Get a Job (not you, silly, me)

i realize that it has been over a month since i last updated here, and now that the weather is a lot colder and i'm stuck inside the house, why not update now? school is still trudging along, as usual, same old same old. i find myself going to the library more often to borrow books to read in my spare time, which i seem to have a lot of nowadays.

something different, you ask? well, today i applied for a couple jobs at brea mall. i just feel this is worth mentioning because i've never had a "real" job before (you know, the kind that requires a resume). my first intention for going to the mall today was to go to the supposed "job fair" that the woman at puente hills' See's Candy told me about a week earlier. so i go to the mall, and lo and behold, no job fair. damn you, lying old wench!!! *ahem* anyway, it turns out that this "fair" is just a couple days that See's decided they wanted to take applications, and by the time i got there, they had already hired all the people they needed.

by this time, i figure, screw See's Candy, imma find a job somewhere better. which i did. hahahahaa. Godiva Chocolates. i filled out my application as quickly as humanly possible, stuck in my resume (because i figure that an entire empty page for "previous emplyoyment" looked bad but if i showed off all the stuff i did in school then maybe it'll leverage things out) and introduced myself to the manager, who turns out to be one of the nicest ladies i've ever met (take that, See's!!).

i also applied at Charlotte Russe, which i think is pretty sensible, mainly because i love clothes and i shop there all the time (well, i look around mostly, but you get the point). anywho, both of these places don't start interviewing until november, but i'm still totally looking forward to having a job. extra money for the holidays doesn't hurt either. :)

also, since i like to consider this a "food" blog (teehee) i wanted to talk about this cake. the ginormous cake that Orange Coast College had for their 60th anniversary, which was actually last month. it was 1000 lbs-- i heard someone say 3000, but who knows how they weigh this thing-- and you probably can't grasp the size of it through the crappy cellphone pics, but that was all i had at the time, and i HAD to take a picture of it to show someone.

look at that monster. you should make sure to note the really gigantic bottom layer, which was too big to capture in it's entirety with my cellphone. also, a pic of those random girls to compare for size. haha
a picture of the gigantic slices they were handing out. this was after i took a few bites of course, and then realized i should take a picture of it. you can't really tell the size from this picture, but lemme just tell you-- it was so big that i could only eat half (that's half a slice) and eventually had to get rid of the rest somehow because my stomach was starting to hurt... one of the most shameful moments of my life.

Say Goodbye to Summer...

and a sighing hello to school. again. sigh. i can honestly say this has been one of the laziest summers i've ever had. it didn't even really feel like summer. it just felt like one REALLY long weekend. oh how the days go by...

since it's august, i have to mention the very many birthdays that come with this month- including mine!! yay!! happy 18th birthday, elaine! what's your gift, you ask? college, of course! you get a school you don't know anything about, filled with thousands of students, all of them complete strangers!!! yippeeee!!! you can probably tell by now that i already started class. sigh. it's time again for new classes, new school, new people. i guess i'm just not up to it all. so far my actual classes have been fine. it's the people; everyone already seems to know each other, but i can't even seem to find out where my next class is! or even just the bathrooms for that matter...

i suppose i just need to wait for things to get in their natural order, when everything doesn't seem so new. hopefully that'll be soon :)

now, back to birthdays. in my family, august has 7 birthdays- 5 of my cousins, one aunt, and my birthday.

we celebrated my birthday with korean bbq. mmm... the reason i post this picture is so that you can see the tremendous amount of food there, and also that shirt i recon-ed out of a really old eddie bauer shirt i found at goodwill. it's from an angle that is just far enough so that you can see the jist of the shirt, but can just barely see my horrendous tanlines... because no one wants to see that.

two of my cousins, who were turning 23 and 20, had a party last saturday, and my gift to them were "make your own birthday cake kits" that i made, including a mug, chocolate cake mix, a whisk, a measuring spoon, chocolate fudge icing, and candles. originally i was going to just sew up a bunch of plushies for them, but then i realized how old they were. i wanted to make something that they can actually use rather than just toss aside after saying how cute it was. so what do you give to a couple of people who describe themselves as lazy? 5 minute chocolate cake! i swear, this is one of the LAZIEST ways to make a cake, but it actually came out kinda good. you just gather all the ingredients, mix it in the mug, and bake it by microwaving. the only problem i have with this cake is that you have to eat it almost immediately after you cook it, otherwise the texture changes a lot... and not in a good way :(

sprinkles cupcakes. i've never been to sprinkles, but i intend to taste what all the hype is about. after recently finding a recipe for their strawberry cupcakes, i knew i had to try it, because we all know that strawberries are the best fruit EVAH. and i have to say, they were delicious. drool. obviously i didn't make the ones in this picture, but when i made the cupcakes they didn't seem to last long enough for me to take a picture. that's a good sign, right? i didn't make it with the same strawberry icing, i just used some homemade whipped cream. after a VERY long search for the perfect buttercream icing, i just decided to give up. i soon realized that i never really liked icing... at parties i would always just eat the cake part, pushing the icing to the side. whipped cream always has a subtle sweetness to it, which i like more than the overly sweet buttercream.

mmm. whipped cream... :9

All American Food

this week was a lot more eventful than i thought it would be. thursday the new Chick-fil-a was opening here, so of course i had to check it out. Chick-fil-a has this promotion where the first 100 customers in a new location get a year of free chicken sandwich meals. long long story short, they decided to give it to the first 120 customers instead, and guess what number i was? 124. gay gay gay.

the reason why i woke up so early. mmm.

the crazy asses who tented out all night for free sandwiches. i even saw someone unpack a whole couch. ugh.

the rest of the day was good though. i got to embarrass myself continually, got to rant with laura and reinalyn, and just chill and watch tv with them (Saved By the Bell and Yo Gabba Gabba!). i also got to see chris' house for the first time. i still can't believe he has a house cleaner. we did a lot of spontaneous stuff on a day where i just expected to get breakfast and go home. :)

later that night i left home to spend the weekend with my cousins. on friday stacey and i baked an apple pie. god pies are tedious. but i had fun making it, and at least this time around i had some company for help.

there it is, in all it's gloriousness. i'd say it's pretty good for the first time that either of us has made a pie.

later we ate lunch at (where else?) Chick-fil-a and then stacey took me to Trader Joe's for the first time. so many choices! i ended up buying dried hibiscus flowers, mainly because i was just curious. i mean, it's supposed to be like dried fruit but it really looked like a bag of dried sea creatures. who could resist? anyway, it ended up just tasting like a really big dried cranberry, something i think should be eaten in small proportions. let's just say i only ate one of them.

after one of her friends showed up we started making cranberry oatmeal cookies, but alas, they turned out really weird (hence, no pictures). there wasn't as many cookies as promised in the recipe and they ended up tasting like dried cake and just looking like mounds of stuff. several hours after, i realized that we forgot to add the brown sugar. i was so disappointed in myself!!! augh!

saturday was fun as well. after dropping by my cousin's aunt's birthday party, kelley, aimee, and i ventured to the OC Fair, which was riddled with traffic and bad drivers. when we actually got to the fair we wandered around trying to find some good fair food and this is what we came up with:

sigh. frog legs. what a disappointment. for $13 all we got was 2 sets of frog legs on top of fries and a soda. lame. they don't taste that bad; it tasted like a combination between fish and chicken meat, but i don't think it's worth trying again. blech.

classic kielbasa and sauerkraut. the kraut definitely tasted different from what i've tried before. i just want to know, is it supposed to be soft or crunchy?


the ferris wheel! too bad we didn't ride it this time, but i thought it would be nice just to add a pic of it. haha. isn't it pretty?

the very last ride we rode, Dizzy Dragon. it made my arms and my stomach hurt.

i've decided i probably need to stay in a little more this week, as my sunburn from last week finally started peeling. also, i need to put my internal clock back in place. everything always seems a day off for some reason. :P

Weekend En Espanol

this weekend was pretty interesting. i spent friday night, saturday, and sunday morning camping at lake Hemet with kelley and jesse and his family. and while most of what was said was in spanish, it reminded me a lot of Deutschlager, or german camp (that is, german language camp). the crisp air, the clear lake, and only being able to understand half of what was said. besides that, it was pretty fun, and a hell of a lot better than just staying at home, which was probably what was going to happen. it's really dark there at night, but it helps to see the stars better, and i noticed that the stars actually twinkle there.

i couldn't help but reminisce about Deustschlager while i was there, and then about german. sigh. it turns out that out of the eight of us who took the german 4 AP test, none of us passed (that i know of). where did we go wrong?! i guess there is something wrong going on when we have too much fun. and boy, did we have fun. THIS IS SPARTA!! in the end i suppose i don't care about that score as much as i should. some of the most fun i've ever had in high school were in that german class, and that's the most i could ask for. and we all know it's better to have tried and failed than to not try at all. for now though, i'm just worried about the next time i visit frau rovell.

a week ago or so i made these cranberry oatmeal cookies, just so i can finally get rid of our craisins (the crazy raisin!!). also, we had a lot of oatmeal at home, and i think we both know it's not that appetizing on its own. but in a cookie? yes. deeelicious.


the cookies were nice and soft, with a buttery taste and a tartness from the cranberries. mmm. while craisins are completely good on their own, it helps to have a somewhat healthy snack around the house to keep you away from the potato chips. it also helps me realize that there are other desserts out there besides cakes and pies.

so without further ado, the recipe, which i based off of another recipe and made a few modifications to.

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
1 c. butter, softened
1 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
2 each eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
3 c. oatmeal
2 c. dried cranberries (craisins!)

directions:
preheat oven to 350 degrees f.

in a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. beat in eggs and vanilla.

in another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. add to butter mixture and mix together until completely combined.

fold in oats and dried cranberries to mixture until distributed throughout the dough.

drop dough in rounded tablespoons onto greased cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes. makes 48 cookies. :)

you can add nuts to the cookie dough if you like, just minimize the amount of cranberries if you do. i've also seen recipes online that top the cookies with melted white chocolate, for more of a christmas-y taste.

Pictures Can Be Deceiving... VERY Deceiving

i suppose we all make mistakes once in a while, and this just seemed to be "one of those days." i decided i really wanted to make mini vanilla cupcakes, and i really wanted to make use of those strawberries and raspberries i had sitting in the fridge. for the cupcakes i decided to use this recipe, mainly because it was the simplest one i could find and... sigh... let's just call it a disaster. the cupcakes came out of the oven really dry, with basically the texture and taste of a flour-y sugar cookie. i took one of these cupcakes and hit it against the table, and it actually made a kind of "knocking" noise.

not that that wasn't enough of a message telling me to just stop, i thought that maybe i could make up for it with some good icing and a nice presentation. i mean, the cupcakes didn't taste too bad. i desperately tried to save these little babies from the humiliation they would have suffered if i had just left them alone for my family to find when they got home. so, being the "innovative" cook that i told myself i was, i tried to make a strawberry buttercream icing for the top by adding finely chopped strawberry bits to the icing instead of the milk. no. NO NO NO. big mistake. i forgot how much water berries retain, which left my icing very juicy, to the point where it had a syrupy consistency.

but i didn't stop there. oh no. now i had to save both the cupcakes and the icing, because it is forbidden to waste any kind of food in this house, and also because that "icing" took up all the confectioner's sugar i had left, and i refused to throw it out. i decided i would just use the icing as a kind of creme filling to the cupcake. i mean, it's taste was acceptable to pass as some sort of strawberry creme, kind of like those strawberry creme frappuccinos they have at Starbuck's. so i filled each cupcake and topped it with a strawberry slice and a raspberry.

a closer look at the lies these pictures tell.

a shot of the "creme filling."


so what did we learn? well, for one thing, pictures can make almost anything look delicious. i mean, damn. that cupcake there looks really good. another thing (re)learned is that things that you love can still let you down. i love love love strawberries, and i really thought i could save these things with them. it didn't even stand a chance. another lesson: taking the easy way out usually leads to trouble, or in this case, a really dry cupcake. also, substitutions in recipes should only be used if they have been proven to work.

now the only thing i have to worry about is how to get rid of those things without actually having to eat them.

Easy Like Sunday Morning...

another lazy weekend gone, another lazy week ahead of me. saturday was filled with doctor's appointments, injections, blood tests, and eventually watching Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D, which i really do not recommend. now, i know i haven't seen any of the previous Journey movies, or have even read the book, but geez. not good at all. also, 3D things tend to give me headaches.

yesterday i went out with laura and reinalyn to eat lunch at Chipotle, and then later wandered around Kohl's, played dress up, and took pictures of it, just like the good 'ol times when we would have minimum days at school and just take the 30 minute walk over there (this was before any of us had cars). we also wandered around Pier 1 Imports for a change, sniffing candles and incense, relaxing in the couches before anyone kicked us off, and wondering what parrot soap is made of. all in all, a good day; i finally got out of the house on my own for something besides grocery shopping.

i also got around to making a shepherd's pie for dinner. i don't know what's up with this picture... looks kinda yellowish. anyway, it was nice to finally make one of these on my own instead of just buying the pre-made frozen ones. also, it tasted really good.

i don't really remember which website the recipe was from, but most of the recipes for shepherd's pie are basically the same; ground meat, cooked on the stove with carrots, peas, onions, garlic, corn, and whatever else vegetable you want, then put in a casserole dish with mashed potatoes on top, then baked in the oven to make the top crispy. gotta love the home cooking. :)

sorry, no dessert today. today i woke up unusually late for some reason, and just decided it would be another day watching tv, using the treadmill, watching more tv, and maybe reading a magazine. hopefully tomorrow i can come up with something to make, which might be a little hard since we don't have milk. also, i'm finding it a little more difficult to just make desserts whenever just because i'm bored, and my sister is complaining of me making the family a little hefty...

"Rustic" Nectarine Galette

another day stuck at home, another dessert. what? i have to do something to occupy my time, dammit! it wasn't just me at home today, it was my sister and my dad too, so i didn't have a chance to make a huge mess and just clean it up before everyone got home like i usually do. anyway, here it is; a "rustic nectarine galette." i got the recipe from a book i bought a long time ago on sale for $2. pretty good, right? i wasn't quite sure what a galette was before i made this, but if i had to guess, i'd just say it was basically a pie without the pie tin.


hot damn. this thing was delicious. i've never made a pie or galette before, so i'd say this was a success. the crust was nice and flaky, and, even though i usually don't eat nectarines, i definitely would buy another batch of them to make another one of these. you probably can't tell from the pictures, but underneath the layer of nectarines there is a layer of almonds, which added a nice crunch. i also over-estimated the number of nectarines i needed for this, so i decided to turn the leftover nectarines into a marmalade.


it turned into a nice rosy-pink color after i put it on the stove for a few minutes, most-likely because it had a few pieces of the nectarine skin in there-- you can't even really see them now. i was planning on putting it in a nice glass jar, just so it would look a little more presentable, but apparently we don't have any containers in this house that aren't plastic... sigh. at least it tasted good, right?

Summer Loving...

welcome to my new blog! because this summer has been pretty much just a whole heap of laziness, i've decided to start blogging again. yay!! new blog, new elaine. now that i'm basically stuck in the house (apparently 17 is too young to get a job in any of the places i want to work in), i'll have more time on my hands to make things. i'm definitely going to start posting more of the stuff that i make, since i missed out on posting about some of my biggest creations with my last blog, including things from sewing my first piece of clothing to making my prom dress. i will also be sure to include pictures, because who are we kidding--the pictures will probably be the most appealing part of the entire entry. so without further ado:





yesterday i made green tea pound cake using this recipe, with a few changes. since i didn't have any matcha powder (or any money to buy it for that matter), i decided i would just grind up some tea leaves myself, which was SUPER tedious. a lot of it wasn't really pure powder, but the tea leaf remnants left nice little flecks of dark green in the cake, which i think added to the look. i also didn't get the bright shade of green that the matcha would've brought, but i like the light yellow-green look of this. it makes it look more natural. instead of using the loaf pan used in the video, i just used a regular square pan and cut out the shapes after the cake cooled, then topped it with confectioner's sugar. overall, it tasted pretty good... the tea taste was subtle and it wasn't overly sweet. and i had to add strawberries, of course, cuz they're my favorite :)

hopefully the pictures look nice; i don't have my own camera right now, so i'll be relying a lot on my dad's, because anything taken with a high quality camera looks nice!

and, while i know it's a few weeks late, i wanna mention the biggest cake i have ever made. you can see the picture here. i did NOT NOT NOT take these pictures (obviously), so i have a link for you instead. my cousin asked me to make this cake for her debut, which is basically just a huge 18th birthday party. like wedding-big. it was a carrot cake, as requested by the birthday girl, with cream cheese icing for the filling and buttercream icing on top. mmm. :P