http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypgXMcQNpdM

I was wandering around the internet and I saw The Most Amazing Cake Ever™. Seriously, look at this thing and tell me otherwise.

I did some research and found out it is from the Atlanta, GA shop Highland Bakery. I’m thinking of setting up a road trip because, damn. Check out their other cakes and you’ll see what I mean.

I bet those cakes are mad tasty too, but I’m just blown away by the artistic skill. They could taste like sand and ash and I would eat them solely to have some of that amazing art in mah belleh.

http://highlandbakery.com/

Addendum: OMG there are two new cakes posted on Highland Bakery’s Flickr stream. I… I have no words for the bunny cake. Gloriousness.

Coffee plants look like sticks with red and green berries popping out every couple of inches. The coffee bean must be picked by hand and can’t be stripped by machine because they ripen individually. They look like this:

Inside the red berry is a slime-covered beige-colored set of beans, and that slime is resilient, yo, it ain’t comin’ off easy. So what they do is soak the beans in water, where the slime coating ferments and slides off (and apparently this process smells super-gross). Then they commence with the roasting process or they plant them. If they plant them, they look like this:

They have come up with a variety of non-toxic ways to deal with problems that crop up (“crop up!” har!) in the fields. There was this ingenious little device strung up all over the place.

There’s three cups, the top two with the bottoms cut out, a plate, some rum and some water. The insects that attack the coffee plants drink the rum at the top, then fall down through the successive cups until they fall into the cup in the bottom (the one with water) and they drown. Low-tech and effective. Also, there’s a certain worm that likes to eat the roots of the coffee plant, so they put other plants with tastier roots in the with the coffee plants, and the worm eats those instead.

The way the Costa Ricans strain their coffee is using this cotton sock-looking thing suspended above a tin cup. It’s like the original filter. It looks gnarly because the sock-thing gets stained brown so even if it’s clean it looks like it was tied to the shoe of a hiker and dragged all over the trails. But it does the job so people still use this tool.

Okay, reptiles and whatnot. Iguanas! We saw a ton of iguanas. I learned that I love iguanas. I think they’re great. You would think most of the iguanas we would see would be green, but this was the only green one I saw.

It’s iguana mating season, so the males are this vibrant shade of pumpkin orange. They were draped all over the place, being sexy to the lady ‘guanas I suppose.

And then we saw iguana sex! They do it vertically which I think is unnecessary, but whatever. Not my call.

These iguanas were on the Caribbean coast. When we were on the Pacific coast we saw a different type of iguana that was stumpier and grayer. They looked more like Godzilla.

Geckos! Geckos are also great. They were my constant companion. They hung out near all the light fixtures waiting for buggies to show up. I insisted Cricket take many photos of them. Regular gecko. Dramatic gecko. Teeny baby gecko.

This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. This guy was really into his light fixture, literally and figuratively.

• | • | • INTERMISSION  • | • | •

A bug. I like the way he coordinated the white on his back with the ends of his antennae. Moving on.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER  • | • | •

Caimans! Caimans are little crocodiles. They do all the same things crocodiles do, like float there with only their heads above the water doing their damnest to be a log. I have a few pictures of that.

Awww, look at the baby! He’s so wee and you can see his little body under the water. So sweet and prehistoric.

This photo is called “Emperor’s New Clothes.” The guide informed us there was a caiman right in front of us, so we all dutifully took photos of this patch of grass, but I don’t know if anyone actually could see said caiman. So now we all have pictures like this.

Turtle shell. I didn’t put an exclamation point after that because, well, he’s dead and frankly not that thrilling. But I liked how you could see his ribs attached to his shell.

On one of our last days in Costa Rica we went to a bird ‘n’ crocodile sanctuary where big lethargic crocodiles laid around on the sandy banks and resembled spiked sacks of flour. We saw a ton of them. And one that was a ton. We’ll get to him momentarily.

At one point our boat captain for the day, I believe his name was José, decided to join the Bad Life Choices Society by getting out of the boat barefoot and feeding one of the crocs raw chicken meat. It was rough to watch because, you know, aaaaaaahhhh DUDE what are you DOING.

As we gently floated down the river, our guide Aaron got very excited because an insanely huge crocodile named Mike Tyson was hanging out near us. Mike Tyson the croc got that name by biting off the tail of one of his rivals. I learned that crocodiles never stop growing and Mike T is very old, so he looks terrible, like Jabba the Hut, all corpulent and flabbalicious. Aaron also told me one of my favorite nuggets of the trip, which is that crocodiles don’t really have any enemies once they reach adulthood and they can die “from elderness.” I have informed many people that someday they will die from elderness, and no one seems to appreciate it as much as me. Oh well. Here’s Mike Tyson.

And while we’re staring at the massive bulk of MT, one of his lady friends sidles up to the boat. How close did she get? Real close.

And the José got out of the damn boat, still with the barefootness, and fed them raw chicken. Aaaaaaaaahhhh JESUS CHRIST José do you have a death wish STOP DOING THAT.

By they way, the entire time we were hanging out on this river that is rife with predators that have eaten living things for forever, some idiot farmer allowed his horses to graze on the banks of the river. We were all like, run! Run away horses and one mule! They couldn’t hear us. They seemed okay. I still worried.

Oh, and I wanted to include a video Cricket took of leaf-cutter ants. We saw them when we went on the night frog walk. They were so cool. They had worn down a path, and some ants were carried giant leaf shards with ants on it cleaning it. Did you know the ants don’t eat the leaves? They take the leaves down into their ant lair where they basically do some farming, and a fungus grows on the leaf, and that’s what the ant eats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIFPZCzVkLA

All bromeliads are composed of a spiral arrangement of leaves sometimes called a “rosette”. The bases of the leaves in the rosette may overlap tightly to form a water reservoir. This central cup also collects whatever leaf litter and insects happen to land in it.  Tank bromeliads (as the water storing species are often called) rely less heavily on their roots for nourishment and are more often found as epiphytes. The roots of epiphytic species harden off after growing to form holdfasts as strong as wire that help attach the plant to its host. Even though bromeliads are commonly called parasitos in Spanish-speaking countries, these epiphytes do not take sustenance from their host but merely use it for support. All bromeliads share a common characteristic: tiny scales on their leaves called trichomes. These scales serve as a very efficient absorption system. In species found in desert regions where the air is hot and dry and the sun beats down relentlessly, these scales also help the plant to reduce water loss and shield the plants from the solar radiation. These plants are so covered with scales that they appear silvery-white and feel fuzzy.

The most well-known bromeliad is the pineapple and the most well-known epiphyte (air plant) is the orchid. Epiphytes will attach any place they land on. Here are some epiphytes on a power line.

And here are some bromeliads scattered about growing on a horizontal branch in the forest.

We went to pineapple plantation to learn about the wonderful world of pineapples and I was taught how to choose a good pineapple in the store. It is not by sniffing it or squeezing it or poking it at its base to check for softness or tugging on its leafy crown. A good pineapple has large “eyes” in the pattern, it is shaped nicely (not pear-shaped or uneven), and the bottom part is golden-colored. I also learned that the bottom half of the pineapple is sweeter and less stalky than the top part, so save the bottom half for people you really like (or yourself). Here is a shot of the pineapple plantation that grows amazing organic pineapples. It is owned by the Collins Street Bakery in Texas, famous for having the best fruit cake in the world (their claim, not mine – I’ve never tasted their fruit cake, so I cannot judge).

They also grow ornamental pineapples. Like these cuties:

And these that I christened “tiny pineys”.

And now changing gears for a second: The Montezuma Oropendola! It’s a bird, not an ailment. A cool-looking bird, in fact.

What I loved about this bird was the amazing sound it made. It sounded like someone shaking a thick sheet of plastic. And apparently they are called “oropendola” because when they make the call, they will hang upside down from the branch for a second like a pendulum. I found a video on YouTube that kind of captures the sound and the motion. It’s way cooler in person, all tremulous and loud.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HjNZ1a0PTY

I could listen to that all day.

Check out this yard full of canna lilies being all flouncy and vibrant.

I like the way the seed pods look like unpeeled lychees.

I spent a great deal of this trip taking (or attempting to take) pictures of ferns. I’ve always loved ferns, but the second I would get them into my house, they would become very sad and die. The first day we were in Costa Rica, we went to a volcano and Cricket insisted we go on a walk. In the rainforest. 6,000 above sea level. On a mountain. This did not go well for me. At one point I wrapped my arms around a moss-covered tree trunk and whispered, “I love you, tree. I hate my boyfriend. I hate him so much. I will live with you forever. Because I’m going to die here. Right now.” At one point Cricket tried to take my pulse but it was too fast for him to count. Periodically we would stop so I could catch my breath and stare daggers at Cricket and I noticed this lovely baby fern leaf all curled up. I said, “Hey, can you take a picture of me pointing to this?” Cricket went to take the shot just as some NATURE! flew up into my eye aaaaaaaahhh nature in my eye. So now we have two lovely pictures of a curled-up fern leaf and me making low moaning noises while trying to get what turned out to be a piece of leaf out from under my eyelid.

(I’m real outdoorsy.)

I learned a neat fact about ferns. We passed some fern farms and the wee fernlets were under large tents covered in black mesh fabric. That is because ferns grow on the forest floor where 60% of the sunlight is filtered out, so the black mesh is attempting to mimic that.

Here’s a fern I saw one day that had spores on the underside of its leaves.

Here are teeny-tiny ferns growing in the rainforest.

And here’s my favorite fern photo. FERN FIST.

Other plants: a stilt root tree.

A red ginger flower. I don’t know if it tastes like ginger, but that’s what it’s called. It’s used a lot in fancy-pants flower arrangements.

And a passion flower. I’ve always known passion flowers to look like this:

But did not know they also looked like the one I saw, this one:

Birds are next. A lotta birds. Very exciting.

Lookit there! “Foolproof Gravy,” it says! That sounds not-scary. I opened to the table of contents, where I was pleasantly greeted with this:

I can shake a jar! And she said, “Promise!” Martha wouldn’t lie to me. So I bought the magazine and went home.

A couple days before Thanksgiving, I actually took a glance at page 82 with the gravy instructions, expecting them to be relatively simple and uncomplicated. What greeted me was, sadly, quite the opposite.

What the hell, Martha? I thought we were cool! I don’t have seventeen hours and a staff of ten to make frikkin’ gravy! I don’t even own a whisk! You suck so hard, Martha.

However, I would not let this gravy situation ruin my Thanksgiving. I took out a bunch of steps that I found unnecessary, and sho’ nuff, my gravy was delish and everyone was thrilled. Here’s my recipe.

1. Buy a box of organic chicken stock from Costco’s. Make sure you get stock, not broth. Also, get organic stock because otherwise they add secret naughty things into it, like dextrose and MSG.

2. Put about a two cups in a clean take-out soup container from a Chinese restaurant. Add about 1/2 cup of flour to it. Put the lid on tightly and shake like hell until there are no lumps of any kind. Your arms will feel like Rosie the Riveter. This is a good thing.

3. Take the turkey drippings and pour them into one of those gravy-separator thingies. Wait about ten minutes. The grease will rise to the top. Pour as much of the non-grease-juices as you can into a small pot on the stove (about three cups). Add the contents of the Chinese soup container. Slowly low-boil the mixture over the stove, stirring constantly until it reaches your desired thickness. For me it took about seven to ten minutes of boiling until it got to a pleasantly festive viscous consistency.

4. Add a tiny bit of pepper maybe. Don’t add salt. Some people don’t like too much salt. Some people have high blood pressure. Let people add their own salt. Serve. Done.

It was delicious, everyone was happy, and I didn’t have to interact with giblets. A win-win, I think.

Addendum: A few hours after I wrote this, I saw a pertinent blog entry on mimismartypants.

Thanksgiving at my house was awesome, except for the part where Martha Stewart was a lying skank. That thing about soaking the cheesecloth in butter and wine and draping it over the turkey breast results in nothing but a shrieking fire alarm, frightened cats, and an oven full of smoke. Luckily this all happened before any guests arrived, so LT just pulled the whole cheesecloth mess off with barbecue tongs and threw it in the sink. Quit trolling, Martha. People (me) actually believed that cheesecloth nonsense. I’ma gonna get you back, lady.

http://www.girlzlyfe.com/

It says “Girl’z Lyfe” (that spelling gives me agita as well, it’s not just you) but it has cool things for both sexes. And they carry a lot of Fred and Friends products, which I love.

http://www.shanalogic.com/

Shana Logic does skew a bit more girly and tweeny, but they have all handmade things and their selection changes fairly regularly.

http://www.shopplasticland.com/

And there’s PlasticLand. They focus mainly on vintage fashion, but PlasticLand also has quite the selection of Fred and Friends as well as other curiosities for your home and self. Check out the rad old-style ornaments.

In addition, there’s a woman I once met who made the best truffles – really creative flavor choices. She has since made her order quantities much higher (when I first bought from her you could get 30 truffles, now the smallest order you can place is 120 truffles). However, her work is impeccable and I highly recommend asking for the “Vinie” truffle, which is pink peppercorn and dark chocolate. Maybe buy 120 and split them up, then distribute them to a variety of people.

http://7to3chocolates.com/

And don’t forget, there’s always Etsy (here’s my review of a few stand-out shops) and the stores in your town/village/city/floating island. Also, if you come to Manhattan, there’s a holiday fair in Grand Central and one right nearby in Bryant Park, and then there’s ones in Union Square, Columbus Circle, and St. Bartholomew’s at 50th Street and Park Ave. Lots of small business and handmade art at all of those.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey, whoever did this cake? IT’S ON. I don’t know who you are, but the next time I make a cake, it will DESTROY you with its awesomeness. You done brought the clouds, so don’t be surprised when it rains. BOOYAH.

Anyway, I was looking on NotCot.org today, a website B. turned me on to, and I saw something someone invented for sleeping in weird places. Let me tell you something important about myself: I love sleeping. It might just be my most favorite thing ever. I refuse to let anyone sleep near me because I am unwilling to compromise my sleeping style (thrashing, pillow scrunching, snoring, etc.) And, on select occasions, I have been known to pass out face-down on my desk. Therefore, this product was made for me. What amuses me no end about it is how she looks like a molting pillbug who’s been on a bender for a while and is worse for wear. They need to work on how to make the sleep cocoon look less conspicuous than sleeping face-down on the desk. But, trust me when I say this, if this comes out in stores, I will be first in line to get it.

http://www.forrestjessee.com/198768/SLEEP-SUIT

The preciousness of this cake, it slays me. I was inspired to make this for my mother’s birthday party (which was this past weekend). Here’s the problem: I have never baked a cake. I think I made some brownies in high school, and then I made some peach cobbler a couple years ago, and that’s it. So I have no prior cake knowledge to pull from. Here’s what I did in case you wish to make it for someone you love:

1. Buy Dr. Oetker’s Organic French Vanilla cake mix, vanilla frosting and rose pink food coloring. It has to be vanilla cake so it’s pale. This particular cake mix was the least synthetic of the mixes, and since I never bake I didn’t want to buy a ton of supplies I would never use again (flour, sugar, baking powder, etc.) If you want to make cake from scratch, more power to you. Just make sure it’s a pale-colored batter (no chocolate).

2. Get a myriad of 8″ springform baking pans. I just have one, so this took FOREVER. Try to have at least two. Borrow from friends. Whatever you gotta do.

3. Mix the batter in a big bowl. I used two boxes and their accompanying ingredients (eggs, milk, oil). Then take five identical bowls. Pour equal amounts of batter into the bowls. It should look like this.

4. Arrange them in a row. Put a whole bunch of food coloring at one end and no food coloring at the other end. Then, using miniscule amounts of food coloring, try to create a gradation from no pink to bright pink, like so:

5. Pour the lightest color into a pan and bake. Check frequently, almost obsessively to make sure it’s not turning brown. The edges can turn brown, but if the top starts to get any color, pull that sucker out right quick.

6. Take a knife and run it slowly around the edge of the pan. Pop the pan off. Then run a big ole bread knife underneath the cake until it separates from the base. Place on display thingie (I have a raised Martha Stewart cake display thingie, so that’s what I used). Use the bread knife to level the cake if it’s higher on one side, or poofy in the middle. Lightly frost with frosting.

7. Repeat with the next darkest level. Over and over and over until you hate cake and you want to punch cake in the face.

I also made my mother the adorable flag thing that was on top of the cake with her name on it. Here’s what it looked like when it was finished.

Then people cut into the LoveCake and surprise! It worked!

Since my camera is kinda average it looks like the two bottom stripes and the two middle stripes are the same color, but in real life it was a beautiful gradation. People were like OMG PINK CAKE STRIPES HOW DID YOU and I had to explain it to a variety of people and they all were impressed. So if you like to bake I recommend you make this because it will garner rave reviews. And it was tasty and delicious (bonus!).

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/typical-horse-racing-in-japan

Now, on to the talent portion of our competition. I like to think I have some skills in some areas. However, often I am shown that I am not awesome in any way, shape or form. I would like to share some videos of people making me feel useless right now.

1. Some Japanese men making mochi. Be sure to watch the bit between the pounder thing and the bare hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HKnHnUk0S8&

2. This policeman riding a motorcycle all smooth-like around super-tight turns. You know how this would go for me? Get on motorcycle. Progress five feet forward. Fall over, most likely with the motorcycle on top of me. Moan until someone rescues me. The end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJxOsYh12yY&

3. And finally, the Nike basketball commercial from 2001. Damn. DAMN. It made me want to learn how to bounce that tangerine orb like a pro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kSmis2g3SI&

First of all, retouching is really hard. Every time you fix something, you notice something else that doesn’t look right. It’s an ouroboros of annoying. The main problem I came across (aside from having to edit out dirt flecks and light flares for what seemed like forever) is that Heineken’s bottle is darkish green and their beer is tea-colored. However, they like to give the impression that their bottle is bright green and their beer is golden and lit from the inside with a heavenly light, like an angel accidentally dropped a halo into it. I’m not going to get that effect taking photos in a conference room with natural light. So I did the best I could lightening and greening-up the beer, while not modifying the label or the cap, which didn’t need greening. I reiterate, a colossal pain in the patoot. Mad props to my retouching friends who do this for a living. My hat goes off to you.

Cricket and I were walking past the Millennium Bridge and we happened on this weird neat-o fountain. It looked like a ship with all kinds of wacky alchemy stuff attached to it. My favorite part was the figure in the back who looked like a giant-nosed Napoleon with an umbrella on his head.

St. Martin-in-the-Fields (real name) Church is one of the best churches you could have the pleasure of visiting. They turned their crypt into into a lovely tea room with stellar cafeteria-style food service (like lamb shank and roasted root vegetables, yummers) and you only feel slightly horribly guilty for enjoying tasty snakkies on top of the graves of people. You can also do bronze rubbings and listen to different kinds of live music. Cricket and I took the time to go up into the actual church-area and I was surprised at what I found. Their main window is clear glass, and in the center is a milky-white-stained-glass egg that is lit by special lights, so it looks like it is glowing. I think that is genius. Instead of having the whole bible story mapped out, they left a little to the imagination. And darn it if it doesn’t look ethereal.

London has a Chinatown, much like most other cities do. Theirs is much smaller than the one in New York. And they have a wall dragon as you walk in.

The lanterns are a really nice touch.

And their pharmacist has this great poster in the window. The tank illustration gave us the giggles.

We visited two major stores: Harrods and Hamleys. Harrods is one of the most famous department stores in the world, and I must say it is fancy. If you do go there, make a point to go to the food court. Holy Moses, it is glorious. They have every kind of food from anywhere in the world. It was mind-blowing. For example, here is a photo of a section of their terrines. Terrines are basically patés or finely ground meatloafs.

And that’s just one little corner of the magic. Another cool thing about Harrods are the 11,000 lights on the exterior.

Hamleys is a very old and very large toy store. Here is the lowdown on the floors:

5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress-up, etc.
2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin’s Magic section.
Basement: Interactive — Lego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and GAME (retailer).

I don’t really care one way or the other about toys or games, but I did geek out really hard when I got to (wait for it) the Harry Potter Wand Store section.

Every wand for any character from the film. So exciting! It made me believe, just for a moment, that there’s a train that could take me to Hogwarts.

Now, everyone says the British are more elegant and reserved and classy, and I am inclined to agree, based on the fact that they made an opera of (not making this up) Anna-Nicole Smith’s life. Really. And it’s at the Royal Opera House, not some avant-garde experimental theater space. That’s pretty wild. (It got great reviews, by the way. I would have tried to see it, but it opened after I left.)

Two final random shots: One, an old ship with a terrified-looking deer as the figurehead which I found really funny for some reason.

And a men’s store’s spring window display. The smallest figure is spinning while only wearing underpants. You can almost hear him saying, “Whee! I’m nakee!”

That’s it. That’s my trip to London. If anyone has any questions or queries, feel free to contact me. I have 300 other photos that I did not share here which I would be happy to show you.