Longest. Post. Ever!

I'm starting to feel like this is a real blog, mostly because I've been doing rather large posts recently (well for me anyway). Besides that, I kinda just realized today that I leave for Ireland in 13 days.....nervous..... Anyway, let me catch you all up on my last week or so. It seems as though whenever I'm upset for some reason (my hair falling out, my schedule getting messed up, etc.) I don't post. And then the pictures build up and then I have 5 folders of photos accumulated throughout the week, and then they just become clutter on my desktop and I never used them; not this time. I am doing this post TODAY even though 30% of the stuff in it happened over a week ago. Okay, here we go!

Friday 9/18

Last Friday, I went to a casino in Dover. Instead of just walking around the floor, I managed to find a little food place (not the most comfortable seating but ehh). Now it may look like there are plenty of wonderful things to eat, but that's not necessarily true. Besides the gelato and pretzels, there wasn't much to eat up at the register; none of the breads in the picture were for sale. Speaking of which, why is there a bakery in the middle of a casino? Since when do people say "Yeah, after all this gambling I'd sure like a muffin and fresh baked baguette"?

After a bit of scampering around the hotel part of the building, I managed to find a decent seating area, accompanied by the world most comfortable couch. Nothing food related here; at all.

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Friday 9/25

When I first showed this picture to Ashley, she had a confused look on her face. I told her I made pancakes, and she asked what that nasty cakey, chocolate looking stuff was on top. Then I told her it was made of salt dough! That stuff was alot of fun to work with, and time just flew because by the time I was done it was 11:00. So now I know if I ever need to kill time, make salt dough :D

Later on that day, Franiel thought it would be important for me to learn how to cook "cuban beans". I personally think its because he wants me to cook for him more often -.- either way, the recipe was shockingly simple: half an onion, quartered, the actual beans, olive oil, cilantro paste (which, I checked the label, didn't actually have any cilantro in it), half a green pepper, half a red pepper, and a packet of Goya seasoning.

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Same Night

When I got to Trump Plaza, it was around 12:30, and I was kinda hungry. So I did what any food blogger in this situation would do; order room service! Okay, so I'm going to say this before I begin, this omelet wasn't nearly as gross as it looks. I was kinda shocked too when I saw the mound of cheese on top, but once I took it off it actually tasted good. It was accompanied by hash browns and three pieces of fruit.

As of now, I am officially blaming the crappy lighting for how this food looks. Maybe it's a problem with my camera, but the Apple Pie I ordered did not look anywhere near this gross. Once the woman brought it up, she mentioned that I should've gotten ice cream with it too. And that's how my nice before bed snack turned into constantly thinking about ice cream.

The next morning, yes those are frosted flakes, I ordered breakfast. I really like Frosted Flakes, so I kinda had to order them. I was a little surprised that only one box comes in a order costing $3, but they were still good.

Along with the cereal I got a bowl of mixed fruit, which I thought was going to be berries but ended up being melons. Because the bowl was melon, I encountered a common problem of mine; eating honeydew. I rarely like to eat it, and not because its bad, but because whenever I eat it, I am always served the hard, unripened portion of the fruit. That's the gross part, and that's what happened here.

To complete the meal (Yes, "Fatty's Breakfast" continues), I ordered French Toast. I only managed to finish half because of the other food I had eaten plus two glasses of Orange Juice. They were pretty good, just they never seem to bring enough syrup for me /:

Later on in the day, I went over to the mall. Among lots of stores I went in, I only managed to take a picture in "It's Sugar". Of course, me being me, I never took pictures of the candy I bought; it was all gone by the time I got back to my room O.O

(This is my favorite photo of all of the ones in this post) After all the buying and walking, I ended up going out the this little outdoor area where you could stare out into the ocean. I brought a soft pretzel with me, and the damn birds wouldn't leave me alone long enough to enjoy it! So I think to myself, maybe if I throw them a small piece in the other direction, they'll leave. Nope. Even more birds swooped down and crowded by me. This made me think of Bridgid because she would have been terrified if this was her lol!

Later that night, we all went to dinner at Cuba Libre. Here is my problem with this restaurant; dim lighting. Its bright enough so you can see your food clearly, and the people themselves, but you cannot take pictures with an iPhone camera (with no flash!!) This is why I need a real camera.

*sigh* the things I do for this blog. When I first learned that my phone couldn't take pictures in here, I needed to find a way to show something. So I scooted a portion of the salad near the candle and managed to take an awful photo.

Mango Ice cream. ALSO! I noticed something about the bread (which they served with mango butter). It wasn't quite recognizable at first, but after about three pieces of bread, I felt somewhat sickened. I wondered what they did to the bread to make it taste like this, and then I remembered that Palmier cookies taste like this. The slightly sickening taste of cooked butter; puff pastry.

Fast forward through me getting put out of the casino, again, to the next morning when I had brunch at Roberto's. I thought they had such a nice table setting, so I decided to take a picture :D

First Plate: Two croissants, mozzarella and tomatoes, and pineapple and cantaloupe slices. All cold food, all very good. No complaints here (I hear people cheering lol).

Second Plate: Waffles with mixed berries. They even had a neat little waffle iron plate that made diamond, club, heart, and spade shapes! On top I places a few strawberries, raspberries, and hilariously small blackberries. The syrup was very light.

Third Plate: Tomato and Onion omelet. Because this was a real restaurant and not Denny's, the tomatoes were sauteed before they were added to the eggs so they didn't make a big watery mess like last time. Accompanied by more pineapple slices!

Fourth, Final Plate: Three chocolate strawberries, some gross peanut butter square thing, and a "sacher cookie" which I didn't know existed. I do not like sacher torte. At all. I think its gross and I don't know why someone would combine chocolate, apricot, and almonds and put them into a cake. I don't know why anyone would put them into a cookie either, because it was nasty.

So as you can see, this is pretty much the longest post I've ever done, but I was good, right? It took me an hour to type, it had better be good lol. So you all might also notice that I changed the layout a bit, removing the "blocky" paragraph at the end and replacing it with a centered one. I like it better. More tomorrow.

Early Mall-ing

So today, I went to the mall for a bit with Ashley. I was just waking up around 9:30 this morning (okay I don't usually take this long to get up, but I was really tired after the night before, plus I had the day off anyway so why not), and I got a knock on the door asking if I wanted to go to the mall. So, you know, why decline?? So i hurried up and got dressed, and we got a cab to white marsh mall. While there, we walked around a for a while, and I got the super expensive new Dairy Queen drink, "raspberry white tea smoothie", at $4 (no picture). The lady was like "$4.19" and I just stopped for a second. She said it again, and I came back to myself, surprised at the cost of this drink. I knew if I said I didn't want it anymore, it would turn into this big thing about "I already rung it up" and shi-stuff so I just bought the damn drink. Picture tiiiime!!!!!

Ashley, angry looking for some reason in Forever 21. We went in there the first time and it was blazing hot, but after going in again we realized it was just the cheap store saving money by now turning on the A C until 11.

So after out little mall escapade, we walked over to the avenue and got lunch (after walking around the farmers market for a while and buying devils food cupcakes), I ordered the "Apple Berry Salad". As you can see, it has Gorgonzola, frisee, candied walnuts, shredded apple, strawberries, and cranberry citrus dressing. HOMG delicious.

So then I got a burger and sweet potato fries.... let me tell you all how the waitress tried to get over on me (and I'm pissed I forgot to call her on it!!). Okay, so the burger was supposed to come with regular fries, collectively under the same price listed for the burger, but because I ordered the sweet potato fries, she put those on the plate instead. I looked on the bill and she charged both the sweet potato fries and the burger separately. Wtf? Where are my regular fries?

Ashley decided to let me photograph her little (I called it goat food) wrap. I was like, post this on your blog, and she told me to put it on mine because she doesn't run a food blog. I keep telling her she needs to get a specialty for her blog to become popular; mine is food. Hers could be like accessories or clothes or something. Ehh. I guess that's up to her.

I am sorry to say that I will not be blogging tomorrow, as I am going camping!!! I'm going to try to enjoy the outdoors and not use my cellphone at all, which means I wont even be taking pictures of my food -.- (I feel like a camera addict). Meh, I guess its not that big a deal. Oh! And I should also mention that I going to Delaware for a bit tonight, then I'm coming home tomorrow morning for the camping. More...(well I can't say tomorrow) uh....I guess Sunday or Monday.

-.- I wish these crackers had chives / crappy bagels

If only you could imagine my excitement when I discovered that I don't have class tomorrow! It's such a relief when you know you don't have to get so early it feels like night time, and then you don't have o try to stay awake during lecture because its so early, then cook for a few hours before walking a mile and a half to the bus stop, only to get home an hour and a half later. BLAH! I'm glad i got it all out lol. Okay, picture time!

So yesterday, I really felt like drinking Italian soda, and I swear I don't know any place that sells them besides restaurants, and I am not going to pay for an entire meal just for the drink. So I looked up exactly what Italian soda is; apparently its just sparkling water and vanilla syrup, both two things i have in my house. The picture above is me cooking my vanilla syrup, just thought you all should know ;D

Okay, I didn't need to be this artsy with my vanilla soda, but i liked it so much I thought I'd at least make a nice picture..

Later on in the day, I noticed that we were all out of bagels. I also remembered that I had made bagels before, and it was pretty straight forward; mix the dough, shape, proof, boil, bake. I went to get my BP232 book, but then I couldn't seem to find a recipe for any other type of bagel but plain. So I looked up an egg bagel recipe, did a bit of math, and came up with reducing the amount of water and adding 4 eggs.

They look like crap in this picture. That being said, it was only in this picture. In real life, the bagels were great, I even added a bit of corn meal to the baking sheet for added texture like the bagels at the grocery store. I cut one, and spread strawberry cream cheese on it; it was amazing. really. REALLY.

Anyway, besides that, I'm not typing much today. I made sushi in class today, went out on the boat for a bit, then I went out and got Panera Bread and Ben and Jerry's Ice cream. Both very good. However, I'm not going to share my ice cream pictures with the world; they're all mine! Also, tonight I was supposed to be watching the Grey's Anatomy premiere, but I went out for food instead. All is not lost though, as I bought an iTunes card tonight and fully intend on downloading it first thing tomorrow morning! More tomorrow ;D

Sick Bloggers Get to Eat Crackers and Vitamin Water

So a lot of things have gone awry in the past week. I haven't been posting, I'm sick, I lost all my hair, and today because I didn't go to class, I might have accidentally ruined my group's "Grand Buffet" project because I wasn't able to print off another copy with the correct measurements. I mostly feel bad about that. If I had a car, I honestly would drive down there now and give them the papers, but I don't, and no one here will take me now. Anyway, I'm trapped in my room today because I'm sick; no I don't have "swine flu", I have a sore throat. I thought I knew where I got it from, but practically everyone was sneezing yesterday in class. Either way, I'm getting back on track; its picture time.

Sometime last week, I stumbled upon a recipe for lemon poppy seed cookies, so I decided to bake some. I harassed Franiel and Ms.LPTM to no end to buy me some poppy seeds; I am so broke I cant even buy poppy seeds for myself. I need some monehh!

Just thought I'd include this because it's one of the few pictures I actually have from Garde Manger class so far; its just a Caesar salad, but I thought it was really good so I threw this one in here.

So the pictures a bit dark, but you can see what they are; on Saturday I managed to finally buy a muffin tin, so I baked some cupcakes that night. The icing looks super crappy, but that's because I couldn't find my pastry bag, and I had to use a zip lock bag with a hole cut in the bottom -.-
(notice the little chocolate chip eyes ^.^)

Okay, so this is pretty much the highlight of my week; my Disco Peacock! Okay so it wasn't actually mine, but I assembled all the melon balls. It was really fun to work on.

Last picture today, I also cut a honeydew! This one I did alone; I kept thinking the leaves looked like lays ruffle chips... the "guest chef instructor", who instructed us on how to do them, kept saying I was doing a nice job, but I couldn't help but think she was saying in her head "this looks like crap". Oh well, I like my melon!

Well, I'm gonna get off now, short post. I'm not well, and I need my rest; I just hope tomorrow everyones not too upset that I didn't bring the re-printed out papers. I guess thinking about it doesn't make a difference now. More tomorrow.

Hurray!

I've completley changed the layout of my blog, and I think for the better. This isn't an actual blog post, just a quick little paragraph to note the change. I have had the same blog layout since Dec. 08; I figured it was time for an update. I will have an actual blog post (like I usually do) up by tonight, I just really wanted to do this real quick. Well, that's all, as I 'm working like a slave in my basement today, for no apparant reason what so ever beside my mother telling me that she doesnt care that I'm on break. Byee :) Oh and btw, I'm going to allow comments starting tomorrow.