The Cupcake Challenge

After seeing so many nice foodie blogs, I decided to go ahead and try out my first recipe:
adapting the Rose Cake Tutorial to cupcakes.

Knowing myself as I do, I decided to make the actual baking part uber simple... otherwise I get fed up with the project before the actual work begins. I went with a Betty Crocker cake mix.

To make it even more fun, I found these really cute muffin liners at Target and prepared them for batter.

And here is my lovely stand mixer doing most of the work for me.

Baking the cups...

And after figuring out which tip was the appropriate one for making the roses, here is what I ended up with!

& I was able to use the new cake stand I got off of craigslist! If you are looking for a way to make cupcakes pretty without having to be overly creative, this is perfect.

So this is why I'm fat?

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this... but it was strange enough that I wanted to share.
http://thisiswhyyourefat.tumblr.com
To be honest, I don't really find this spaghetti & meatballs cake to be all that appetizing.

Chocolate cake covered in spaghetti icing, with Ferrero Roche meatballs smothered with raspberry sauce.

Just Hungry

One of my favorite foodie blogs is Just Hungry. This is the perfect blog to visit if you have thought about trying to cook Japanese food but don't know where to start. The recipes are all very authentic and cover a huge variety of food types (from the Japanese food you're probably familiar with to things that you didn't even know existed). There are even guides to help you cook rice properly, make your own tofu, or understand the plethora of different types of rice.

Sukiyaki - One of my favorites!

A closely-related side project is Just Bento. I for one get board of packing a sandwich every day for lunch - and this is a great alternative to that. There are some great [healthy] ideas on the site, and not just for what you would assume to be specifically Japanese foods.

Spring vegetable bento with jumping fish - so cute!

And just in case you prefer actual cookbooks to online blogs, there is a Just Bento cookbook!

Keepin' It Legal

After starting this blog, I realized that the posts are much prettier and more interesting when they have associated images or photos. Although I'm sure everyone who reads this blog finds all of my thoughts incredibly interesting... something pretty to look at doesn't hurt, either. :)

Sooner or later, I started to realize that oopsies, I was just getting the images for my posts from searching Google images. Which could mean copyright infringement. After looking around the internet for a bit, I realized that finding free, legal images can actually be a really annoying task. Some websites advertise free use of their images, but only after you pay for a subscription to their site. Excuse me? That does not qualify as "free" to me. So here are three legitimate ones that I have found so far that I really like:

-Free Artistic Photos - the photos are searchable by different categories and are all free for non-commercial use.

-Every Stock Photo - once you find a photo you like, clicking on the "license" tab will give you information on how you can use it. Many of the photos do not even require you to attribute the work to the author.

-Wikimedia Commons - Access to multiple types of media files, with information on the licensing agreement associated with each photo.

Tag Cloud

So the title of this post may seem a bit boring... who cares to talk about tag clouds anyway?

Well, you should notice my tag cloud. It is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. I can't exactly take all the credit though, as I noticed it on the Morrissons' blog first, and I immediately knew I wanted it on my blog when I started one as well. The Morrissons are actually distant relatives of mine (don't ask me to tell you the connection!); Lawrence and Michelle just moved from outside of London to northern Virginia with their three sons. So as their closest relatives in the area, we have had some fun adventures with them since they arrived, which you can read about on their blog. 

So back to the tag cloud... well, I saw it on their blog, but unfortunately the HTML was not compatible with blogger blogs. Thankfully, I found this conversion so that I could add it! I tweaked the HTML a bit to make it look the way I liked, and voila! A tag cloud that actually looks like a cloud!

And now my blog also has a pretty new background to celebrate springtime! I am certainly ready for warm weather!

Aeri's Kitchen

I have been really impressed with some of the great blogs out there that are dedicated to a specific type of cooking. One of my favorite blogs is Aeri's Kitchen - Aeri does a great job of making Korean cooking accessible for people who have never tried preparing it before. I really like that there are often substitutes for ingredients - like honey instead of Asian pear juice - because otherwise many of the recipes would probably not be feasible for me.

One of my favorites is BiBimBap - a very traditional Korean dish with rice, meat, and vegetables (so it's healthy!). I usually substitute chicken instead of beef, and the marinade always turns out really well. I also just substitute whatever vegetables I happen to have in the fridge for the more exotic ones, and it's great!

My other favorite Korean dish (especially at restaurants) is bulgogi. I really think that the best cooking blogs are the ones that provide step-by-step instructions - and Aeri provides pictures with written instructions as well as video instructions. It doesn't get more comprehensive than that! I don't cook beef dishes too often, but bulgogi is one that I will make an exception for. It's pretty quick to prepare the marinating meat one night and have it ready to cook up quickly the next. Why pay for a cookbook when this is so much better?!

The Blog Phenomenon

So I've been thinking about starting back up a blog for a while now. Every few years, I go back to my blog from high school -- and it really makes me glad to have a glimpse back into my life at that time. I tend to quite easily forget details of events, and I've laughed really hard at some of those crazy high school antics that I had somehow forgotten.

Original Blurty Blog  (2003)

Livejournal (Early 2004)
Livejournal (Late 2004) 

In all honesty, the other main point of this blog is to better document things than I could be doing on facebook or twitter. I want to be able to go back and look at my thoughts or websites I like without having to dig through my previous facebook posts. I also want the freedom to fully express my thoughts (as must as possible for something posted on the internet), which you surely can't do with the character limits on twitter feeds. Now that I'm also decently active on Yelp.com, those posts will make it on here as well. You can basically just expect a hodgepodge of things... expect the unexpected!