Today I started cleaning out my bookshelfs – getting rid of old magazines I will probably never read again, old books, various CD’s I no longer need and the like. I had no more room for new DVD’s and I cleaned off two shelves in my bookcase. I’m sure there’s more I can purge when I get around to it, but I’m done with it for now. It looks better already and now I don’t have to leave my DVD’s laying around in piles on my desk.

Yesterday I went with my mom to her friend’s house. They were having some sort of remembrance event for her daughter that died a year ago. I used to play with her kids when we were little. I don’t really remember her very well, but she was just a year older than me. I remember last year when my mom told me about it it really made me think for a while about things since we were close in age and I used to know her.

Yesterday I was in an Asian market with my boyfriend, who hardly ever goes into Asian markets and doesn’t really know too much about them or Asian culture. We were looking for some various sauces for a dish he wanted me to make and he said, “Oh, I guess they don’t have soy sauce here.” I said to him, “Oh, no, it’s probably in a separate aisle and has it’s own dedicated section of soy sauces.” Sure enough on the next aisle over was a very large soy sauce section. He looked at it baffled and said, “Damn, you weren’t kidding.”

We decided to not get the stuff to make the dish since it was already late and we were getting tired, so we went out to eat instead. But as we were putting the items we got back onto their shelves and such, we passed by a worker stocking eggs. There was a sign that said “Balut – 99 cents each.” My boyfriend asked the worker, “Are these 99 cents for the whole crate?” (it was a maybe a crate of 2 dozen eggs). The worker said, “No, no, each.”

My boyfriend looked at me puzzled and said, “Why are those eggs 99 cents each?”

I replied with a disgusted look on my face, “Because they’re balut. I bet you have no idea what that is.”

“No, but I do know I wouldn’t pay 99 cents for one egg.”

“I wouldn’t pay anything to eat balut! It’s basically an egg, with a duck fetus in it.”

He look at me with a puzzled expression on his face and said, “Your people have weird customs.”

I laughed.

Last week I wanted to make a cake that would last all week – something to serve to a few guests as they came over to visit and some of it to bring into work as a small treat. I had made some chocolate cupcakes the week earlier for a co-worker’s birthday and decided I would try and make the recipe into a larger cake with a few tweaks.

I was trying to make a hazelnut-chocolate flavored cake, but the hazelnut flavor fell a little short of my expectations. I tried using some hazelnut oil I bought at Bristol Farms to replace some of the butter but it didn’t give it enough oomph. I was trying to find a hazelnut extract, but next time I attempt it I may go for just trying to use some hazelnut liquor instead.

What was great about this cake were the hazelnuts. I toasted them in the oven and sprinkled them in between the layers and all over the outside of the cake. And I would try making the frosting with the hazelnut liquor, too. I made a little mess with the frosting and ended up just using a store bought frosting and mixing some of the hazelnut oil in – which didn’t really work. But the cake still turned out to be tasty – but very rich. The first piece I had was too large of a piece. But the hazelnuts made it awesome.

So, more hazelnut attempts for the future – as if you haven’t guessed, I really like hazelnut. I’ve also been toying with the idea of a hazelnut cheesecake… hmm.

Besides all of the dessert making I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been seeing my share of films lately which is kind of strange since I felt like I had a big long movie void in my life. So far this summer I’ve seen Indiana Jones, Iron Man, And Then She Found Me (a little indie flick), Get Smart, Hancock, Wall-E, The Dark Knight and Space Chimps. And of course now X-Files 2 is coming out… and some other things I want to see, like the Clone Wars. It’s been a summer of movies!

The 4th of July has never really been much of a holiday for me. Fireworks, eating, parades and what not. Not much to it if you ask me. I instead spent the holiday in the movie theater, watching “Hancock”, which I enjoyed. Not as much as I enjoyed “Wall-E”, but I still liked it. I also ventured out to the park near my house with Maya in tow to watch fireworks. I let her run around in the grass, which she enjoyed far more than the fireworks.

Today I got the desire to make a dessert. I had been wanting to make something coconut-y for awhile now and I decided today was the day to make a coconut pie.

I can’t pie crust for the life of me. I’ve tried, it seems to never turn out right. I even managed to mess this premade pie shell up a little bit – I baked it off with no pie weights (since I don’t have any) or any beans in it (I just plain old forgot) and the bottom of the crust puffed up while baking, showing me exactly why you need pie weights. The outer edge shrunk down on the sides and pulled the whole edge down. Oh well. Lesson learned.

I used this Old Fashioned Coconut Cream Pie recipe I spotted on Allrecipes.com, with a few adjustments after reading the reviews. I used half coconut milk and cornstarch instead of flour. I used 3/4 cup of toasted coconut and 1/4 cup untoasted just to play around with the textures a bit. I think it turned out quite well. If I wasn’t feeling lazy, I could have made my own whipped cream as well. But Cool Whip saves the day again. I would maybe go a little easier on the toasted coconut on top next time, but I wanted to use the rest of the coconut I had toasted and went a little crazy.

I was at Chili’s for lunch today. I ordered these cute little mini burgers that had very long toothpicks in them (I don’t know for what reason, the burgers seemed to stick quite well to the buns on their own due to the copious amounts of cheese). I had one mini burger left over and asked for a box. When the waitress came by to give me the box, she said, “You know, you can either remove the toothpick or lay it on its side to fit into the box, okay? Just a head’s up.”

I mumbled a thank you and then quietly laughed to myself, thinking that there was a time that she must have witnessed someone else baffled as to how on earth they would get the mini burger into the container with the very long toothpick still in it. I opted to just remove it.

We just had a lovely Sweeney Todd themed birthday party for Heather. I was on cake duty, of course, and this time around I opted to get the lumpia catered as I did not have the time or energy to make them from scratch. But the lumpia was delicious and gone well before the party was over. If you want to eat lumpia at our parties, you must show up on time, otherwise no lumpia for you.

So here’s the crafty part – the cake I made. It’s supposed to be “Mrs Lovett’s Pie Shop”. The red circles (which is supposed to be a tiled floor – I could have done that part better I think) are colored chocolate pieces. The “counter” bottom is made from chocolate zingers. The counter top is a chocolate bar and the pies are just mini pecan pies. The cake itself is Red Velvet cake with a cooked frosting. I wasn’t sure how the cake would turn out since I had never made the recipe before, but it turned out really well. Also, the frosting did not taste good alone so again I was worried the cake would not taste good. But putting the two together makes for a great cake. It was slightly moist inside, a little chocolately and the frosting was not overpowering and not too sweet. Just right, I thought.