The musings of a mad woman with a doughnut obsession!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Rice and Chocolate

my fake smile: "enough with the pictures, let's eat"

On Sunday night we attended Caroline's 8th Annual Thanksgiving Feast. I pretty much go just so i can have sticky rice stuffing (oh and to spend time with friends and give thanks for the good stuff in our lives--I always forget that part). I love sticky rice. Here is a picture, but be warned, it is 100 times more yummy than it looks here. I know Caroline is a great cook and her turkey is always great, but all I want is sticky rice!
Caroline outdid herself with the turkey, stuffings, mashed potatoes, and roasted corn salad. Her guests brought appetizers, a tofurkey, 2 types of mac and cheese, and the obligatory green bean casserole. For desserts, this year there were two outstanding additions that I have chosen to highlight based on creativity and the curiousity level they elicited:

1. "AMERICA": A pastry concoction made with a choclate chip cookie crust, with a layer of fudge brownies, a layer of devil food's cake, a layer of cinnamon rolls, and topped with a crumble and all baked together. The creators told me it is called America because of its all American ingredients. I say it called America because it is a good snapshot of our diets. It was intertesting, a bit too much for me, but it was quite the hit with the guests. but the superstar of the desserts this year was:

2. The Chocolate Fountain. Not only was it tasty, but everyone had fun posing with it and dunking all kinds of food into it. Yummy and fun--a great combination!


The Thanksgiving feast is getting harder and harder to top. What food item will be the superstar next year? --besides the sticky rice.

posted by DeeDee at 10:21 AM | 0 comments

Monday, November 14, 2005

Funnel Cake: the Doughnut’s Dutch Cousin

The First Annual L.A. Int'l Tamale Festival was as yummy as expected. Fred and I took the Goldline from Pasadena to Chinatown and met up with Susan, Caroline, Brian, Mykel and Angel. Because there were several of us there, we were able to try each other's food -- a great strategy for any food-centric festival. Between all of us, we ate A LOT of tamales. We had cheese and jalapeno tamales, Oaxaca style tamales, fancy-schmancy chicken cilantro tamales with a chipotle sauce, pork tamales, cinnamon raisin tamales, roasted corn, strawberry juice, horchata, kettle corn, and funnel cake!


While I have always seen funnel cake at carnivals, festivals, and amusement parks, I had never actually had any. Thanks to Susan, Caroline, and Mykel, I finally got to try some.

Funnel cake where have you been all my life?

According to Wikipedia, funnel cake is “a regional specialty food, originally associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch region of the United States. It is made by pouring batter through a funnel into hot oil in a circular pattern and deep frying it until golden brown. It is often served with powdered sugar, jam, or other toppings.

MMMM! Dough, oil, sugar. Same concept as a doughnut in an easier-to-share form! The only hazard associated with funnel cake is the flying powdered sugar that ended up all over Susan. We had the plain funnel cake with powdered sugar. I'’m not sure about the funnel cakes with the jam toppings. It seems like the jam would overwhelm the delicate freshly fried dough. Caroline likes the jam, so maybe next time we'’ll have to try that!

After the tamale-extravaganza, we took a long walk at the cornfields across the street to try to burn off some calories….ok it was mostly too ease our guilty, calorie-conscious minds, since we would actually have had to walk all the way home to Alhambra in order to burn off all those calories we ate. There's been some hoopla in the news that people were filming "porn in the corn" but we didn't see any. Only people trying to relax after their crazy tamale binge.

Hopefully there will be a second annual tamale festival. Funnel cakes, see you next year!

Here are some more pics:

posted by DeeDee at 2:44 PM | 0 comments

Friday, November 11, 2005

Wish List

The holidays are just around the season and although I have made non-present pacts with two of my friends, here is my Christmas wish list:

Any other suggestions? Let me know what you want and I’ll find you a nice picture to post.

posted by DeeDee at 3:54 PM | 0 comments

Monday, November 07, 2005

Doughnut Observation Network and Undercover Tasting (DONUT) Team

Congratulations to Lily, who is now an official Doughnut sleuth in the DONUT team. She sent this report back from Germany via Goleta:

Thought you'd enjoy an unusual doughnut discovery in Germany: we discovered these "schneeballen", translation: "snow balls" while walking around Rothenburg. One of the cutest little towns ever. Apparently these are the local specialty there, and every other store is a schneeballen bakery. “Rothenburg ob der Tauber” is the official city name and all Germans seems to know that schneeballen come from there. Anyway they're large balls of fried dough strips with chocolate or nougat mixed in there to hold the ball togetherand then covered in chocolate or powdered sugar. Cuter to look at than the actual dry taste. But cute nonetheless.

Thanks for the information Lil! As the first member of the DONUT team you are by default the team leader. We will discuss your responsibilities later although they are mostly ceremonial. Keep the tips coming in, kids.

posted by DeeDee at 11:38 AM | 1 comments

Friday, November 04, 2005

Scorpio Celebration

We celebrated Manyee and Caroline’s birthday this year at a pseudo-Mediterranean place called Oasis. It was way cute, the food and drinks were great, and the birthday duo seemed to have a blast. When someone asked me about it and I started talking about the evening, I realize that when Caroline and Manyee get together, nothing comes close to being normal. Don’t get me wrong, I love that it’s always an extraordinary event. Normal birthdays are for the rest of the world! (p.s. sorry about the formatting on this, Blogger doesn't have the best HTML editing capabilities.)

Here are some examples of how these westside celebrations are different (in a good way!)


[continue to next post]

posted by DeeDee at 12:10 PM | 0 comments










example
Normal

Scorpio Divas

B-day Theme
Happy Birthday
"Full-out"

Gift Opening
Open one by one, say something nice
Wear a tiara and yell
“oh–my–god you guys” every time

Best Gifts
cash, giftcards
A corduroy jacket with a
fierce python being attacked by
an Aztec-y looking chick
Memorable moment from the past
Drunk friend throwing up
Drunk friend dressed in 80s
clothes trying to consume 3" hot pink stilettos
Cake
yellow cake, chocolate frosting
Puff pastry with sweetened
cream cheese, chocolate
chunks, and fresh berries
Fashion Statement
none
Birthday Cake Reaction
Smile cordially

posted by DeeDee at 11:00 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Elmo Gueits

posted by DeeDee at 11:53 AM | 1 comments