SuperEggplant

Bake on

Posted on March 21, 2007 by mariko

I just wrote a review for Candy Addict on a recipe for Leftover Easter Candy Cake, but it’s just so tasty that I decided to discuss it here as well.

I know, it doesn’t look that pretty, but trust me, it’s delicious! It’s essentially a pound cake (the sucker has 2 sticks of buttah in it) with leftover candy mixed in. You want to be careful to pick decent candies. Nobody wants to bite into some gummy jellybean wedged inside a cake, after all. I used mostly chocolates, but I felt it was my duty to include some marshmallow Peeps as well. If you go to the Candy Addict review, there’s a link to the recipe and some more information about the cake, too.

Posted in baking | 10 Comments

no need to knead!

Posted on March 20, 2007 by mariko

Okay, so I am definitely the last person in the universe to try the no-knead bread, but I thought you had to have a Dutch oven to properly make it! Last week, though, an article in our local newspaper indicated I could use Pyrex or enamel, so I had no more excuses. Let me first confess that I am not a bread purist. I hate kneading dough. If my Kitchen Aid stand mixer can do the kneading for me, why should I get my hands all sticky? Also, I am short, so I have to stand on a stool in order to get enough leverage on the dough to knead somewhat efficiently. Lastly, I am weak and possess flabby arms. No kneading for me!

This no-knead bread is stinkin’ incredible. IT LOOKS LIKE A REAL LOAF OF BREAD. And guess what else? IT TASTES LIKE A REAL LOAF OF BREAD. It’s no wonder this recipe has made its rounds among all the food bloggers in the world! It is so easy and has an incredible payoff. What more could a person ask?

I took some of this bread over to our friends’ house and was asked, “Where did you buy that bread?” I MADE IT, AND I DID NOT KNEAD. I see many, many loaves of no-knead bread in my future.
To read more about no-knead bread, please visit Megan at Not Martha. She has extensive information about it. And for the record, I used King Arthur all-purpose flour that I purchased at Trader Joe’s (I also got my rapid-rise yeast at Trader Joe’s). My Pyrex casserole was too small, so I ended up using my Chantal pot, and it worked just fine.

Posted in baking | 24 Comments

at least other people are productive

Posted on March 18, 2007 by mariko

Well, I haven’t done anything crafty for quite some time, but thank goodness I have friends who are still productive! Action Hero Melissa whipped up a great Built by Wendy coat with some superbuzzy fabric. I made her put it on so I could take a photo of it.

It’s fully lined, too! Rock on, Melissa!
And another Melissa is now my Canadian Connection:

My melasma thanks you!

Posted in sewing | 10 Comments

cakes and more

Posted on March 15, 2007 by mariko

We’re gearing up for a big superbuzzy update (there will probably be some stuff up on Friday), but I am still without my main computer. The good thing, though, is that my brother is “fixing” it for me. When we lived in California, and I experienced computer problems, I would always call him in a panic and ask for advice, and the first thing he would say to me was, “I told you to buy a Mac.” Next he would say, “What do you want me to do about it? I’m in Portland.” Now that I am in Portland, I can call him and make him come over or take the computer over to him.
But anyway, I was going to talk about Megan’s birthday cakes! She threw herself a party to celebrate her 40th, so my brother and I flew down to join in the fun. She ordered three cakes from Delessio!

This is the Chocolate Tower Cake. It is super impressive looking! It’s quite chocolatey, but I thought the other chocolate cake (the Malted Vanilla Cake) tasted better.

Lemon Decadence Cake. Nowhere in the description on the Delessio site does it say that this cake is smeared with coconut. Well, IT IS, so I was unable to eat it. Coconut lovers enjoyed the cake, though.

I didn’t get a photo of just the Vanilla Malted Cake. It was delicious! The chocolate flavor was much stronger in this cake than in the Chocolate Tower Cake, and the blobs of vanilla buttercream complemented the chocolate very nicely. It tasted kind of mocha-ey, for some reason.
So anyway, we hung out and ate cake and met many nice people and did some freak dancing (ha ha, just kidding), and Sunday we continued to just take it easy and hang out. The weather in SF was absolutely gorgeous! We had a lovely brunch at Suppenk

Posted in food | 8 Comments

planetary juju

Posted on March 13, 2007 by mariko

San Francisco was fun (man, the weather was incredible), and I have more photos of cakes to share with you, but it’s been one of those weeks already–yesterday was spent in the emergency room all day with Peter (he had a kidney stone!) and today some dll file went missing on my computer and caused computer havoc (my brother is here now installing a new hard drive). I don’t even want to think about what might happen tomorrow! In the meantime, here’s a photo of Megan with a couple of her birthday cakes:

Posted in candy/chocolate | 9 Comments

skippin’ town

Posted on March 9, 2007 by mariko

Clearly I need a better system! It just happened that UPS and USPS converged on me today, and I hadn’t caught up with some other boxes, either. Sigh. Anyway, all these boxes mean we’re going to have a pretty fun update at superbuzzy next week! In the meantime, my brother and I are skipping town and heading to San Francisco for the weekend to celebrate our friend Megan’s 40th birthday. Yes, it’s the Megan who defeated breast cancer a couple years ago. There’s going to be loads of cake (from Delessio!), so it’s going to be a lot of fun, though probably low key, since we’re old and also because my brother just caught that super nasty cold. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Posted in General | 4 Comments

mini pudding

Posted on March 8, 2007 by mariko

I was at the giant Asian supermarket today buying candy, and I found some matcha pudding cups. It was a foil bag, so I couldn’t see the individual pudding cups. I figured the package probably contained two or three cups. Imagine my surprise (and glee) when I discovered it contained these teeny little cups.

This contains about a spoonful of pudding, and by pudding, I don’t mean the kind Americans are used to but the Asian type, which is more gelatinous and solid (yet flaccid). It was quite delicious (wasteful, but delicious).

Posted in candy/chocolate | 10 Comments

needlin’ around

Posted on March 6, 2007 by mariko

Ay, caramba! It has been a long while since I have posted! I’ve been so busy packing up orders that I really haven’t done any crafting or anything else remotely interesting to share with you. The other day, though, I had to help my mother with some errands, which proved rather fruitful for me, cuz I got to have tasty udon and snatch some Japanese craft books.
Here’s my mother enjoying her udon:

And here are my noodles. It’s gobo ten, which is burdock root tempura with udon.

We ate at Hakatamon, which is inside the Uwajimaya supermarket in Beaverton. This is also the location of Kinokuniya books. Woohoo! Oh, and here’s another tip–I found one lonely tube of the magic pink lip balm!
I didn’t purchase any sewing books, but I did pick up a couple books on handwork. I’m not sure why I got these, since I never do any handwork and know very little about it, but maybe I can learn!
This one is full of little cross stitch designs:

Here’s a sample page from it:

The ISBN is 4-579-11106-0
I also got a sampler book of embroidery stitches:

I know nothing about embroidery, but this book has really good photos, so I figure it will be an excellent reference if I ever take up handwork.
A sample page:

ISBN 4-529-02401-6

Posted in other crafting | 11 Comments

bring it on

Posted on February 27, 2007 by mariko

We don’t have the superbuzzy blog going just yet, so you’ll have to put up with some announcements here! We just got in some really great stuff, and it’s up and for sale. We didn’t do a newsletter this time, but we’re not trying to be sneaky or anything; we’re going to try to post new items to superbuzzy intermittently rather than all at once. We hope that takes some pressure off of our customers and also off of us!
So, there’s some great midweight fabric that’s ideal for skirts, jackets, tablecloths, tote bags, you name it!

How great are these elephants? I got some in orange, and I’m thinking about making a Japanese-style apron! Oh, wait, elephants on an apron=who’s the big elephant in the apron? Who cares, the elephants are cute!
And how about these trees. They come in a number of different colorways:

Any house hunters out there?

And late last week we added some nice cotton, folky fabrics. Kelly blogged about them here. Here’s just one example:

Cool border on the edges!
We’ve got more coming, including more bags from Shinzi Katoh, so stay tuned!

Posted in zip | 9 Comments

striking gold

Posted on February 25, 2007 by mariko

For those of you living in the Portland area, hey! It’s Yukon Gold fries season at Burgerville! The Yukon Golds take the sting out of the removal of the sweet potato fries. Peter has gone on a low-sodium diet, which complicates things a bit, but the staff at Burgerville was very accommodating and made sure no extra flakes of salt touched his food.

Posted in food | 11 Comments

Bake on

no need to knead!

at least other people are productive

cakes and more

planetary juju

skippin’ town

mini pudding

needlin’ around

bring it on

striking gold

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