Friends!

TJ made me some iced peach juice. Actually, I think's more of a... hm... It's basically ice and peaches stuck in the blender. I really liked it, since it was icy cold (frozen peaches, I found out, don't taste as juicy or sweet as fresh peaches), but there was still a pleasant peach taste. TJ didn't enjoy it though, and proceeded to throw away a plate of cut up peaches, which kind of irked me.

 In other news, SR gave me a peanut butter cookie that his mum made for him. It's funny, because my mum came to Penn to give me my glasses (whoo!!! I can see far away now!) and brought along a bag of broccoli, cauliflower, mangoes, peaches, and basil from the garden. She also brought me a slice of pizza, which is pretty silly considering I have at least 9 slices of pizza in my fridge right now.

I Tell You, Mango Smoothies Require Mango.

For La Maison Française, my college house resident program, we played pétanque, which is basically like curling, but without the ice or the skates... so before we went to play, we went to Saxbys, which is this coffee shop right next to my college house [still not explicitly stating where I live! :O but one could definitely find out...]. I got a mango smoothie since it was 8pm and I didn't want caffeine in my system, lest I lie in bed for seven hours unable to fall asleep. I was really happy when they gave me a big straw too :D

Isn't my photo beautiful? I'm trying to make food look more amazing... And the amazing part of this was that I took it in at around 8:20pm, without flash [can you believe it!?]

Anyway, the smoothie was quite disappointing. It was basically sugar and mango juice and crushed ice. I do not call that a smoothie. There were no mango chunks, mango textures [the fleshiness did not exist], or anything else... I'd imagine that smoothies have milk or some sort of apple juice/juice base, but this was full out basic.

I suppose some people like smoothies that are way too smooth [so smooth that they are essentially drinking a thin liquid], but I prefer smoothies to be thicker, and have actual pieces of the substance with which the smoothie was made, which in this case would be mango.

Free drink on the house, though, so it was still nice :D

Lindt - Chocolat Noir, Cremant

This is a short update about the first Lindt I tried from the ones JM gave me. I ate it while I felt neutral. The past few days I've been on emotional highs and lows. So.
Normal piece of dark chocolate. It was, as the label says, creamy. Not gritty, not bitter, not dry. It was smooth. Better than the truffles, duh. End of today's update. Back to course scheduling. SHOULD I GO TO GRAD SCHOOL? My freshman year 1st semester schedule depends on this. [Yes, overthinking.]

Berry Nice Morning.

With ice cream dollop.
Without ice ceam dollop.

I'm gonna let two grad parties slide [too many pictures]... and instead talk about berry pancakes and smoothies. Yesterday morning, my brother and I went to JM's house to make some berry smoothies for breakfast and watch the movie 21. We brought along a lot of raspberries, some gooseberries, and a few blueberries from our yard. JM has this mulberry tree, so the smoothies we made ended up being berry berryful. Actually, I can't really take credit for what JM's sister and my brother made, with milk and ice and berries. Oh, and maple ice cream, once we realised that the smoothie tasted way too sour without a shot of sugar.

JM and I, on the other hand, made some berry pancakes with the leftovers. We used this flat-pancake recipe but omitted the baking powder because apparently last time, the pancakes had turned out sour. JM actually has a griddle! GRIDDLES ARE AMAZING! Although I never butter or oil the pan when making pancakes, JM does. I personally didn't see much of a difference...

The only problem with not having some sort of raising agent was that they tasted more like crepes, and the berries had to be flattened in order to actually get something that looked uniformly flat. Actually, we had dumped in too many berries in the first place, and there proberry ["probably"] was more berry than batter. I liked that they weren't sweet, though.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning :)