one to be trifled with

today my dad took us to see the house they were considering getting in pomona, and geebuz that place was GHE-TTO. and not even ghettofabulous. just straight-up pitbulls in every yard, with an old tire place right behind it. people also seemed to get the impression that they could dump their stuff there, so in the back of the house there were piles of junk, including some old lumber and a baby carriage! really? the place wasn't even done being built. how can we expect to move there soon if they're not even done building it?! sighhhh.... here's hoping we move somewhere that i actually feel safe.

on a slightly less frustrating note, my baking midterm is this wednesday, and we'll have to make buttercream icing, dark chocolate mousse, lemon bouches, and write "happy birthday" in chocolate (and hopefully that's it). so in preparation for that, i practiced writing with chocolate today (even though for some reason it seemed that the more i practiced the worse it got) and then later used that chocolate to make the mousse.

since i had all this chocolate mousse, plus a vanilla cake from class that i kept in the freezer, plus a bunch of berries that i had to use for fear of them getting bad before i could, i made a faux-berry trifle (did you like my little pun in the title of this post? haha).

raspberries on top, a.k.a. the fruit that never fails to make my desserts look elegant (even though they really aren't haha)
really need to work on my layers, especially since i've never made a trifle before (who knew it would be so hard?). layers, from bottom to top: chocolate mousse, vanilla cake, mousse, strawberries, cake, mousse, raspberries.
note to self: don't put mousse in the fridge if you plan on working with it later! it stiffened up in the fridge because of the chocolate and was too hard to spread a smooth layer of it, hence the oddness of the layering here. also, apparently i forgot to soak the cake in syrup/coffee/whatever, so that part was a little dry. at this point, i don't care! it tasted bomb, and i wish i could eat more of it without feeling ashamed of myself.

on another note, this whole thing with me trying to lose weight is not really working out :( since we basically had to clear everything out of our house, that also meant that we had to take out all the exercise equipment, AND the weighing scale. and even with that gone, i can LITERALLY FEEL MYSELF GAINING WEIGHT. definitely not a good sign. dammit. why is food so tempting? why am i so weak?!! i need to work about a million times harder now at the rate i'm going.