Marco Polo

We have a guy here at the office named Marco Perreta. It makes for funny moments as most of us are geeks and yell out "POLO!" when he is called after.

I love my job!

"Marco?"
"POOOOOOOOLLLLLLOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

Good times!

Insomnia

Why is it always the nights I decided to go to bed early and wake up early that I can't sleep?

Paradox.

Cupcakes

I just made an awesome chickpeas salad for dinner. I was orginally supposed to make a pasta salad, but i didn't have any canned tuna (and I like to have a protein in my meals!) so i went for chickpeas instead and skipped the pasta altogether. For a last minute whipped up meal, it was pretty good! I also didn't follow any recipe, so i'm pretty proud of the little cook in me! ;)

Speaking of cooking, i have yet shared the cupcakes i made last week-end! At christmas i got this book from my aunt:

And I had never baked before but was extremely excited 'cause i have quite the sweet tooth! So the first cupcakes i made, i kinda cheated and made mint-filled brownie cupcakes. They were delicious but required no icing which didn't make them "full" cupcakes.

So last week-end was my first attempt at baking cupcakes from start to finish from scratch including the icing and....decorating it! Yes, because i never do anything simply, i decided i also wanted to learn how to decorate cupcakes So I had bought a piping bag as well as a basic kit of 4 tips and some food coloring.

I decided to make the ‘devils food chocolate’ cupcake because I love chocolate, and I had all the ingredients! Unfortunately, for the icing recommended for the cupcake (chocolate ganache) I was missing corn syrup. So I decided to make the ‘fluffy vanilla icing’ instead and figured that chocolate cake with vanilla icing is always good!

Here is what my cupcake is supposed to be:

Here are my cupcakes (without the damn chocolate ganache of course!):

The icing was a bit difficult as it required an electric beater, which I do not have. However, I own a whip and an electric blender. Turns out, that’s not the same! The electric blender goes too fast and I hurt my wrist with the whip. I did manage though by alternating between the two, depending on the recommended speed (high = electric beater, low/medium = hand whip). That icing took work which only made it more delicious! ;)

My kitchen after the 'great icing of 2010':

That same night I brought over my cupcakes and the icing at my friend Stephanie’s place and we ate too (after putting the icing in the microwave and melting it and then whipping it back into shape!). On the Sunday, I decided to finally ice my cupcakes (which I had stored as is) and therefore decorate them! So I tinted half my icing in purple and covered most cupcakes with white and proceeded to explore what kind of shape the tips I had made. Of course, a lot of my cupcakes are terribly ugly due to the fact I had no clue what I was doing! But that flower one is kinda pretty! ;)

To reward myself, I bought myself flowers! Who needs a man? Especially one that says he can't buy you flowers 'cause your cat will eat them! HA! Proved him wrong! :P

AC!

So I'm a bit late, but we just had a heat-wave here in Montreal. The heatwave is still happening i believe, but the temperature aren't as high anymore. As much as i wanna be a California Girl, 43oC is TOO HIGH! So I gave in a bought AC. Yes, i didn't have AC. Not everyone has AC around here as we have generally a pretty cool weather with a few hot days in the summer. We just deal with fans. I mean, some people have AC, but it's not a standard like in Cali.

It was 33 in my house, so I decided to get AC. Even with it I was only able to bring it down to 29 during the heatwave. We got some pouring rain friday so the air chilled a bit and then i managed to get a nice 25. YAY!

My poor Charlotte was sticking her tongue out like a dog trying to cool herself. I felt terrible. The poor thing is covered a fur coat during a heatwave! I don't think i've introduced Charlotte eh? Next post!