Archive for the ‘Tasty 'n' Delicious’ Category

We now take a short break for some cute.

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I found some more pictures of really swell cupcakes on Flickr:

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and my personal favorite, mainly for the name: The Straw-Berried Treasure Cupcake.

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The cute inspiration bug bit me again recently when I saw the submarine tea thingie.

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That makes me so happy. I have loose tea that I use occasionally, I may end up purchasing this.

Also, on a more macabre but still cute note, how badly do I want this wallpaper? (Answer: really freakin’ badly).

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I love animals. I love anatomy. I love black and gray. I want – nay, I NEED – this wallpaper.

Moon and etc.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Not much has been going on in my world worth blogging about (you wanna hear how I cleaned my bathroom? And made a presentation for work? I think not), but I did see the movie Moon starring Sam Rockwell. No, really, JUST starring Sam Rockwell. Sam Rockwell is the only person in it. Kevin Spacey does the voice of the robot Gerty, but other than that, it’s like Castaway. I saw it by myself, and then I saw it again with my father, which was great because I missed a whole bunch of stuff the first time around. You spend the first watching of the film saying, “Where did that come from?” and “Isn’t he supposed to be dead?” and things like that. So when I watched it with my father, I got a chance to really catch all the things that had me confused the first time. Here’s a brief plot synopsis without giving away the ending: Sam Bell is an astronaut on the moon all by his lonesome. Some giant industrious company back on earth has figured out how to get clean energy from the rocks on the moon, so Sam Bell monitors the harvesting machines and sends the energy back home, etc. It’s a lonely existence, but in two weeks Sam will get to return to earth and see his family. And then… things start happening. Nee noo nee noo nee noo nee noo. No, it’s not really like that, there’s no Aryan princess sitting in front of a snowy TV screen informing you of the arrival of bad things. It’s an extremely well-done film and I hope it wins lots of awards. If you want a more detailed review, go here.

In a totally non-movie-related news, Cricket mocked me for talking about a “twig district” in New York. There isn’t really a twig district, there’s a flower district, and one can procure many a twig or branch there. I took a picture of one shop to illustrate that.

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That’s one of the things I truly love about New York, the districts. There’s the bead district, a restaurant district, the plastic district, a light bulb district, etc. And those are only the ones I know. Who knows what other wonderful clusters of shops New York holds?

The other thing I took a photo of is this gorgeous enclosed bridge that I walk by from time to time.

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It’s like an enchanted world. It connects two dull buildings with its ornate coppery multi-levelness. I would love to walk across it one day. In the meantime, I can just walk past it and drool.

Addition: Lookit! Brain-sucker cupcakes! How fabulous!

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The healthful benefits of fried food.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

As I have mentioned before, I work in Koreatown, which is a wonderful area if you like spicy food with lots of vegetables and rice (which I do). I pass tons of restaurants which show pictures of their food with a lot of comments like this: “Tofu cooked in mineral water to aid digestion” or “Our kimchi has healthful elements to prevent disease”, all of which is fine. Snorth, the other day, told me about this amazing Korean fried chicken place called Bon Chon. So I went to their website.

http://www.bonchon.com/eng/

Okay, fine, you make life-alteringly delicious fried chicken. Why must you repeat that it is healthy and low-calorie? It’s FRIED CHICKEN. Do you remember when KFC had that horrendously written commercial campaign? It was the one where they said, “You know, if you strip the skin and breading off of our fried chicken, it’s really quite healthy,” and America, as a group, was like OH FOR REAL COME ON do not compare your processed fried chicken to a big bowl of dark green arugula and kale PLEASE KTHX. I’m having flashbacks of that with Bon Chon. Also, for engrish, it’s pretty stellar. Here are some quotes about the signature Bon Chon taste secret:

We use only vegetable oils to fry our chicken. Along with our special sauce, this process eliminates oil and water from the chicken so that it can create lean and crispy tastes. (OH FOR REAL COME ON, etc.)
The initial flavor of the fried chicken decelerates as the temperature cools down.
You hand remains almost free form our ingredient sauce.
Your fingers and hands should remain free from its sauce because the sauce and ingredients remain intact with the chicken.

Pretty pretty cupcakes.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

But first, spam! Spam that has been sent to my comments, as you know, periodically tries to mask its intent in order for me to approve it and allow it on through. It has tried complete gibberish, and unintentionally poetic phrases, and false inducing of pity, and random collections of proverbs. Now the new tack, which I happen to like very much, is to tell me a charming childhood joke, like one you might find in Highlights magazine.

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This cracks me up, because now I want to tell people jokes and then yell a medication’s name after the punchline. “What do cats put in their drinks? Mice cubes. LEVITRA!!”

Now, on to cupcakes. I went to a lovely party on Saturday night for a girl I went to college with, her 30th birthday party. Lini, the birthday girl, is bringing back the 1950s house arts in a big way. She made a German chocolate cake with what I referred to as “aggressive frosting.” You know how most people attempt to make frosting as smooth and uniform as possible? Not Lini. Lini put smashed pecans and coconut shreds in it so it looked like it was furry and alive. It reminded me of that monster book from Harry Potter, like if I got to close to the cake teeth would just SPRING OUT from nowhere and there would be snarling and gnashing and whatnot. I swear it heard it growling. But it was delish, so whatever. Anyway, Lini and I were talking about how much we love cake decorating shows because, hey, they’re decorating something. And then you get to eat it! And in addition to the German chocolate cake, we had cupcakes, which inspired me to share some really gorgeous cupcake designs with y’all.

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And my personal favorite, because it reminds me of my childhood:

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Wedding in Lake George.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

My co-worker C. got married, and I got invited to her wedding in Lake George Village. Lake George, for those of you who don’t know, is in the upper part of New York State, approximately 90 miles from Montreal. On one of the banks is Lake George Village. It was quite the summer resort town back in the 1950s and 1960s, and a great deal of the buildings are still left over from then.

This is the lake from our hotel room. The area is heavily peppered with hotels and motels, apparently the population goes from about 1,000 to 15,000 in the summer. Ergo, many hotels.

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And the stores/restaurants/amusements are charming and quaint and delightful. I took some pictures of the more dated and adorable elements.

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You can’t really appreciate it because I was zipping past it in a car, but off to the left of that shot is a wax museum. You can see a bit of it.

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And this is supposedly the oldest minigolf course in… someplace, maybe the Adirondacks, maybe New York, something like that.

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And I couldn’t get a shot of it, but there is a Tiki Resort right near the minigolf course.

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The town just screams, “No one puts Baby in a corner!”

So, the wedding. It was lovely, except for some poor teenage boy who had to read a passage from the Song of Songs that was clearly written with a woman’s voice, so Poor Teenage Boy had to read this whole passage:

Listen! My lover!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.

My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
Look! There he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattice.

My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.”

Okay, first of all, if I was a socially awkward male heterosexual teenager, this would be torture for me. Second, every time he said, “lover,” how was I not supposed to think of that Saturday Night Live skit? I mean, really. Then the next kid got up for a reading and said it was St. Paul speaking to the Phillipinos. I found that endlessly amusing as well.

The rest of the wedding went smashingly, C. looked gorgeous, and everyone went outside and posed for photos while actively freezing to death.

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We all shuttled to a lovely castle on the side of a mountain, where there was dancing and consuming of food and beverage until late into the night.

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The best part of dinner was that it was a buffet, so there weren’t herds of waiters tromping around with large trays of food, passive-aggressively deciding when dancing was to cease (”Well, you can keep dancing, but you’re food will get cold. I’m just sayin’…”). You could get what you wanted when you wanted. And they also brought out The Meat.

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It took two people to carry it out. It reminded me of those ribs that Fred Flintstone gets and they put it in his car and his car tips over. It was enormous. Really.

Here are children in awe of The Meat. Or perhaps they got sucked into it’s gravitational pull. Can’t be sure.

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And then the wedding ended and we went back to the hotel for the afterparty. Here is the beautiful blushing bride playing beer pong with one of the groomsmen, Ham.

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It was a lovely wedding experience all around. I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. because I am weak and frail, but from what I understand, the revelry didn’t end until way after the sun came up.

Addendum: Apparently, at 3:00 a.m., C.’s 80-year-old grandma played beer pong as well… with scotch. Gramma is hard-core.

The internet has neato things. I feel the need to share them with you.

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

1. I visit CuteOverload every day for my daily dose of cuddly happiness, and it appears to have spawned a similar site, totally devoted to cute food. How marvelous. It’s called EpiCute, and I have posted some of my favorites.

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Did you see that gingerbread house with the red birds? OMG, that is so very awesome.

2. There’s an artist/graphic designer who goes by the name Lunchbreath. He designs some really stellar infographics and charts. Some of them have rough language, but they are very clever and very funny and you need to see them. Right now, in fact. He also has terrific handwriting, very distinctive and charming. Here’s his flickr stream where you can peruse his entire graphic collection: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchbreath/

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I iz 32. Feels a lot like 31. Also, Pinkberry and forthcoming art.

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

I had a lovely birthday, thank you. I went up to the Berkshires in Massachusetts and saw some theater, ate some food and generally just chilled. It was extremely mellow. I saw a few movies: Grey Gardens (the new HBO movie, not the documentary it is based on), and while it was excellently acted and apparently truthful, it also made me really sad. It was a freakin’ sad film, about unfulfilled dreams and wasted talents and a lost era, all that fun stuff. Ruined my Saturday night, I can tell you that. I also saw Wedding Crashers (finally!) and it was quite good. I mean, it didn’t change my life or anything, but it was amusing and clever and I had no idea how funny Vince Vaughn was! And now I do. I might, just might see The Breakup one day, even though romantic comedies (or anti-romantic comedies, as that one appears to be) are not my bag. VV might make it worth my while.

Also, in a totally unrelated note, I have tried Pinkberry for the first time this afternoon and it is yummy-nummy. I like the bacterial tang of yogurt, so that is a lovely change from regular frozen yogurt. I would recommend what I had, regular flavor with little yogurt chips (like the coating on yogurt-covered raisins). Dee-lishious. I don’t think I’ll become addicted or anything, but I can understand why others have become so. I think the fact that small is five bucks is definitely going to prevent me from making this a habit. But it is a pleasant treat every once in a blue moon.

I’m working on a ton of projects right now, so I’ll be telling you about those as they develop. Some graphic design, some logo design, some jewelry design, whooo, it’s a busy life. I shall keep you posted.

The Meadowlands Fair.

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Oh, it was bleak. You remember the Bloomsburg Fair I went to back in the day? That had all those amusements and cool foods, but it also had local charm like pie bake-offs and 4-H club. The Meadowlands Fair, however, had none of those nice things. It felt like very con-artist-y and ripoff-y. It was all rides and impossible-to-win shooter games and sideshows. Yes, sideshows. Don’t believe me? I took pictures.

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I refused to go into the sideshow, but my friends did and they said it was very, very lame. For example, the two-headed lady? One lady stood in back of another lady and rested her chin on the front lady’s shoulder. But it wasn’t a total loss. I saw an adorable ride in the kiddy section.

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Aww, a teeny ferris wheel made from little pumpkin houses. And, of course, there was the food. I learned many new and exciting things. Like KFC did not invent the “meal in a bowl” concept.

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And, in keeping with every fair’s policy that food must be served on an impaling device of some sort, there was a booth with some high-class stabbed cuisine.

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But the redeeming item at the fair was, without a doubt, the deep-fried dill pickles with horseradish dipping sauce. Oh. Ohh. So good. It was my first time having this delicious fried delicacy, and it was so worth it. It was like the best components of fried food with the vinegary tang of dill pickles. French fries seem so blase next to it.

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Africa, Part 4: Kruger and Durban.

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Finishing up Kruger: The last night there Cricket got jiggy with the big braai-ing grill and cooked up a great big slab of meat (all this occurred during Owl Appreciation Hour and OMG did you SEE my OWL?!??) but it was very very dark out there, so he wore his headlamp the whole time. I’m telling you, that man can make a headlamp sexy.

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Speaking of very very dark, the stars were AMAZING. Imagine being in a place the size of Rhode Island with less than fifteen thousand people. Seriously, you could see The Milky Way. It was phenomenal. Cricket tried desperately to take a picture of the stars (30 second exposure time, using a tripod, making everyone in the nearby housing turn their lights off, etc.) but while the picture is good, it really doesn’t capture the sheer mammothness of the night sky. But you can see The Milky Way! Those are the smudgy cloudy-looking bits. Soooo breathtaking.

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I really hadn’t seen very many monkeys my entire trip, so I was delighted when on our last day, a troupe of vervets showed up at our house. I was the only one who was excited. They are very, very naughty beasties. They spend all their time plotting how to get into your personal space and steal your foods and valuables.

Plotting…

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Plotting…

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A brief stop with the plotting for foraging…

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Then the continuation of the plotting…

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And finally success. I heard a scream, and then a flash of gray out the door. This particular monkey got into the kitchen and stole some hot cross buns. Look at how he sat in the tree juuuuust out of reach and ate it, all cocky-like. “Yeah, I got your hot cross buns, heh heh heh.” Snotty little humanoid.

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On our drive out of Kruger we drove past a large watering hole with buffalo on one side and marabou storks on the other. One marabou stork bravely ventured over to the buffalo side, but was politely but firmly forced off by a buffalo bouncer who got closer and closer with those big horns of his. Wise marabou, he got the hint.

Watering hole, buffalo side.

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Watering hole, marabou side.

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And that was the end of my four days in Kruger Park. Every time I go there, it’s as magical and awe-inspiring as the first time I went (when I was five.)

Cricket and I then headed to Durban, which is a major city in South Africa. There’s not much for me to say about Durban, we were only there for two or three days, and most of that time was spent chillaxing with a lot of good food, but there are a few key points I’d like to touch on. Durban still has a great deal of the nifty colonial architecture of the previous century. Say what you want about the European oppressors, they build a nice building. With lovely tin roofs and stained glass windows and intricate railings.

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Don’t you just want some tea and crumpets when you look at those? And you see those gorgeous tropical trees everywhere? Mom pointed out a particular one that was so cool. It looked like an acacia, but it had these softly fuzzy orange-to-yellow berries or flower pods on them. So incredibly beautiful. This is the tree:

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And these are the berries/pods:

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Another thing we noticed in Durban is that since Africa is going back to its roots, it’s getting rid of the European-named streets. However, everyone is accustomed to those street names, so they’re doing it slowly and in an interesting way.

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I assume eventually after everyone has gotten used to the new names, they’ll get rid of the yellow signs, but for now it looks like this.

The final thing I wanted to mention in Durban is the beadwork. Beadwork is a big, BIG artform all over South Africa and the continent, but there was this one shop in Durban that just blew my mind. They had plants and monkeys and chandeliers and wall mirrors and things that looked like Chinese shrines, all beaded, and some with lights. I bought a small beaded baobab from them (I’m having it shipped, it was too big for my luggage, I’ll take pictures when it gets to my apartment), but I really wanted the human-sized, lightbulb-filled baobab. This is a poor picture, but trust me, if it was in a restaurant in New York, you would spend the whole meal there staring at the tree and ignoring your dinner companions. It’s an engrossing tree.

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Next up: The KwaZulu-Natal province.

Two things.

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

1. I was watching the Ace of Cakes marathon on Monday and kind of half-paying-attention while working on other things, and Duff was talking about making something and probably giggling (he does that) and… wait, is that a jellyfish cake in the background?!??

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Dude. AWESOME. I don’t care for many of Ace of Cakes cakes because I find them too cartoony, but seriously, that jellyfish cake is super-rad. I realize only the dome top part is edible and the rest is structural, but who cares? JELLYFISH CAKE. I bet Snorth is cursing herself right now for not having that as her wedding cake.

And yes, I’m quite aware they are not called jellyfish anymore, they’re called jellies. But “jelly cake” means something totally different. For those of you kids playing at home, starfish are now called sea stars and seahorses are now called… something else. I forgot. I can’t keep track of politically correct ocean nomenclature.

2. I saw Slumdog Millionaire. I saw it based on the reviews I read. You can read one here. Note the words they use in the review: “beautiful, sad, sweet, uplifting, and thoroughly entertaining”. Yeah, sounds lovely, doesn’t it? I’m going to totally ruin the movie with a mess of spoilers right now because no review I read did that and that caused me to have to choke back stomach acid while watching this film. IT’S AWFUL. The first half is disgusting and the second half is boring and a bit silly, plot-wise. Let me first clue you in on the disgusting bits: Jamal the Street Child lives in absolute squalor in Bombay (it’s still Bombay at that time). He is defecating at the local lavatory (a shed over a pit) when his favorite movie star lands in a helicopter nearby. His brother locks him in as a prank, so to get to see his movie idol, Jamal pinches his nose and drops himself into the pit of human excrement, then crawls out underneath completely covered and rubs his liquid-filth-encrusted-self on members of the crowd surrounding the movie star in an attempt to get to the front. I’m turning green just thinking about it. Shortly afterwards, we see Jamal and his brother and mother washing at the local watering hole, when apparently a religious riot breaks out and Jamal sees his mother get whacked in the face with a hunk of wood and die. Jamal and his brother see other people being torched and killed in front of them, and on their way back, they see their mother’s corpse floating in the water. Wait, it gets better. Jamal and his brother are living at the local dump when a man shows up and offers to take them in. He teaches them to sing so they can sing on the street for money. However, blind children get twice as much money, so when he finds a particular child with good singing skills, he drugs them and blinds them with boiling hot water and a spoon. OH MY GOD. This is all in the first half-hour. How can no one mention this in any review anywhere? The rest of it is all about finding the one true love of your life you are destined to be with and fate and all that whatever and it ends with the lovers being together and a bollywood dance number. Aside from Dev Patel, who plays the adult Jamal and is excellent, this movie blows and if it wins a slew of Oscars I’m going to be very, very unhappy.

Addendum: I am very, very unhappy.