Japantown

We were in Japantown the other day and walked by one of the many restaurants. Nick reminded me of the time he commented, "Wow, they have to make that food everyday and put it in the window....seems like a waste." To which I replied, "you know it's plastic, right?"

Anyways, this is very common in Japanese restaurants. And apparently we were the cause - and by "we", I mean Americans. After we bombed the heck out of Japan back in WWII, us and the Europeans decided we should probably help them rebuild (how nice....). When "we" arrived there, we couldn't read the menus. So the Japanese restaurant owners had wax models made to show Americans what was on the menu. That way the Americans could pick the food based on what it looked like.

Now, it has become a HUGE industry. Restaurants have been known to custom order an entire window display - upwards of 1 million yen ($10k). I actually had a mini set of sushi when I was little. It was fun to play with. I kinda wish I still had it, it would make for some fun magnets.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Martha Stewart's Lemon Meringue cupcakes!

Delicious! They are bit tedious because they require 3 different major components - cupcake, lemon curd and meringue frosting. But totally worth it, although the torched meringue is really the best part :-)

It's like a little mini pie right in your mouth!

Try it, you'll like it.

Virtual Choir

This seems fitting for Easter Sunday. A healthy dose of singing.

For the most part, I watch stupid youtube videos online. I came across this one today, which is much better than most of the other stuff out there.

It's pretty incredible. A conductor/song writer, Eric Whitacre, created a video of him conducting the song and added some piano. Then he let people download the sheet music and video for free, record themselves singing and send it back. Then they mashed it all together.

Here's his website: http://ericwhitacre.wordpress.com/

Happy Easter!

I made a birthday cake for my friend, Lisa. It was red velvet with whipped cream, cream cheese frosting - pretty tasty in my opinion.

I actually made a dozen red velvet cupcakes and used the other half of the batter to make 2 mini cakes. Initially it was going to be a 2 layer cake. But I got ambitious and tried to make it 4 layers. There were "technically" 4 layers....but it wasn't too pretty. I think I'll have to try the dental floss technique next time....it's super tough to cut a 0.5" layer into 2-0.25" layers.

But it was good :-)

Here's a picture of the cake after we pulled the candles out.

And after we pulled a few slices out.

2 thick layers and 2 skinny layers.

Weekly Websudoku

EASY (3min 28sec)

http://www.websudoku.com/?challenge=7zm04yjj

Easy Puzzle 402,739,020

MEDIUM (8min 50sec)

http://www.websudoku.com/?challenge=e6zefbyt

Medium Puzzle 3,374,369,480

Sunday mornings at the buck

There is a Starbucks about 2ish miles from our house.

On Sundays we walk to Starbucks with Mochi and have ourselves a little breakfast. We even bring some snacks for Mochi. It's quite delightful.

This past Sunday, on our way home, we encountered this fine, self assured man. Over 6 feet tall wearing a shimmery purple track suit. I love the confidence.

asdf

Osama

This is a conversation between Nick and I. A little background - Wasio is Nick's virtual, personal assistant and he works in Pakistan.

Nick: Wasio just said 'Osama's in Pakistan'

Bryn: Should we let the CIA know.....

Nick: Oh, Osama is Wasio's boss.

Turns out Osama is a very popular name in Pakistan. Nick explained to Wasio that anytime we hear the name Osama, we automatically think Bin Laden.