Waterfalls

Welcome

We're pretty well settled into the new apartment, aside from a few piles that got shoved to the side with an "I'll take care of that later." The boys love the place and are adorably outgoing, watching me leave in the morning from the stairs. Eli still sleeps on my pillow at night, something I was afraid he'd stop doing with the shock of a new home. He still comes up to me at 11 every night and meows at me until I go to bed (usually not until much later).

Now to plan the housewarming....

No Teavana for me

I was at the mall in my home town this morning, and visited the new Teavana shop that opened where my Häagen Dazs used to be.

I'd rather they kept the Häagen Dazs.

I have no problems with nice tea; I've been ordered from Revolution Tea for some time. Teavana was giving out samples of a couple teas and when I asked how they sell it (loose? bag?), the salesgirl roped me into the store and showed me the gigantic canisters holding the loose teas. She'd open a lid and then fan it in my direction. Yeah, smells good. Then she keeps firing her schpeel at me, while waving a huge can lid, about how they sell it at a certain price (i.e. $12.00 per 2 oz), but generally sell them in 1/2 lb canisters. Uh, how about you put the per pound price on the canister then? You don't need to be an expert in math to see why you're trying to make the price seem lower.

I said I preferred my tea in individual infuser bags and she got hostile with me, "So you're saying you like canned vegetables? You know, people are getting concerned with the preservatives in their food nowadays." I said that I'd been buying organic teas from Revolution for some time and I enjoy the convenience of the single serving. She saw that I was annoyed, and said, "But we have easy ways for you to make a single serving with loose teas!" I said no thanks, and walked out, shaking my head. If she hadn't gotten so uppity with me, I may have gone for some of the tea, which was very nice, but I didn't want to have someone lecture me like a timeshare salesman to guilt me into buying some very expensive tea.

Countdown

We have fifteen days until we officially move.

I have not packed a thing.

I love frozen yogurt

I have been on the hunt for the perfect frozen yogurt.

Pinkberry popped into the world a few years ago, and I didn't go because I didn't see what the big fuss was about. Then I went to visit Jennie and Julie and went to a frozen yogurt place on campus, where the yogurt was pretty good, kinda like soft serve ice cream, and started my quest for good frozen yogurt.

First I went to Oko in Park Slope. Aside from serving all natural frozen yogurt, the store also encourages you to think of ways to be more eco-friendly, with factoids posted on their bamboo walls. Their packaging is 100% biodegradable and compostable too! The first time I had their wildberry flavor, which turned out too sour, and I tried Josh's orange creamsicle, which was less sour, but still too sour to enjoy the whole thing. Tonight, we went again; Josh went for the walk because he didn't like his yogurt last time and I went with the intention of trying their plain yogurt flavor to compare with the other places I've tried. Turns out it's great, and Josh changed his mind about disliking frozen yogurt.

I also tried Pinkberry a couple weeks ago and got addicted. It's pretty close to my office, so it's easy to say, "I'm having a bad day, let's go spend $5.50 on frozen yogurt." I've restricted myself to one visit to Pinkberry per week, and I'm now having less iced lattes from Dunkin Donuts for my weekly treat as a result. I always get the medium original Pinkberry flavor with banana, strawberry, and mango on top. Because they charge so much for toppings, it makes more sense to order the medium, which includes 3 toppings. I learned that the first time I went, when I ordered a small with one topping and paid just a bit less than my friend. And I ran out faster and was sad. Pinkberry has two other flavors as well: green tea and coffee. I don't like green tea and the idea of coffee flavored yogurt grosses me out, plus these flavors are more expensive than the plain one.

Another place opened up nearby, called Yogurt Land, where you serve yourself and pay by the ounce. I went during the grand opening and served myself some cookies and cream, about a small sized portion at Pinkberry, and topped it with mochi, and paid $2.00. They have 16 flavors at one time and it's nice to pick out exactly what you want.

Pinkberry is my favorite followed by Oko. I guess I'll stop with the weekly Jamba Juice visits and go with frozen yogurt for the summer.

Productive weekend

We hate our apartment. My upstairs neighbor is noisy and dirty. My downstairs neighbor his smelly and dirty. My floors sag and my bedroom floor has a big hole that I covered with a box. In the kitchen, you can get stuck to the edge of a board that's starting to splinter off if your pant lets are long (all of my pants). And let's not get started about the assorted bugs that dirty neighbors attract. Thank you, craphole apartment, for introducing me to roaches and water bugs (aka gigantic roaches). It's time to move on!

Despite the fact that our lease doesn't end until July, we've been looking at apartment listings for months so we could figure out how much we could spend to get a bigger place in an area that was safe and offered relatively easy street parking. After defrauding one scammer (wanted a deposit check for an apartment he refused to show because the keys were supposedly with him in Maryland), I made a couple appointments for this past Saturday. The first place was really promising and the second was a total dump with holes punched in walls, graffiti on walls and doors, footprints on doors from being kicked open, etc. And the previous tenants left all their food behind, so there were roaches. The landlords wanted the new tenants in by May 1st and the tenants would be responsible for fixing up the place and pay for the expenses with some sketchy deal where you deduct the total amount of renovation over 12 months.

We were all set on the first apartment because it was so new and gorgeous, but after Sunday brunch, I got a call back from one of my inquiries that I gave up on, thinking the apartment had gone to someone else. She wanted to know some more about us and after she figured we were normal people, she offered to show us the place in the afternoon. Poor Josh, after a day out on Saturday, he just wanted to play Xbox in his sweats. He hadn't been in them more than half an hour when I told him we had to jump on a viewing. After we saw the place, which is more than we ever thought we'd get, Josh didn't mind losing a couple hours of Xbox time.

I'm so excited to move, because I love our new apartment, but then I have to remember that we have two more months (technically) in our current place. Maybe if I speed the move through, I'll be able to spend most of June in my new place.....

I'm coco-nuts!

Yet again, I broke my rule for bringing baked goods to work. I normally bring only tried and true recipes to the office, but for my boss's birthday, I wanted to do something special. I decided on a big, old-fashioned coconut cake. This is not something I wanted to practice beforehand because it's expensive to produce and makes a BIG cake. I dorkily recorded the process of putting the cake together, just in case you want to be bored.



Here's the first layer, on top of a foil wrapped cardboard cake round. The cake smelled so good because of the coconut mixed into the batter and it was hard not to cut a piece for myself. I had to be satisfied with the bit I cut off of the bottom to make the layer level.



Then came a layer of cream cheese frosting, which was surprisingly not too sweet. The problem I ran into while frosting was trying to figure out how much was enough. I didn't want to put in too much, because the top layer's weight might make it ooze out the sides, and at the same time, I didn't want to have a lot of leftover frosting.



And there's the top layer in place. It looks like a gigantic whoopie pie.



The cake isn't naked anymore! Turns out I could've put some more frosting in the middle because I had a lot of frosting left over.



I didn't want to make that big a mess or risk dropping the cake, so I gently pressed shredded coconut onto the sides. I probably could've gone with a heavier application, but I figured I was already dropping enough coconut.

It was a little taller than 4", so I had some problems with my cake box, which is 10 x 10 x 4. I just smushed the top icing down a little and put parchment between it and the box top. Thankfully, the cake was a huge success and fed 20 people! I'm definitely making this cake again.