Thanksgiving #1

(First off, I would like to say that whoever is taking my photos and putting them on myspace.com, please either stop, or at least let me know who you are.)

Hi all! I hope you guys had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday, whether you spent it gorging on food, skiing or snowboarding, or what have you. I had the fortune of having TWO fantastic Thanksgiving meals. The first, being with my family. There was a huge table with mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and of course, a giant 16 pound turkey!

So my roommate and I drove down to my parents place. First off, I would like to say that the autumn colors are just gorgeous right now.



There was a whole day of cooking and cleaning, there were a few of us stacked up in the kitchen, with anything from maple sweet potatoes to clam chowder. Needless to say, there were definitely many cooks in the kitchen.



Click below to see more of the Thanksgiving feast!

Cupcakes and cakes, oh my!

Hi all! Okay, okay, I'm still alive, I promise. I'm sorry for being so MIA this month... thanks and apologies to those who have been continuously checking without anything exciting and new to see.

Honestly, it's been a kind of a dragging much in terms of productivity. This whole job search thing is extremely frustrating and I'm getting sick of typing up cover letters. So I have kind of avoided anything that involved typing a copious amount of typing and thinking. I feel guilty because I've been wanting to write a few posts about food and politics, but I just can't seem to bring myself to do it. Eventually, eventually.

But enough whining, it's still been a good month regardless. I've made some awesome friends, I'm actually getting out and being social, how exciting is that? I had a chance to watch my fellow dance girls perform once already!







Aren't they beautiful? It's an epic dance, "Ode to the Plum Blossom," and it was an awesome performance. :)

So the past month has involved a decent amount of baking, including a cake for an order, a vegan cake for a fellow vegan friend, and 5 dozen cupcakes for a young girl's birthday!





Click the jump for more cakes and cupcakes!

Halloween has come and gone.

So Halloween this year was pretty awesome.

First, there was going to a pumpkin patch and actually carving pumpkins! I went with a few guys... two of them from India, so this was their first Halloween! Our pumpkins were awesome.



Mine was the Scarecrow! Do you have any idea what a pain it is to care thin slices out of a pumpkin with dull blades from a Safeway pumpkin-carving kit?! Anyway. What an awesome day last weekend!

Then there was this past weekend! It involved dry ice, Twister, music, costumes, and, oh yeah, FOOD. We had about 15 people over, and, of course, I made way too much food. I think people might have filled up on the appetizers. :| There were vegetarians and vegans, and there was enough food for everyone. I didn't have much time to make anything especially Halloween-themed, but at least I had enough food to feed everyone!

Unfortunately, since I was so busy with food and actually hanging out with people, I didn't have a chance to take many photos of the food. I had a chance to take a photo of the table before the craziness all began!



Those are some of the appetizers (all home-made): hummus with seasoned pita chips, bruschetta with tomato and basil, cinnamon apple challah.

The final menu went as follows (and I actually finished most of it on time... amazing, I know!!) I'll post recipes to a few of them in the up-coming weeks. :)

Appetizers
* Hummus with home-made pita chips (vegan)
* Cinnamon apple challah (vegetarian)
* Parmesan zucchini sticks (vegetarian)
* Parmesan breaded chicken
* Bruschetta with tomato and basil (vegan)

Main Course
* Spinach feta quiche (vegetarian)
* Turkey pasta bake
* Peanut soba noodles (vegan)

Dessert
* Pumpkin pie (vegetarian)
* Caramel apple bites (well, it was partially successful?) (vegetarian)
* Persimmon pomegranate salad (vegan)

I hope all of you had a fun and safe Halloween!


Photography courtesy of Debanshu (Chinu) Singh

P.S. I hope you had an awesome birthday, little brother, even though you probably don't read this!

Chocolate Sushi and Tofu House

Another restaurant review! A group of us have been trying to have a dinner out maybe once a week (or once every two weeks...), and so two weeks ago, when I was house-sitting, we all went out to the Chocolate Sushi and Tofu House in San Jose.



Not sure why it's called Chocolate Sushi, but the place is a Japanese and Korean restaurant, including pretty good sashimi and tasty Korean tofu soup. Click below to see more!

Photography, pound cake, and so much catching up

So for any of you living in California, or more specifically, the Bay Area... seriously, what's with the weather? Pouring rains, ridiculous humidity and mid-70s the next day, and "afternoon showers" that flood streets and burst pipes in the 5 hours it rains. Seriously? However, it has led to some great opportunities for photography and playing around with my camera.



The nights in the past few weeks have been amazingly clear, and the previous photograph and the next ones are a result from playing around with my shutter speed.

Look at how amazingly still that water is! This is the bay... all summer it was ridiculously windy, and it was definitely a lot colder at night back in July and August. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of scenic/still photography, but it's still fun to capture the weather and light is always fun to play around with... like when the sky opens up on the Bay with San Francisco in the background.



The sunset on Monday night after the afternoon "showers" was gorgeous. I was waiting at the bus stop on the way to an Owl City concert in the city, and the sunset was just so gorgeous that I couldn't resist.





But enough pictures of the bay (I promise there won't be too many anymore... I mean, you can only have so many pictures of the same place before you get sick of seeing yet another pretty sunset or "Jesus beams."). I have a backlog of photos of the food that I baked 2 weeks ago, and I totally forgot about the cranberry cream cheese pound cake that I baked for the tea party!



So, for some carrot cake, celebration challah, and cranberry cream cheese pound cake, click below! I apologize for the half-photographed steps, but I was in a constant rush making all of these. (Recipe for pound cake below as well!)