an over-sized chef's coat and non-slip shoes and run around a case of food asking "What kind of turkey do you want?" to strangers.

Time gone past vs. time and a half.

Bein' an adult suxxx.

Summer Dee-Lite

Short post because the weather is brutiful out BUT I downloaded an album called "100 Greatest Dance Hits of the 90's" yesterday, which, coupled with "Freestyle Forever" will most likely be summer's soundtrack, just FYI.

Spring Desires

Right down to those buck teeth. Perfection.

Matcha Madness

Baking update!

About two weeks ago I was cravin' green tea flavored ANYTHING and then I remembered I had some matcha powder laying around so I decided to whip up some delicious green tea cupcakes. I love when they come out of the oven and they have a glowing/radioactive green coloring.

And since I had some extra time on my hands via ~*spring break*~, I made some marzipan cherry blossoms and hiragana characters.

They spell out OISHI in hiragana which means DELICIOUS. And they were.

Enjoy.

Collapsing Star

For one of the "required electives" for my major, I am taking 'Latin America Through Film". Sounds like it would have loads of potential right? Well unfortunately we do not make it through many of the films and so far the majority of the ones we do finish are kind of blah.

Like the one we watched yesterday:

The movie features an extremely plain (dare I say fea?) girl from the countryside of Brasil who moves into the city to work. She only eats hot dogs and coca cola, she has a really awful boyfriend who slicks his hair back, her co-worker looks like Carol Burnett doing a caricature of a Portuguese woman, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** she gets hit by a car at the end.

That's Macabea. Her boyfriend "Olimpico" describes the name as sounding like a disease. He's way charming.

Apparently it's based on a really good book written by a prominent Portuguese feminist author who wanted to demonstrate that Macabea was so blissfully unaware as to how sad she should be and was therefore happy and content. That makes the movie sound a bit more interesting than it was. I just couldn't stop thinking about how repulsive everyone was:

I mean... really repulsive:

It got weird at one point because Gloria (the lady on the right sharin' hot dogs and coke) steals Macabea's greasy grossie boyfriend because a fortune teller told her to. Not to mention the whole soundtrack was a mid-80's synth causing the whole film to sound like it would turn into a car chase, detective story, or porn.

The fortune teller was pure Brasilian campy goodness but she also told Macabea that she'd meet a rich gringo ( VIA HIT BY HIS MERCEDES).

But like the author said, Macabea was in her own world.

FIN

A Year

Neutrality of Spring

How great are these? I've said it before, but lightweight button ups are all I want right now (oh and to bleach my hair, but whatevs).

I was going to make a post about the doom and gloom of the past few days, but with yesterday's weather, spring break just starting, and these photos, I'm feeling all spring timey.

Perhaps its because all I have been wearing the past three months is almost exclusively black head to toe, the ideal of different neutrals seems oh so appealing to me lately.

Also, I'm so close to wearing shoes without socks my ankles can almost FEEL it!

You Can Have Bagels Anytime

Oh no! I have been so busy with baking bagels, school, and work that I have relegated this blog to far off corners...

But I will be back with lots of info on outdoor dining, early spring dreams, and Ina Garten extravaganzas.

Oh p.s. I guess I never realized until someone pointed out my frequent bagel cravings, but bagels are my number one favorite food to eat (with tofutti of course). So good!

Mimosas and Mom

Hello hello. Today was a fantastic day and it isn't even over! My mom journeyed from the Valley all the way out to the big city. It was a day full of chuckles, coffee, mimosas, burritos, cleaning, and baking.

After lunch, instead of driving around the city in traffic looking for parking and then trudging along the slushy sidewalks in the bitter cold, I suggested we bake something together since she is always curious about baking vegan. She wanted something cakey and I wanted to bake something new so we tried our hands at a classic bakery staple (at least here on the upper east coast), the black and white cookie!

I was in charge of the actual baking while my mom flexed her icing skills.

In the zone.

The royal icing turned out just perfectly.

Voila!

Hazy Shade of Winter

Last week, we were walloped with a snow storm. And this time it was a doozy! My school even closed for two days which is crazy since it has not closed for snow in over 9 years.

Luckily, I had planned for this and made my house an igloo of comfort with all the amenities, including but not limited to:

1. Snacks (pita chips, sesame sticks, cheese poofs for the nonvegans)
2. Boozes (champagne, wine, baby bottles of Bacardi, vodka)
3. Baking supplies (flour, powdered sugar, choco chips)
4. Vegan black pepper steaks
5. Emergency mini-pizza for Cesar

All of these things came in handy. I ended up baking a huge batch of Russian tea cakes, chocolate mini-bundts with choco glaze, and a miniature three layer cake that for reasons such as not letting the cake cool enough and three mojitos looked awful.

Tuesday night was spent tidying up my room and hanging a wall of paintings (I have a phone-photo of it, but I want to hold off on showing it until I can get a better quality image). I also watched Lost and clocked out early.

The following day was all about takin' it easy and take it easy we did! Eventually, friends, including Anabelle, trekked it out to hang. We played Mario Party, snacked, and I ChatRouletted a baking show. The aforementioned disaster cake was laughed at and then promptly consumed on the spot. So good.

They're calling for more snow tonight and tomorrow! What the heck. I cannot wait for summer...

Blood Orange Sunday

Happy Valentine's Day everybody.

I have been so lazy with posting here and even lazier with uploading photos from my camera to my computer. I could blame it on school, work, and this annoying cold, but really it just boils down to laziness...

Anyways, V-day was enjoyable. Woke up early-ish and made some delicious vegan coconut waffles with blood orange syrup and homefries for us. The syrup did not thicken as it should, but since it was my first time, I am willing to try try again. I was inspired by these treats from Vegan Yum Yum:

I read about these awhile back and thought that the blood orange with coconut would be the perfect red for Valentine's Day without being overtly "romantic" and cliche a la strawberries and chocolate. I had no idea that was the chef's original thought as well! Great (vegan) minds think alike I s'pose.

Additionally, I whipped up some pomegranate orange mimosas. The rest of the day was spent tending to both my cold (via Tropical Emergen-C!) and also to a slight hangover (via mimosas and coffee...). Finally, the day ended with these and a fantastically endearing card with two giraffes on it:

Not a terribly attractive picture, but I snapped it on my phone before leaving for school.

Now on to the rest of the week!

First photo from The Satorialist, second from Vegan Yum Yum