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

Why Follow?

Why follow the instructions on the package?

Do you ever follow the recipe on the can of sweetened condensed milk? No! The one on the plastic wrapper that envelopes chocolate chips? No! The one on the back of cake mix?

W-WAIT! Of course you follow the one on the back of cake mix, or cookie mix, or pudding mix... there just is NO other way to use up that powdery stuff! You MUST add three medium sized [yes, medium] eggs, one stick of butter, and half a cup of water. Otherwise, the cake will cease to ever exist! It will blow up the oven, or stick to the spoon, or end human intelligence [not that THAT would be a huge deal, since it happens if you DO follow the recipe down to the millimole]!

However, since this household lacks butter, I decided to make this gluten-free cake mix that my mum bought [I don't know why, since she knows that I rarely use mix, let alone gluten-free cake mix] using my brainpower.

Also, I didn't want to use the oven because it would waste a lot of energy.

All I did was add two eggs and some water. In other words, this cake is pretty much "fat-free". Then I microwaved a bowl of it, for about 148 seconds.

And... it tasted like plain store-bought-cake-mix chocolate sponge cake. Without the burnt parts, and the wasted oven heat.

Easy.

You don't see cakes in bowls much.

This is technically the 27th, but I microwaved my first cake on the 26th.

Divine Chocolate.

I like volunteering at the Essex County Environmental Center, and the largest events include Octoberfest and Earth Day. Since I'm very behind on posting, here is a snippet of a piece of chocolate I got on Earth Day while I was taking a break from the face painting station [I also ended up eating 4-5 organic hot-dog buns, and I met this guy, P, who works at the parks and he's really cool and has eyebrow piercings]. It was called "Divine Chocolate", and the lady at the desk informed me that it was Fair Trade, which I suppose is nice.
If you think about it though... if everything was forced to be Fair Trade, everything would cost more, and people will "complain", and there would be this black market of "cheap" stuff made from illegal labour. Basically, it's like child labour these days. Another unsolvable problem... This is looking at it from a global perspective, rather than purely a human rights or environmental perspective, because people are inherently selfish.
Anyway. This morsel of chocolate was extremely pretty and delicious :D
This has to be the most sensual chocolate picture, ever. Look at the detail... the drips... the decadence.... ahhhh.