This Weekend

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My whole dorm room is on a diet.

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There was some kind of party for international students on friday, and my Taiwanese roomie Antonia asked me to help her bake a cake like the blackberry one I made for Romina. She told me she wanted to add banana to it, so we mashed up some banana and put it into the cake batter. I used the same recipe as Romina's cake though. Inbetween the layers is a caramelized walnut mixed with a buttercream glaze and mushed up bananas. On top are those same candied walnuts, all cooled and hardened and two banana slices. Everyone was drooling in my dorm. We ate a big bowl of salad while staring at it... it almost felt like a weird ritualistic cult-ish meal. We didn't get to try it, but apparently it was a big hit.

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Meanwhile I've been making soups and salads non-stop. This is a chicken broth based soup. It has shrimp, broccoli, carrots, chicken, onion, garlic, mushrooms, blackbeans and potato in it. It's my mission to make our diet delicious.

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I made this for Jesse last night. It's a braised steak with a sherry-mushroom sauce. The asparagus has a peanut-curry sauce on top. Not exactly low-fat, but at least high-protein... for him! I'm trying to balance good fats with bad fats, so that's where the nuts come in. We also got two avocados that'll turn into guacamole sometime soon.

Work

I work at a French Pastry Shop called Le Gourmet here in town. I have to admit, I took the job because I used to go there all the time and became addicted. French pastry is pretty hard to come by.

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This is pretty normal for me. All those yellow slips of paper? Finished Cake orders during Christmas. Usually they come out something like this:

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That's a Bouche de Noel or yule log. I wind up decorating a massive amount at work. Though really, I'm usually wishing I were just doing this:

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A Brioche. Omnomnom.

All these photos were taken by Sarah Jenkins, my friend and coworker. :D

Omnoms

I am going to post pictures of all the things I eat and make, especially the delicious ones. I think this will reveal who I am because I'm all about food. :D

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This is the first thing I took a picture of in Japan. It's a cold soba with an egg and little nori seaweed strips. I actually remember it being pretty gross because the egg had a foamy-texture, but my "guardian" Shiho picked me up from the airport and took me out to eat. She wound up doing lots of wonderful things for me, and this was the beginning of my attempts to be fearless when dining.

I'm going to be double posting something old and something new a lot, I think.

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This is my roommate, Romina. She's from Germany. Her birthday just passed, and I baked her a cake and we went on a picnic.

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It's a simple yellow cake with a buttercream glaze and a blackberry filling.

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These are her pictures, but it was my cooking. We have a botanical garden here, so a group of us went and made traditional bento food for hanami, or flower viewing festival. We made chirashizushi and makizushi. It was a pretty great day. Everyone really enjoyed it.

And that's it! For now. :)