Dates, before you knew them

In case you were wondering, fresh dates left on the counter don't turn into the tasty dried dates you know and love. . . they turn into moldy fresh dates.

Stay tuned for. . .

Photos from ZURICH!!! We were all totally smitten with this giant challah. I'm not even sure if it's a good bakery. . .

When the cat does not approve of my reading selection

The kitty doesn't approve of the Twilight series. She thinks I'm wasting my time, and that I'd be better off with some Kierkegaard or John Maynard Keynes.



She's serious. . . (Fortunately I had another book on the table next to me - otherwise my choices would have been to nap or to disturb the cat sleeping on my chest.)

Lunchtime Walk: Cambridgeport

I really like Cambridgeport because it's so architecturally and socioeconomically diverse. Because it's around the corner from where I work, it's the destination of many of my lunchtime walks. Last Thursday, I finally brought my camera.

I like this old fashioned firebox:



I walked by this perplexing assemblage and wondered whether it has anything to do with the handmade war memorial a couple feet away:



WHAT IS THIS??? It's embedded in the sidewalk, about the same size as the metal water caps. I take a lot of walks and I've never seen another like this. I've seen little embedded clovers diamonds advertising sidewalk makers, but nothing as mysterious as this scuba diver plaque. Maybe it's related to the "no dumping" square plaques with the fish? Though, I've walked over this particular thing at least 100 times and didn't notice it until last week. Maybe I'll ask at City Hall.



I like the moss growing on the bottom of these flower boxes:



Condemned house, unconventional color:


Car horsies:

:

I bet their pizza deliveries never get lost - this stained glass house number is taller than I am:



Rusty metal table out for the next day's trash pickup:


I'm really not sure what this place is. I don't think I've ever seen it open:



But there's interesting stuff in the windows:

The end! I need to remember to bring my camera more often. I'm always seeing things that I find peculiar.

Chemistry Lesson (Muffin Failure!)

After numerous attempts, I've finally created the perfect breakfast muffin. They can be made with numerous combinations of fruit and nuts, and they contain a good balance of monounsaturated fats (olive oil & nuts), protein (yogurt & eggs or eggbeaters) and fiber (wheat or oat bran and whole wheat flour. Despite all of this healthy stuff, they have a lovely cakey crumb and aren't at all dry or heavy. Usually.

Tonight I mixed up my current favorite, cranberry orange. They taste just like the box mix of cranberry quick bread that we made when I was little. (Was that the first marketed use of dried cranberries?) I didn't realize that I forgot the olive oil until the batter was already in my reusable silicon muffin cups. I scraped it out back into the bowl and added the olive oil. As I suspected, it negatively affected the texture of my finished muffins. Instead of being fluffy, they're leaden and kind of oddly smooth. To make things even worse, the orange I collected the zest from was a little too squishy for zesting and doesn't taste all that great. I just realized too, that I used baking powder instead of baking soda. They didn't rise very much, but I'm assuming that's mostly because they were overworked with the late addition of the oil. Over all they taste ok, they're just not the incredible success that was the previous batch.

These are the good ones. I can't wait for cranberry season!!

China cabinet before and after

I really love branch coral and branch coral decorated household items. I feel guilty buying the real stuff, so environmentally correct fake-o branch coral stuff is great. I saw these branch coral drawer pulls on a bookcase on a design blog this spring, and then I was delighted and surprised to see them in Anthropologie the next week. I couldn't resist buying a set for my china cabinet, which was sadly in need of a makeover.

Sad, boring china cabinet with missing & shattered old glass drawer pulls (they're in the top drawer so that I can replace them if move, ha ha):



Here's the after:



And here's a close-up, because it's difficult to see much from the photo above:

I really don't love these photos - they're not very visually informative and they don't do my makeover justice. However, the drawer pulls I love. They're coated metal, so they're very sturdy and I don't feel like they're going to break when I yank open my drawers which probably need a good sanding or at least a soap rubdown.

I'm back!!!

I did something really crazy this winter . . . I made a 14 layer cake. Or at least I planned to make a 14 layer cake, but as things worked out it was only an 11 layer cake. That's still a heck of a lot of cake, even if they were only about as thick as hefty pancakes. I don't think anyone missed the "missing" 3 layers. Because I'm not totally insane and because I wasn't about to buy 9 more cake pans, I used foil pans. Here are the pans with the batter:



Here are the layers glued together with an annoyingly drippy chocolate glaze:



Here's the cake before it's trip to the party:



And here it is cut open!

Snow Day YES!!!

No school for me!! So I have time to upload some of the hundreds of photos I've taken over the last couple months. I'll go chronologically.



"HOME" Cambridge. (Not MY home, there's a (tiny in the photo) neon "HOME" sign in the bottom right hand corner.)


"BEAUTY" Somerville





Shelburne Falls

Halloween eyeball cupcakes

Haloween Vampire fang bite cupcakes

Housewarming lemon cookies

A friend's excitingly colorful pantry

Fame!!!!!!. . . !!!!!!!!!. . . !!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite tv shows when I was young, along with Little House on the Prairie and Mork & Mindy, was Fame. Fame documents a group of talented teenagers at the New York School of the Arts. The actors seemed very grown-up and glamorous when I was 10, and I was totally hooked, though undoubtedly much of it went totally over my head. Plus the music is catchy. A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie (1980) that the series was based on, and was impressed, though I did need to fast forward through some of the musical numbers. So now, through the beauty of NetFlix, I'm watching the series again. It holds up as high quality drama, and the costumes are fabulous but it's not quite as exciting as I remember.