Flourless chocolate cake

I've been really craving something decadent lately so on Sunday I made flourless chocolate cake. It was a bit more work than the stuff I normally bake, but in the end it came out pretty well! A bit too much cocoa, but aside from that I was pretty pleased.


The only problem is that after having a slice, my chocolate craving was completely satisfied haha. What to do with the rest?? 1.5 hours prep + 1.5 hours baking = 2 minutes of pure bliss....

Lemons galore!

Now that it's getting warm and happy in SF, I've really been craving happy summer food. Happy summer food like sorbet! So I went to my neighborhood market to see if anything jumped out at me and ta-da! Ginormous lemons at 3 for a dollar :)

These lemons were magical. Esther, remember the last time we made lemon sorbet? This was so much easier! Just one lemon had about 1/4 cup of juice!

And don't even get me started on how much zest you can get from just one of those lemons! Craziness!

The 'fruits' of my labor ;)

Just for size comparison, here are halves of lemons from my friend's tree next to a half of the crazy big ones from the market...

Even the juice came out different! The little lemons had darker, ever-so-slightly-more-orange flavored juice. The big lemons were light and tart, and produced about 1.5 cups of juice, so I used them for the sorbet.

There was even enough left over to try out Tracy's lemon butter cookies!

Next time the lemon sorbet needs a raspberry reduction sauce (and maybe a tiny bit less zest). Still, I loved both recipes...

And so did Ryan :)

If you want to try it out, you can see the recipe here! The only change that I made was to swap the carbonated mineral water for grapefruit/tangerine sparkling water... well, that and I added a healthy splash of rum. You know, to keep things from getting too icy. Worked like a charm :)

10 spoonfuls of happy

QUESTION: What makes me happy?
ANSWER:
                           

1) Biting the heads off twelve different flavors of Gummy Bears (from Wegmans)

2) Eating Chickfillet at Fudruckers

3) Rooftop Trees

4)  GIANT Strawberries from Costco

5) Impromptu Advertising . . . mmm, refreshing!

6) Paddledragons! (They're at the inner harbor and yes, we have to try them!)

7) A store just for me!

8a) Tulip season in my parent's front yard

8b) Flowers that look like they've been attacked by a scissor monster.

9) Random crazy-cars on the highway.

10) And of course. . . reconnecting with old friends. 

Please share some things that make you smile :) 

Coffee Shop Art

Hey all, e-Dawg and i here with another fascinating story of love and betrayal! But really just crafting. So we've been wanting to make 'bottle flowers' for a while and E-Dawg has been saving up bottles for some time.   

Look how gleeful she looks!

First we cut up the bottles. 

Then we got bored with that. So we raced! READY... SET . . .GO!

We took all the pieces out to be spray painted. As you can see they all turned out differently (because we're super creative.) We only had white and gold spray paint so we went with white and gold. The best choices are no choices at all!

Some close ups: 

We loved spray painting! We totally get the appeal of tagging walls. But we kept it legal .... this time! ;0)

We did a bit of posing with the flower. Here's e-dawg trying to be 'whimsical'. 

For some reason every time I yelled "Be more whimsical!" she ruined the picture with a laughing smile. Weird, huh?

I just look scared.

Then we decided to make some Coffee house art... because what else are you going to do with flowers made of bottles? With a little paper, wire, hot glue, and netting, the 'masterpieces' were done!

Now we just need to figure out what we're going to do with these. -_-

Bus Stops, Galore!

While searching for an answer to our bus stop decorations mystery (part 1 and part 2), Google led me to a site with some creative bus stop structures!

Creative bus stops from around the world!



My favorites are the one painted to look like the living room from The Simpsons and one that is full of Ikea furniture.

Bus Stop Jungle part 3: Answers

Well, after weeks of speculation, we finally have an explanation for the flowers. I'm a little disappointed that my happiness was caused by something as evilly corporate as a massive deodorant campaign, but at least they are being evil in a pretty and friendly way! See the completed ad display below...

I still think Esther and Iris might be on to something with their alien conspiracy theories though.

Whatever you do, DON'T INHALE THE CREEPY SPRAY-ON DEODORANT!!!!!

Bus Stop Jungle part 2: Baltimore

THERE IS A SERIAL BUS STOP FLORIST ON THE LOOSE!

While driving to Anica's after looking for apartments today, I saw a Baltimore bus stop decked in flowers similar to the one Elaine saw in Cali. (as reported here) This was the best pic I could get, since the light turned green after I took it. Are the bus stop decorations connected? Was one inspired by the other? Or is this some kind of alien communication that we just can't understand? 

There is some evidence that these were not independent acts of whimsy. Check out these close ups of the two bus stops from opposite sides of the country. They look remarkably similar and both have what look like oranges (?) among their blooms. 

Sadly, we may never know who put these up. We can only be glad that they did for whatever happy reason. Be sure to keep your eyes and cameras open and let us know if there is another sighting!