When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Yolato is delicious. And if you register, it's free! I just registered, but even paying for it tasted good. I got pistachio since green is a health food color (like salad or broccoli), also pistachio is just awesome! Next time though, I think I'll have to try the plain yogurt and get some fruit toppings. Love the flavor of yogurt! Pam said that it tasted very yogurty the last time she got it, which sounds pretty good to me. This time Pam got the tiramisu and that was pretty divine. It even had some sweetness of alcohol in it.

Pam and I took our Yolati on the road to Commerce on Bond. There's some weird art stuff lying around that a kid tried to climb on. (Not climbable art.) There were also two dresses on some somewhat beat up mannequins. We both agreed that the one of the right (the goldish one) looked better than the green/blue one on the left, since that one looked like it's been through shredder. There was another dress by the change machine, but we didn't discuss it. It was kind of nice--the structure of it was interesting anyway. When Pam was getting money from the ATM, some dude, who's ATM next to hers wasn't working, started hovering over Pam. This guy was big, and it was like he was towering over her to see her PIN or something. Very creepy.

Pam forgot her phone, so we went back to her apartment to retrieve and wait for Randi to call back. Njoki had been napping before, but when she woke up, it was so much fun. We decided that fitting a queen-sized bed in Pam's room would be a ridiculous feat; toasting about ships, especially fun ships is great fun; running out of toilet paper, then running out for toilet paper, then not getting a bag and then running from someone who says, "So you got toilet paper?" is probably thinking, "Man, she's got to go bad!"

Can't wait to try my Soyjoy bar! Njoki got her bars and shared with me and Pam, just like she promised when she signed up for 3 free bars on the website. It's a bit silly that the bars are different flavors though, but oh well. I'm going to be eating something in the morning tomorrow--so exciting!

I asked Njoki for a good Mexican place in the neighborhood since that's where we wanted to go with Shane's brother Paul. We went to Florencia 13 for their delicious burritos. I got a Boyle Heights, and I still have some. It was yummy, but I was too stuffed to eat the rest of it, so I got it packed.

Paul is 18, likes milk, but rates milkshakes on a scale of 1 to 10, a 5. 5! I told him he had to get a Broadway shake from Tom's Diner. I then told him that Tom's Diner is the diner they use for the outside shots on Seinfeld. Then, like a true fan, he was talking about a big salad. Paul said that today he's been to the Met and the Guggenheim--and he paid full student price for the Met. Well, someone's got to I guess. It was nice meeting Paul. It's strange though when younger people seem as old as onesself, but I guess that's how all old people feel.

Apparently, I look young in the driver's license photo that I just had taken when I renewed and upgraded (from the dumb provisional, crappy, get some extra money from people who switch to real licenses when they're not expired yet licenses).

After dinner, we walked through Soho and Little Italy along Mulberry to a karaoke bar called Yello. I found the place kind of creepy since it was next to a Chinese funeral home. It also wasn't full on. Anyway, on our way there we passed by some Soprano's people coming out of a restaurant. Apparently, some people saw the actor who plays "Paulie." I recognized the guy who plays a thug in lots of movies: Steve Schirripa/Bobby 'Bacala' Baccalieri. Paul was excited--I was too.

Jon's home. Looks like he drank some wine. He's offering it to me now.

Bunny Cake!

Weeks ago, I got an email from my mom about a bunny cake from the Betty Crocker website. She envisioned me, my sister, and my cousin each constructing her own cake and judging the best bunny as if it were some kind of reality show. That didn't happen.

Each bunny consists of a layer of cake--cut and decorated to look like a small rabbit on a platter. Betty Crocker suggests using her carrot cake mix and cream cheese frosting--but since I've overcome my carrot-cake-making virginity, I made this guy from scratch. Instead of Tish Boyle's recipe for Cui's cake, I used Dorie Greenspan's recipe from Baking since her recipe made three layers, and I wanted to try something new. My goal of using three layers was to create two bunnies and some cupcakes for myself to taste and snack on. As you can see, there's only this one bunny. Those things next to it are Easter eggs decorated with jelly beans. (Wee took them to school--and Bob seemed to like it--even though he still won't tell Wee who the main band at Rutgersfest this year is.)

And so how did that happen?

On Saturday, Jon and I went to Food Emporium to pick up some staples that we ran out of--in particular juice and eggs. We also didn't have cream cheese for the frosting or coconut flakes like the recipe called for. Juice is a vital staple, since if we don't have that in our fridge, we drink the beer instead, which makes us bloated and dehydrated anyway. (And while I love milk, any time or place--sometimes it's nice to switch it up.) Eggs--we ran out of when we decided our eggs were getting kind of old and boiled them all for a macaroni salad that we now call: Buht Buht Juice. What can I say? Eggs help get the juices down there flowing--if you eat too much, too fast, which is usually the case since it's so freakin' delicious.

So we picked up everything that we needed. Unfortunately, there, on the shelf, behind the label "coconut flakes," a vast empty darkness. Was the whole world making bunny cakes?! Or coconut macaroons for that matter? Apparently.

My mom and sister made these coconut macaroons from scratch as well. They came out pretty good. Crispy outside, chewy inside, chocolates and coconut-y.

When all was said and done, we lined the bottom of the cake stand/holder under the bunny with these because 1) there was room 2) we are all sick and thought that it looking kind of like bunny droppings was hilarious.

HILARIOUS! (and it was.)

Anyway, I made the carrot cake batter (no tears this time) and poured it into two round cake pans and the rest I poured into a cupcake pan. The cupcakes were ready before the cakes--so when it was just about cool enough (not really--but who can really wait?) to eat, Jon and I tested them. It came out not so sweet and spicy as carrot cakes are known to be, which, was interesting. It tasted light and almost healthy--though I do recall the two cups of sugar and one cup of oil--but spread over three pans--that's not so bad! What was interesting is that there wasn't much batter--but the baking soda and baking powder seemed to be doing it magic really nicely--so they rose beautifully.

I saved creating the frosting until the next morning since I was too tired to think about cleaning my mixing bowl.

On Sunday, I made the frosting, but it didn't look like it'd be enough for two bunnies plus cupcakes. (I wanted to make the cupcakes into little chickens, but really, who wants to eat yellow frosting in addition to two bunnies? I thought better of it and decided that the bunnies will be chick-less, and that I can give away the cakes and snack on the cupcakes for the rest of the week so I can't be too generous with the portions I'm eating.) So, I threw another stick of butter and cream cheese into the mixer, and then added a pound of confectioner's sugar and lemon juice. Voila! More cream cheese frosting. Though I'm not a huge fan of citrus desserts--the lemon made the cream cheese taste kind of healthy and brighter than usual--so it went with the healthy feeling the cake gave me. As I continued to lick my fingers throughout the cleaning process and then frosting process, it didn't really seem all that healthy though.

In later photos, my Popo flanked the bunny with some salt and pepper shakers shaped like turkeys that my Aunt Isabel gave us for our Thanksgiving feasts. It's too funny. I'll try to post it--since it sort of makes up for the cupcake chicks I failed to make.

Anyway, I was having some difficulty frosting and the one bunny I started with. For some reason, having only two cake halves made the bunny kind of narrow. That wasn't the difficulty though, but when I asked my mom to help me fix the frosting, she decided to cannibalize the other bunny by creating one more layer to fatten up the one I was failing to frost. After that, PoPo came in, and said that the bunny should have legs. The funniest part was that she was imitating what the bunny's appendages do--so she was pawing and imitating how it would run and jump. She and my mom created little arms for it--that I guess were supposed to blend in and be the feet too. The shape sort of came out like a seal or one of those kinds of animals, but it was cute anyway.

I cut two little eggs out of the remaining cake and frosted them. We decorated the bunny with blue jelly beans for eyes, a pink one for the nose, and an array of other "tropical flavored" jelly beans for the eggs. Wee only found neon construction paper, so that's why the ears are so pink. Ayee cut up some carrots for the mouth and whiskers. (It's wearing my dad's surprised expression.) Uncle Al stopped by the supermarket and got coconut flakes which I patted on the bunny. I threw a handful into a bowl and a few drops of green food coloring then mixed to create the grass.

Overall, I think it was a successful bunny cake--perhaps we'll make it again next year.

Dinner and appetizers were, as usual, awesome. We had ham, roast beef, lamb, and shrimp. Sides included stuffed mushrooms, salad, rice, and cream corn. Desserts included bunny cake, macaroons, ice cream, and fruit tart. My stomach hurt so much--I swear I felt the skin cells multiplying rapidly to prevent it from bursting.

I went to the gym today and burned at least 400 calories...not sure if it means anything, but I really need to lose at least 10 pounds to fit into anything I own...Hippitus Hoppitus!

Hit Record

So I swear, I'll go to the gym after I write this--and can you believe that this isn't a post about food? I think the thing that is provoking me mostly is that somehow I stumbled across this website: http://www.hitrecord.org/home.html, and I want to figure out how and I got there. Like emptying my brain on the page so I can mindlessly read Jane on the elliptical. (Yeah, it's not as easy as it should be with the type so small.)

So this hitrecord.org website is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's. The kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun/10 Things I Hate About You/Brick. The site is cute, and I use "cute" to describe it because it's not extraordinarily technologically impressive--but I, using Blogger, shouldn't be criticizing. It's just that "celebrities" doing their own things, in real life and time, is strange. And when it's not like they hired their own publicity team or even personal assistant to do it, and make it look all sheik; it's interesting. I mean it's so much easier to gawk at celebrities and about their lives than to imagine that they're real people. I think that it reveals that Joe (as he's called on his website) is not just the culmination of the characters he's portrayed or that flat/distorted figure in magazines and television. There's a life to him--and he's openly revealing it.

This brings to mind how yesterday Pam was saying how one of her friends who lived in SF had a party and one of his/her guests asked to bring a friend, who turned out to be Julia Stiles. And how Dani said that she saw Julia Stiles at a bar when her group hung out with the Fordham/Columbia group. Pam also said that she heard from a friend of a friend that Natalie Portman got drunk at a party and declared every celebrity she's slept with. The point of this being that it's usually a friend of a friend of a friend whom you hear this stuff from, and it's strange how we react--and it's like: why do we react the way we do? Is it just because it's easy to talk about since they're easily recognizable and makes for easy gossip? And the socialization celebrity gossip provides keeps us sane from becoming too isolated because we are so caught up in our own lives? Or is it because we really care?

Anyway, how I found Hit Record was this: I was googling to see if Gilmore Girls was new today because I'm locked out of playing the Sims since Jon is doing research on the computer. So after I went through all the spoilers of shows I watch: Grey's, Gilmore, and Veronica Mars, I wikipedia-ed Veronica Mars to figure out what I missed since I've only started watching it this past season. I can't believe I missed out on some great stuff, but that's what DVDs are for. Anyway, the greatness of Veronica Mars is similar to Brick and the other noir-ish movies I've come to like watching with Jon instead of the same old crap. Brick was a good movie--and it has the girl from Heroes and the face-wash commercials, Nora Zehetner--who seems like a likable person in real life. It also had Joe, so I read the wikipedia entry on him, which lead me to his site. The video he took with his camera phone after some paparazzi harassed him is interesting--as are the letters and his responses--but most of all, his blog. I think the funniest thing was that his friend didn't want to point out that it was weird that it looked like he had a Japanese flag as a link to his website (the graphics were broken and crappy looking on some browsers apparently).

I wonder how life would be different if everyone kept their own blogs. Okay, now it's time to sweat, or at least think about it some more.