Too many cakes
How did our weekend of cake tasting go? It was fun, and mostly quite tasty. That was all expected. But I didn’t expect to be so confused.
Here are the results. If you want the names of any of the bakeries, let me know and I can tell you.
One egg cake
One egg cake from Mark’s father – He makes this every year for Mark’s birthday. It’s quite sweet. Both Mark’s father and the cake, especially the frosting. But that’s not for the wedding. That was just bonus cake.
Wedding cake baker #1
Wedding cake baker #1 – We liked the design options and we like the cost. The design consultant was really nice and we talked about a custom-ish design that combined various designs that they already do. And since we sort of designed it ourselves, we’re a bit attached to it. But the cakes were either too moist (chocolate) or too dry (swirl or white). The fillings were good, but not great. So this would be a good option, but not perfect.
Wedding cake baker #2
Wedding cake baker #2 - These cakes were considerably tastier. The flavors are also more interesting and the slices look much prettier (if you ignore the saran wrap – we picked up the slices from the baker and ate them at my sis’s apartment). This baker would be more expensive, and we’d have to use one of the basic designs unless we want to pay even more money for a custom design.
Cupcake place #1
Cupcake place #1 – Not very good. Not worth talking about
Cupcake place #2
Cupcake place #2 – Better. But not what we’re looking for. All the cupcake places would be cheaper, but probably more effort for us.
It would have been nice to try other non-wedding cake cake places, but there’s only so much cake you can eat in one weekend.
We’re probably leaning toward tastier but more expensive. I hope that I don’t see any leftover cake next July!
Speaking of leftovers, Thanksgiving leftovers have been turned into a curry turkey pot pie. It’s baking in the oven right now. I used turkey, gravy, and leftover cranberries from a pear-cranberry-almond tart. And I also used some of the extra onion soup. The curry part is inspired by our visit to a cooking class that my sister teaches. It’s a class for HS students at a charter school. We stopped by and enjoyed some curry chicken and roti and some creamy pasta. It’s a neat idea for a class. Each student has to do a little research on a country. Then they bring in a recipe from that country, often where their families are from, and they cook it together in class.
The curry chicken is stuffed inside the roti before it's all pan fried in butter!
It was all really tasty!
Before all our leftovers turned into a curry turkey pot pie, this is what it looked like:
Turkey!
Dinner is served
Designing the pear tart
The result of their hard work
The curry turkey pot pie is done! Good timing!
Post-makeover
Tin Tins around the world
Mark picked up some Tin Tin books in Brussels: two versions of the Crab with the Golden Claws. One’s in English and the other is in Chinese. It turns out that they have a ton of translations for Tin Tin, many of them are in languages that I’ve never heard of.
They also show the availability of all the Tin Tin books on the backs. There are 24 Tin Tin books in English, but only 21 in Chinese.
Tin Tins in Chinese
Tin Tins in English
That might be a little hard to see, so here are the ones that are translated to English but not Chinese (simplified, what they use in the People’s Republic):
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Why is Alph-Art, whatever that is, banned? And what happens in “Tin Tin in the Land of the Soviets” that has to be banned?
Why do the French museums want me to be a student?
I’m not a student and I left my old student IDs at home, so I was fully prepared to pay the regular adult admission price at all the museums in Paris. But at two museums, a significant fraction of the total # of museums that I went to, even though they asked me if I was a student and I said no, they still gave me the student price. Why is that?
Some of the non-standard Parisian museums I recommend are the Musee Pasteur and La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (architecture museum). The setup could use a lot of improvement at the Musee Pasteur, but I wound up learning a ton about Pasteur anyway. Man, he did a lot! Do you think that if I were doing science 100 years ago, I could have made more discoveries than doing science now?
Musee Pasteur
I’m not so into the old architecture (but if you are, they have lots of casts and replicas of old buildings and it’s pretty neat), but the modern architecture sections were done really well.
Model at the architecture musuem
The Musée du Parfum was okay and worth a stop (it’s free) if you’re around the Opera area. I was expecting a museum full of stuff to smell, but it was mostly a bunch of objects related to perfume, mostly bottles, and a store where they try to sell perfume.
Empty bottles of scents that would have been fun to smell
Parisian Carb Count…
… so far
Baguettes: 2
Croissants: 3
Pain au chocolat: 2
Macarons: 7
Assorted other pastries: too many to count
This baguette is from Boulangerie Julien. It’s the pain de tradition. So amazing! The crust is perfectly crispy and the inside is flavorful and chewy. The worse “crispy” and “chewy” don’t really capture how amazing the textures are. When you break into it, it sounds and feels like heaven. And that’s even before you bite into it.
More on the macarons later. I’m off to take advantage of the beautiful spring day and explore and eat more.
It’s April, time to go to Paris
Mark’s on a project based in Paris now and I get to go visit him! I leave next week. Maybe I’ll have some stories about April in Paris soon!
Here’s a little preview. They’re some treats that Mark brought back a few weeks ago:
Macarons from Laduree in Paris
Iowa, check! 47 more states! We’ve already picked a wedding venue, in Massachusetts, but it’s nice to know that now there are 3 states where everyone can get married!
More news/interviews with the Dalai Lama
Nicholas Kristof from the NYTimes wrote an op-ed column about his interview with the Dalai Lama – An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama. In it, he reports the Dalai Lama’s proposal for China to continue to have political control over Tibet, but the systematic measures that China is currently taking to squash the culture of Tibet would have to be stopped. And instead, safeguards would be put in place for the Tibetan people to “preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet.”
“And Tibet can be free only if it is first preserved.”
Just in time for 8.8.08
I learned something today. There was a documentary on PBS tonight that was an extended interview of the Dalai Lama. Wow, what a wise and peaceful and happy man. Somehow, he is able to say these amazingly profound things, but in an amusing, pleasant way. So it was a REALLY interesting interview. I think I need to get a copy of The Art of Happiness and read it.
The Art of Happiness, Dalai Lama
So, what did I learn? It’s quite embarrassing that I didn’t know this. So I’ll air out my shame to save others from the shame of not knowing this. Or if you do know, this can be a reminder, just in time for the Olympics! Back in 1995, the Dalai Lama selected a child as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, who is second in rank to the Dalai Lama. Soon after that, this child disappeared, and it looks like he was kidnapped. The Tibetan government thinks that the Panchen Lama is being held as a political prisoner in China. The Chinese government apparently has claimed that the Panchen Lama is living a normal life somewhere in China and this is to protect him. But they then named their own Panchen Lama! They’re using their appointed Panchen Lama for all these photo ops and publicity stunts. The Chinese government story, as they tell it themselves, seems way more fishy and much less believable. Unbelievable!
Panchen Lama before his disappearance
The people in China probably won’t be able to read what I’m writing directly, because of all the censorship. But I still hope that if more people who have access to the information actually see it, there will be more of a chance that the information will get to people behind the censorship wall.
If the Chinese government had nothing to hide and is doing nothing wrong, why would it need to have all this censorship?
I know some people who would say “because the media outside of China are big liars,” and this is what the Chinese government would say. But this is what I say. Let all the information come out – all the evidence and all the interpretations. Let people see the evidence directly, then they can evaluate the interpretations. The lies won’t hold up. (I know I’m vastly simplifying the issue, but that’s my overall thinking.)
Somewhat related story: I know someone in the U.S. who demonstrated in support of China and to protest the China protesters. This person was filmed on camera calling the Western media liars. This footage was shown in the local news and was available as a video online. This person’s parents were interested to see this footage, but they couldn’t because they were in China and the video was censored.
The Dalai Lama documentary was followed up by a documentary about RFK.
Robert F. Kennedy
(You might be thinking, she’s supposed to be writing her thesis, why is she watching all these documentaries? I’m running a bunch of scripts – taking care of stuff that needs to be done, but that doesn’t require much brain power. So the documentaries are keeping me from being too bored. And they’re contributing to my education. I really want to make sure I learn as much as I can and really earn the Ph.D.!)
Back to RFK – Another inspiring person. I’ll leave you with this quote from RFK:
“All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don’t. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.”
Some quick reviews
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time - This guy, Greg Mortenson, is doing great things and building lots of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And doing it with sheer will and good-naturedness and open-mindedness. I found this to be very inspiring. It made me more confident that I am taking the best next step for my career. The writing is a little clunky at times, but the story and lessons are still really good. Here’s the link to Amazon. On Amazon, they appear to have pages for this book title as well as the old rejected title… “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations… One School at a Time.” The rejected title sounds like something Karl Rove would have chosen for the title. It looks like the terrorism version is hardcover and the peace version is paperback. Maybe Amazon thinks that people who buy hardcover books would prefer to see what Mortenson is doing as fighting terrorism and building nations while people who buy paperback books prefer to see this mission as promoting peace?
The Soul of a Chef: The Journey to Perfection – Sequel to The Making of a Chef. Very interesting insights about cooking and chefhood. The first section is about the certified master chef exam. The second is about a chef from Cleveland, Michael Symon. And the last section is about Thomas Keller and the French Laundry. I’m finding the section on the French Laundry to be particularly interesting. Hearing Thomas Keller explain his insights and thinking to the author really fits with how, not reading this philosophy beforehand, I responded to the French Laundry experience. They really spent the time to balance the flavors and portion sizes, and they took great care and effort to get the most flavor and color out of every ingredient, and that really came through when the plates arrived at the table. I talked about “magic” in my French Laundry reports, but it turns out that it’s not magic. It’s chilling the vegetables before blanching and then chilling them right away. It’s straining sauces 20 times so that they’re incredibly smooth. It’s washing bones before roasting them for a stock. One thing that really impressed me is that they realize that a lot of effort and sacrifice goes into the raw ingredients – both with meat and vegetables. And fungi as well? So because of that, they treat the ingredients with as much care and respect as possible. And they are careful to use every last bit of every ingredient. But then again, they do talk about how if something isn’t blanched right or isn’t chopped right, it has to be tossed. So that’s a bit of a contradiction. But I guess if you just always do it right the first time, then there’s no need to waste the food?
Range – This last one is a restaurant. I was pretty impressed and if I weren’t moving to NYC soon, I’d probably go back. There were some really good items that we ate, and there were some things that really made me say “wow.” For example, it turns out that lime and chive are a really good combination and really made the goat cheese and sorrel stuffed ravioli with lime butter and chives appetizer really pop. Other highlight dishes included the
- puree of squash soup with sour cream and dill – This soup had a really nice kicky flavor.
- roasted chicken with a broccoli rabe, toasted almond and sausage bread salad – different from Zuni’s version; equally good, but in different ways. Zuni’s version has really tasty big pieces of bread. And a few other ingredients, but it’s mostly bread. Range’s had vegetables, lots of nuts, and sausage, so there was more variety for your bites. And I liked the lemony-ness. Chicken was impeccably done. One thing that could have been improved was that the veggies in the salad were too salty. But overall, I enjoyed the dish. It also makes really yummy leftovers – I tossed my leftovers with some extra bread, tomatoes, and some of the dressing that I had made for my tomato bread salad and it was a spectacularly delicious lunch.
- cornmeal crepes with blackberries and wildflower honey gelato – the cornmeal crepes were so delicately flavored and textured. Really yummy. I expected the wildflower honey gelato to be delicate as well, but it was more like “pow!”
- bittersweet chocolate and armagnac souffle – Pretty perfectly done souffle.
I also tried one of their cocktails. I had heard that they were supposed to be good. And when we arrived in the restaurant, the air smelled like fresh citrus. Figuring that the citrus smell was from all the drink preparation, I decided that since the air smelled so good, the drinks must be good too. So I tried the sungold zinger which is 209 gin, sungold tomatoes, agave nectar, and lemon. I love sungold tomatoes. It turned out to be much more lemony (Meyer lemony) than sungold tomatoey. So it was good, but it was not what I was expecting, so that was disappointing. If you call it a sungold zinger and not a Meyer lemon zinger, I’m going to expect more sungold tomato flavor.
One last thing - I saw balut eggs being sold at the egg stand today. If you don’t know what balut is and you want to find out, you’re going to have to do your own google or google image search. I don’t want to put in links or images and then be responsible for grossing someone out. But my question is if I buy balut eggs from the egg guy at the market, can I incubate it and get a duckling?
Houston, that’s really embarrassing
From an article from NYTimes about Houston’s recycling:
It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.
Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city.
Yay, San Francisco! I love San Francisco. Plus, the city collects compost! That’s awesome!
Here’s info on other cities:
I guess it’s the NEW YORK Times, which is why they quote the NYC number, but it’s also pretty embarrassing for NY to be so far behind other cities like SF, LA, San Jose, San Diego, and Chicago. It’s barely above the national average! And why did they exclude Boston? Is this a Red Sox thing?
Okay, here’s the update after looking at wastenews.com:
It looks like they cut it off based on population, and the cities in their bar graph are the most populous cities. Here’s the rest of the list that’s available:
- Austin 27.3%
- Memphis 26.0%
- Fort Worth 22.2%
- Baltimore 42.0% (That’s unexpected, but that’s not bad)
- Charlotte 10.6%
- El Paso 16.0%
- Boston 15.0% (Boston, you should be ashamed!)
- Seattle 44.0%
- Washington 22.0%
- Milwaukee 24.0%
- Denver 10.3%
- Las Vegas 16.0%
- Nashville 28.0%
- Oklahoma City 3.0% (It’s a good thing there’s Houston, otherwise, you’d be getting the shameful headline.)
- Portland 62.0%
Doesn’t seem to be correlated with size. So that’s no excuse. Based on the patterns that you do see, my guess is that weather and willpower are key factors for having high recycling. But Baltimore is pretty high. As is Chicago… so I don’t think weather can be an excuse either.
You know what other city is doing embarrassing things? Beijing is erecting screens to hide some areas for the Olympics. Beijing, we can see the screens and we can tell you’re hiding stuff. And this whole issue appears to to beyond appearances, so there are other interesting bits in the article.
Be inspired to dance and travel
This video made me laugh and smile. And it made me want to dance. And it made me want to travel around the world and see all those amazing sights and meet interesting people. Fortunately, I’ll be able to have a post-PhD trip so I’ll be able to do all those things!
Here’s a video of outtakes:
If you still haven’t had enough of the silly dancing and of the beautiful sights, here’s one more:
Any suggestions for where we should travel?
