Midterm Mojitos

Note: Actually having a mojito with your midterm would be quite possibly one of the worst ideas ever. Do not do this just to make my cheese alliteration true.

The middle of October is officially midterm season. Actually, officially, the midterm is marked by October break I believe, but thats just boring administrative stuff. Regardless, midterms always seem to cluster together--2 in one week, 2 papers and 1 midterm, 2 midterms in one day (that would be my poor sister). On one hand, yes, its nice to just get it all over with. On the other hand, it results in locking-myself-in-a-room-never-seeing-daylight behavior where all I want to do is wear yoga pants 24/7. A friend and I were having a particularly struggle-bus week, mainly because of a class called biochem. It's like if bio-chem was a baseball game, and student was a baseball player on steroids, if pre-meds were not concerned about the health and ethical consequences of doing such things. Anyways, I digress. That was really a terrible joke analogy full of horrible stereotypes.

To celebrate the finish of this midterm (amongst others), she made mojitos! She's a super legit bartender, so she's been practicing her skillz on us so that when she's famous for fantastic mixed drinks and fighting health inequality, we can be like "hey, I once got a drink made just for me by her."

I mean look, she even muddled the ingredients and everything. I didn't even know that muddling was a thing you did for drinks, though that makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

What the Elle: An excuse for swanky bars

This year, a few friends and I decided to start a Young Adult book club, aptly named What the Elle because we live in entryway L this year, so Elle = L get it? Plus, we're all girls, so Elle is the appropriate pronoun. Last year, we spent a dinner time reminiscing about all the great young adult books we read and decided to start a club to read them together as a way to re-live our childhood and to relax. As John Green aptly said on tumblr, adults are just so...boring.
Although we were supposed to read Young Adult books, we ended up starting with The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith aka J.K. Rowling. While going out to a nice bar like Ordinary was not part of the original plan, we also at some point decided we wanted to become regulars, so we moved meetings to Ordinary which was one of the best ideas we've had thus far (and its only been like, a month!).
We planned to meet each time we finished a "part" of the book, which had 4 total. The first time, we ordered this fantastic cheesy bread sticks platter with marinara sauce. Of course, it came with the classic pickles all Caseus grilled cheese come with. Caseus being a cheese shop/restaurant knows have to make some pretty quality cheese bread. If this isn't incentive to make Ordinary your favorite bar, wait till you see the interior (I swear I don't get paid to swoon about them).

Sorry for a- instagram filter and b- bad lighting

 After this first time, we ended up not meeting till we all finished the book thanks to some speed demon reading skillz one of us had who finished the book about 3 days after our first meeting. We made a promise to return to Ordinary after we finished the book to order yards (beer in those tall glasses if you're clueless about drinks like I am). We all must have been really motivated by those yards because we actually all finished in about 3-4 weeks, which is pretty impressive for a "fun read" given the fact that I stopped fun reading when I got into college for a combination of sad reasons. For my celebratory yard, I ordered a pumpkin beer named a pretty cliched name like "pumpkin bumpkin" or "pumpin bumpin" or something to that effect.

I would first like to just note that yards aren't actually a yard long. Unless yards are much shorter than meters, these glasses were really not a yard long. Although to be quite honest, I don't think I could have finished one that was actually a yard-long. The one "faux-yard" took some quality time and discussion about Rowling's new crime novel and some reflection on if Robin from The Cuckoo's Calling was more like Hermoine or Ginny (I still stand by my assertion that she's more like Ginny). The beer itself was pretty good, though not in that omg, pumpkin makes it 20x better than all other beers. I'm not really sure what aspect of pumpkin I was supposed to taste--the squash part? Then again, I'm not really a beer connoisseur either, though I feel like the Belgian might hardcore judge a pumpkin beer.

Bacon Chai Pancakes: A Victory Brunch

A retrospective story on long lost foods (like literally lost). During the commencement period last May, me and 2 of my close friends were staying on campus, post-term. In this period, we get housing in a random dorm, but no food since school is technically out. As college students, eating out is expensive, so cooking is preferred (and way more fun!). One of the things we planned to make were pancakes. Unfortunately, when we tried to make some for dinner one night in the student kitchen, we were chastised and yelled at by one of the student aids who told us all food in the kitchen had been thrown out, including our pancake mix. So regrettably, we ate something else. 

Fast forward 3 months later with the mourning period well done with (it was too hot for black anyways). During the kitchen orientation for the school year, guess what we found on the shelf in the kitchen. THE PANCAKE MIX. After being bitterly denied our pancakes 3 months ago, our first priority was honoring those pancakes and consuming them. It was a lovely ceremony, with the most fantastic of Saturday brunches one can attempt while in college. (Ok thats a lie, we could have tried harder, but you know, we go to school for books, not cooks).

Because it was fall, it was necessary to make a spiced variant of the typical pancakes. Last time I made something chai-flavored was in May when I made chai frosting. In that case, I used a highly concentrated form of flavor made from teabags in tiny amounts of water. This worked shockingly well so I figured I could use that again to see what would happen.

Oh, also, bacon pancakes. Because, hey, whats brunch without some sort of pork-related meat? The bacon pancakes were very much a la Pinterest. Thankfully, not a pinterest fail though. Next time, I might try to get more creative with the bacon and either crush it up to evenly distribute in a batter, or shape the bacon so they spell something within the pancake batter. Yea, I'm kinda a sucker for shaped pancakes, be it letters, micky mouse, or dinosaurs.

While the chai spices didn't shine out as distinctly as in the previous occasions, I could definitely note the taste of tea-like spices in the batter. Perhaps it was due to the lack of sugar and actual spices in the batter itself that made its taste less noticeable? Or maybe the bacon just overpowered everything in its pig-like manner.
I'm honestly not the world's biggest pancake fan (I think I like waffles better), but they are definitely great fun to make, especially the shaped varieties. Plus, things always taste better with revenge and justice.

New York Musical Trip: Surprise Street Fair

Over the third weekend in September, a friend and I went on a day trip to New York to see the musical Once, which was currently starring one of our favorite Doctor Who stars Arthur Darvill. On Doctor Who, he plays a pretty adorable character named Rory whose undying devotion and dry, self-deprecating humor gives me unrealistic expectation about the real world. You know, because the whole space and time traveling thing doesn't already. He essentially played the exact same character in the musical--minus the space, time traveling, plus some singing.

I know this is a food blog, but the musical was really really quite beautiful. It's based off of the movie, which I have never seen but if its anything like the musical it'll be great. One of my favorite things about the musical was that they used a fixed set which was this gorgeous old fashioned looking bar (they actually sold drinks from it!). For each setting/scene they would move around chairs and change the lighting to make a bedroom, a recording studio, ect ect. It was a story about love and how love pushes our lives forward (and a little backwards), so the use of a static set as a sort of reference and grounding point really resonated (I think). We all want that great adventure, that great love in our lives, and yet there is always something static we can return to. Seriously, go see it if you have a chance.

Musical aside, we had some time to kill before the musical started so given my obsession with food, I was given the job of finding us a restaurant near Times Square to get lunch. I almost resorted to Yelp before I remembered that Serious Eats is located in NY and surely they must have a best-of NY guide, which, yup, they did. After picking out Piccolo Cafe, we--this being New York--ran into a street fair along I think 8th Avenue and decided to stop and browse for a while. Along with the repeating pattern of stalls that were selling 5 for $20 scarves, pocket watches, ect ect, there was a number of repeating stalls selling some really tantalizing street food such as corn, arepas, smoothies, even fried oreos. We stopped for some corn which was so delicious I failed to stop to snap a picture.

When we finally arrived to Piccolo Cafe, we ordered and sat in the cafe to eat. It was pretty small, but we found some seats by the window and chilled for a while. I got the turkey signature sandwich, which I didn't think would be particularly special, but it was really quite delicious, filling and for a very reasonable price considering it was New York. Something about the slices of real turkey breast, the slightly toasted yet pillow-soft bread smeared with aioli gave it the perfect combination of flavors. The cafe is apparently known for its egg sandwiches (according to Serious Eats), so I'll have to come back again for those! (yea, for being a food blog, I'm pretty terrible about writing about actual food)

The plain plate made it even more rustic and charming.

We ended up chilling in the cafe for a while people watching. It was super hipster-style decorated with really worn down wood (in that cute way) and faux-newspaper tiled walls. Their music playlist was also pretty great as well, though clearly not hipster enough since Adele was on it.

Also! For those interested in music, here's a video of Arthur Darvill singing Falling Slowly. He's not the best singer in the world, but given that he essentially played Rory in the musical and and sang, I'd have to say, I'd wait a 1000 years for a guy like that.

A Story of Cupcakes: The Genesis of My Devotion

New Haven is apparently pretty well known for its food culture. As someone who follows not one, not two, but THREE food trucks on twitter and frequently checks such social media sites for their locations, I think I would have to agree. Oh, plus, we have 5 frozen yogurt stores within a 2 mile radius of one another. The fact that all of them are still currently open and operating probably says something about New Haven.

One of the best trucks, and the one I probably stalk the most is the Sugar Bakery cupcake truck. Heck, I don't even have to stalk them because I have their schedule memorized by heart. I've even gone above and beyond cupcakes and have had ordered cakes via phone from their bakery to pickup on the truck when its in town. While I know a lot of people are obsessed with cupcakes for the simple fact they're mini-cakes and so hip, these are legit some of the best cupcakes I've ever had. I've gone to a variety of other cupcake shops and trucks whose cupcakes while good, weren't mindblowing. They honestly weren't that much better from like, a Betty Crocker mix or something I could make (as in, my cupcakes are on par with Betty Crocker or worse). Sugar Bakery is the sole exception.

Clockwise from top left: Pumpkin Cheesecake, Tiramisu, Apple Pie, Carrot Cake

I can vividly remember the first time I realized Sugar Bakery cupcakes were special. It was summer 2012. The truck was brand new and I had just ordered a sherbet cupcake because it was late in the day and not many other flavors were remaining. This was the second cupcake I was trying after having tried some other one (probably cheesecake) that was pretty damn good. Now, when you think of sherbet, you think of that distinctive cool, sweet fruitiness that's light and not too dense. How could a cupcake possibly encapsulate that? Taking the cupcake out of its box, I fully expected to be disappointed with excessively sweet sugar and no sherbet. Instead, a whole new world of glorious tastes and cupcakes entered. IT ACTUALLY TASTED LIKE A GODDAMN SHERBET ICE CREAM. It obviously wasn't cold, but it was SO much like sherbet that if ice cream was room-temperature and cake-like, this would have been it. This was an entire new revelation. An entire new standard upon which all cupcakes would be compared to. If a sherbet cupcake was possible, a sherbet cupcake that truly captured all the essence of that sweet ice cream and its picture-esque summer time beaches, swim suits, flip flops and sun-kissed hair, there were no limits in what we as a human race could achieve.

White Chocolate Raspberry

It is because of that sherbet cupcake, I have no qualms about buying more than one cupcake when I see that truck. While it is no longer summer and sherbet has retired till the next summer, Sugar Bakery's fall cupcakes are better than any pumpkin beer or pumpkin latte you could get anywhere.

Apple Pie