Ice Cream Cakes.

My sister's friend's parents [which, in other words, are my parents' friends, which, in other words, are my acquaintances and/or friends] own an ice cream store. They own the Carvel on Main Street in Madison. I did mention them before, when I had the chance of actually making stuff at the store for fun!!!!
Anyway, over the past two years, they've been giving us ice cream cakes for the usual American holidays. It's pretty cool, literally, for my sister because she adores vanilla ice cream. I personally am not as huge an ice cream fan as I am a cookie/cake/baked stuff/bread fan. So, it's awesome, yes, but not as amazing as if I got free baguettes every few months.
They gave me a graduation ice cream cake, though, so that was cool! I cut off my name, though, since there are the issues of spammers and stalkers and idiots who use the internet to my disadvantage, if I were to release my name to the world. So, in reality the cake looks better :)

And, the past.


Look at that texture! It's actually whipped cream.
Fudge topping. I approve. Usually, it's just a layer of vanilla and chocolate, with chocolate cookie/cone crumbs in between. Along with PHOs but I suppose these are sentimental exceptions, not that I consume much ice cream cake...

Rollin' up Graves'.

Short message about Rolos and Graves' Disease.

My previous calc teacher, as you know, kept candy in a drawer for we students, every single day. At one point, I spied this thing that looked like a chocolate, with a golden foil wrapper. It was really sticky, with the caramel inside sticking to my teeth the way benzene sticks together.
Anyway... a few weeks later, at the Hershey store, I realised that they were actually ROLOs. I think that these are significant because I wanted to give one to AP but I ended up chickening out.
Today, I thought of them just because, as usual, I am thinking about food. However, I'm also thinking about not thinking about food, because I actually need to lose 350000 Calories. Okay, maybe not exactly 350000 Calories, but in the past few months, I have gained at least 2 to 3 kgs because my metabolism is slowing down loads, thanks to Graves' Disease. This is a good thing, because it proves that methimazole is working for me, but it sucks for my body since I'm storing everything as glycogen and triglycerides. Tack on a bunch of parties... and plain old exercise doesn't really cut it.
Hmm... at least I know that I can change this. Technically, I'm still of an "average" mass. No such thing as a lost cause. I'm trying to be optimistic.

MS's Grad Party - Desserts!

Okay I lied. I WILL talk about MS's grad party, because it was truly the one with the most ethnically diverse foods [well. Apart from mine :P, but mine doesn't count]. This month, June, has been the most prodigal month of my life. No kidding. All that EXCESS food ["XS" as my chem teacher used to write, while we balanced out equations]... all that variety...

This is LEGIT Americana. Eat and party. Oh, and run away from exercise.

This is the stuff I've been missin' out since 2006, though I don't really know if I would've wanted partying to interfere with schoolwork. Maybe it was just better that I used to be antisocial, because by being antisocial, I would get all my work done.

But now that HS is over, I can party all I want!! This morning, JM came over for breakfast, I went for a super-long walk with MZ, JM and my bro and I went to the weight room... and it was all real chill, just hanging out and letting time slide by, without a sense of anxiety and procrastination.

Okay, so the dessert at MS's party was really sweet! She is Philippino, so there was a ton of ethnic food, which I love. Oh, there was a whole roasted pig... as a side note. MP commented on the irony that I found it enticing, but I basically blog about anything that interests me, food-wise... so here it is!

Glutinous rice pudding, with some brown sugar topping that was the reason the pudding tasted good. [I like corner and side pieces].

Mango trifle. It. Was. The. Best. Thing. There. Layers of mango and cream, patched up with sponge cake and crushed sweet biscuit pieces, and a crunchy top...

Pieces of trifle, with watermelon and the rice pudding.

I think that this was sweet grass jelly drink, with colourful tapioca balls inside. I am not sure, though.

Plantain wrapped in sweet pastry. It actually tasted like sweet potato pastry, for a second, but then I saw the seeds and the yellow filling. Oh, and the texture was not sweet potatoey. Plantains are awesome!

Eggplant parm; glutinous rice flour sweet bun, with a piece of processed cheese [It was sticky and nice until I got to the cheese]; soft taro pudding, coconut rice pudding - second favourite dessert there; some mini rice cake [see below] that I didn't like as much; upside down flan spongecake.

Another rice pudding, above which is the mini rice cake that I didn't really fancy.

Sponge cake! With flan on top! I love flan, in general, and the fact that this cake is absolutely beautifully shaped truly helped me to more helpings of it...

Plate of everything. The one in the bottom left is the coconut rice pudding, and I took the corner piece, with the crusty top and sides. I think that I love corner pieces because it has the widest range of textures.

TH's Grad Party

"Party" is synonymous with "food".

Hate to break it to you all, but TH had a party today and I didn't take any pictures. However, I can basically summarise what happened today at Costco and at TH's backyard. Sooo... party first.

We had really nice mozzarella with tomato slices, and water crackers with cheeses [brie, cheddar, and this other pungent one that I didn't like]. There was orange punch, fruit salad [awesome!] and garden salad. The potato au gratin was really awesome, but the sauce for the penne was way too sweet for me. The dessert was the Costco cake [you know, the giant one. The one everyone has] and those highly decorative but not-flavourful cookies]. Thus, I didn't really like the dessert part.

Okay, now for my party planning!

My party is tomorrow. My mum and I have been arguing about it for the past week. Or, two weeks, really. We keep arguing about the cake, the decorations, the "whether I should grill stuff" or not. It goes on. We ended up going to Party City, Amazing Savings, Costco, Shoprite, then 5 Below, then Costco again, in the past three days.

This morning, at Costco, we bought a ton of stuff including a red velvet cake. I personally didn't want one, since there is a long list of ingredients, of which two are HFCS and PHO. To add to the irony, this is the piece of dessert on which I added "Happy Graduation" with butter-sugar-green-colouring icing. I should've added it to the apple pie, but the container is non resealable, unfortunately. However, I believe the red velvet cake is symbolic to not only my "graduation necessity", but also to the fact that it's extremely "American". Eh. I also got a pack of mini cinnamon rolls, mini brownies, and mini chocolate chip cupcakes. Along with this, we bought some cookies, and I'm going to make some rice pudding. I also made some trail mix yesterday, though I doubt any XC/track people would want to consume it [including me]. I think that there is a substantial amount of sweet stuff :)

Later, I made a salad [without the dressing, though I'm thinking of either pesto or honey mustard; we bought some french dressing and HONESTLY - it is ridiculously difficult to find salad dressing WITHOUT HFCS. and I cut up a lot of baguette [for croutons and breadcrumbs tomorrow].

Yesterday, I actually cleaned my room for the first time in a month. Though, everyone is gonna be downstairs [Wii + food], the backyard [frisbee/capture the flag + food] or the basement [dance party + food... if it rains]. Seriously, the weather has been so fickle. It was "supposed" to rain on Sunday, and it didn't. It was supposed to rain today... and it did, two hours later than it was "supposed" to. It better NOT rain tomorrow afternoon...

I guess I'll have tons of pictures tomorrow. It's gonna be hectic!

School Partayyyzzzz!

I'm getting fat.

Okay, that's the cliche thing to say, for a girl, no less, but it's true. The methimazole is slowing down my metabolism, so in theory I should be eating less. However, since we are PARTAYYYING in school [and out of it], I'm still eating a lot of food. Plus, I can't run that fast anymore, so for the same amount of time devoted to running, I burn fewer Calories.

So, on the last two days of school, I had a party in Calculus, Art, English, French, and since we all skipped 6th and 7th period for the senior prank [recreating the Woodstock festival], where there was food, I basically had a party every period of the day. Though, in the whole year, we've never had a party in physics.

But first... at the Environmental Centre yesterday, I was helping out with dyeing bracelets with natural dyes. The Beats way back in the 60s used to do this - using beets - nothing beats this beet typo... turning beet red, yet, Enviro Centre? [ha. ha. ha. That was not one of my "beetter" puns. Wow this is getting really bad.]

So, Calc - bagel party with a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and spinach and artichoke dip!

Art - brownies, cookies, and a rainbow cupcake! [Thanks, AT]

English - Bagel Party - whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and a Boston Cream doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts. There are lots of sprinkles. The pastel coloured ones are actually prettier than the rainbow coloured ones.

French - MG, who is from France, made these brownie-like confections that are a cross between a brownie and a crepe. Seriously, they were awesome! I also ate a bunch of chocolate Munchkins [the only flavour I like] and Sour Patch gummies.

Woodstock - chips. They had cream soda in beer bottle shaped glass bottles, and fake cigarettes. However, I did not partake in the pseudo-druggin' since I'm straight edge [hahahaha].

Mad Cool Grad Partayyyyyz

I have not updated in ages due to:

1. School. I actually had 5 projects.

2. Grad Party planning, and shopping for grad stuff [presents, shoes, dress. Bleh.]

3. Graduation reshopping because the dress I had gotten earlier was too formal. I can not tell the difference between a sundress and a prom dress. Unfortunately, I needed the former and had bought the latter.

So, the past week in pictures... [I don't know why my formatting got messed up, but bear with it].

1. First garden snow peas, thanks to my dad :D We also got our first two strawberries, and a bunch of blueberries.

2. JB's grad party, 19th - pasta was really hard at the top, but not crispy. So, it was hard to bite, but I liked it. Something I noticed is that nobody's pasta has herbs in it... I'm gonna put basil or oregano in my pasta dish at my party :)

JB's dessert. Costco on a plate, pretty much. I didn't know the ingredients of the stuff in the cake [turns out there was trans fat], so I think I should be more wary, next time. Well, now I've decided that I'm not gonna get a red velvet cake for my grad party. Actually, I think that I'm not gonna get a cake. Just get cookies. And pie.


MJ's Grad Party - 19th - This is the best damn picture ever... you can see the mood - summer chillaxin'. My first legitimate pina colada, and it was great. The crushed ice added a nice touch to it and I could definitely taste the coconut and the pineapple. To cap it all off [haha. Think bottlecaps], there was no alcohol! Yes!


MJ's grad party - 19th - Seriously good mashed potato with peas. Funny how no one is making mashed potato with apple [That's what I ate the first time I had it...], then two types of rice - the browner one had some kinda herb in it that I didn't really like, but the rice wasn't too mushy, which is good. The pasta and cheese was really great. Every party has a pasta dish. And cake. It's just a trend I've noticed.

The garlic bread was okay. The fried plantain was simply delicious... I couldn't decide whether it was savoury or sweet, but the inside was soft and gooey while the outside was crispy. After learning about it through The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver last summer, I've honestly been interested in trying it out. And it was great! MJ's got great food. Seriously. She even had green puffed rice and marshmallow treats, but I forgot to take a picture of most of the food I ate. Plus, I was in the pool the majority of the time.

16th - MP and LS's chem project was about baking, so they made carrot muffins and sourdough bread. I'm not in their class but MP gave me some :) The carrot cake was really nice without the icing, and the bread... It didn't really taste like sourdough; it was crumbly, dry, and the crust tasted the same as the inside. I don't know if I have the authority to make a statement on the definition of sourdough, as I have only had it once before in my life. That time, it tasted much more different from what I ate that day.


13th - NYC with my mum. We were dress shopping as I have stated earlier, and for lunch, we went to one of the NY-style restaurants, where a pound of food costs a certain amount. We went to Speedy's, which is around 36th and 6th, I think [Not sure.] A pound of food costs $9.50 there. I suppose if one was obsessed with eating salads, one could get a ton of lettuce and tomato for a pretty low price.