Another Late Post: Easter Picnic

Back in April, the local Lolita group decided to have a big picnic and Easter egg hunt at the park. I made "bird's nest" cupcakes to go with the spring theme.

Photo courtesy Gigaventure

Read on for coordinate and more cupcake pictures.

ComCom 2012: My First Visit to Mexico!

In March, the Tijuana Lolitas had BABY, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT as a special guest for the Tijuana anime convention, ComCom! I decided this would be my first trip to Mexico--sounds like a pretty good reason, right?

Me and the BABY SF shop staff!

Read on for outfits and a little more about my exciting trip.

A Victorian Picnic

Yesterday the local Lolita group had a picnic at a park in the historical district--it was a lovely grassy area surrounded by restored Victorian houses. I made chai-flavored cupcakes for the event, and even managed to drag my husband along for fun.

Outfit and more about the cupcakes after the jump.

Please Don't Kill Me, Banana

So for the last year or so I've been pretty convinced I'm allergic to bananas. Last spring, I started noticing that my throat would seize up and start hurting after eating a raw banana, and my lungs would feel like I was having an asthma attack. For science, I decided to experiment on myself. I would go a few more days, try another banana, and then when it happened again I'd give the rest of the banana to my roommate and go cry in the corner because bananas were one of my favorite fruits.

To be fair, I've never actually gotten professionally tested for a latex or banana allergy (they're related) so it could all be in my head, but ever since then I've avoided raw bananas. Lucky for me, something about the way bananas are on a chemical level means that when they are cooked, the allergen breaks down and doesn't cause an adverse reaction. Thank goodness I can still eat banana bread!

You may be wondering what this exposition on my crazy body has to do with the picture of funny-looking cookies. Obviously what I'm really leading up to are baked goods with banana in them. Since I can only have banana in a fully cooked form without wanting to tear out my lungs and throw them out the window, I find ways to slip bananas into my baking as often as I can. My husband gets scared whenever I eat any form of banana, but so far so good!

The other half of this story is the 3.5 ounces of ground cardamom I ordered off of Amazon. After deciding that the prices at the grocery store for cardamom were ridiculous, my husband looked up other alternatives, and Amazon delivered. I now have a rather large jar full of cardamom in my spice cupboard, and not enough chai-flavored recipes. I'm making chai cupcakes this weekend for a picnic, but today I decided to make these bizarre little treats...

These hilarious-looking cookies are amazingly tasty. They are surprisingly healthy, too! I got them from another blog, a healthy food blog (how unlike mine...) called burpees in the kitchen. You can find the recipe here. Seriously, go try them. They are all full of chai and banana and chocolate and awesome.

(Goodness, and here I thought I would never get around to having a post that warranted a "healthy" tag. What have I done!)

Happy Leap Day~

It's the 29th of February, which some people consider a pretty special day. For me, it's just an excuse to pretend it's another holiday. My watch thinks it's March 1st, but I guess it isn't sophisticated enough to know that it's a Leap Year. The whole concept of a Leap Year is pretty silly to me, but they had to make it work somehow. And now we have a special day that only comes every four years. Maybe this can be an excuse for more cupcakes.

A leap year is a year containing one additional day in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. (Wikipedia.)

I'm going to use today as an excuse to catch up on all of the outfits I wore in January and February. And tomorrow, I'll have some updates on commissions and a bit of exciting (to me, anyway) news!

 Four outfits past the jump...

Peanut Butter Cupcakes & Green Smoothies (Not Together, Don't Worry)

Yesterday I made Peanut Butter cupcakes for my husband's "work anniversary" (celebrating his first year at the company) since peanut butter is one of his favorite flavors.

I made two different frostings--chocolate fudge, and marshmallow--so that there were both "Peanut Butter Cup" and "Fluffer-nutter" cupcakes to choose from. He said that the chocolate ones were more popular, but I personally liked the marshmallow frosting the best. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't make them any prettier, but neither of the frostings were appropriate for a piping bag. 

Unrelated to cupcakes, I've been drinking a lot of green smoothies. My friend made something he called "Monster Juice" (to get his kids to drink it) with pineapple and spinach, which I thought was pretty good. I made my own version, which I know put together a couple of times a week. Recipe under the cut!

Stop Internet Censorship

In honor and solidarity of the widespread Internet blackout, I'm spreading awareness of the idiotic SOPA and PIPA acts. For more information, check out AmericanCensorship.org, or use Wikipedia's only open webpage to contact your representative.