To Appease My Sister

Just so my sister who lives all the way across the country will stop bothering me - here is a blog post.

Hello! I'm really frickin' busy and I have a paper due on Wednesday.  Check back Thursday if you actually want an interesting post - one that includes stories of running and volunteering and falling and basset hounds.

Good-bye!

Here is a picture of me with said sister... she is the skinny one with pink hair - I am the not skinny one with boring brown hair.

Although I Ran a Race This Past Weekend...

I won't be posting about it today. 

Instead I am going to spend the next day or so attempting to re-repress memories which have been brought back to light with alarming clarity after having been successfully sequestered to the back of my brain for nearly 10 years.

Oh and in case you didn't know - I was living in New York City on 9/11 and watched as the towers fell - and that's all I will say about that.

nuf said

Grrrr...

My car overheated yesterday. 

I had to get it towed. 

And now I am annoyed.

Grrr...

Raspberry Rose Mascarpone Macarons

Otherwise known as RRMMs... haha - nah we'll just call them yummy. 

Do you know Tartelette?  She's awesome.  I use her basic macaron recipe and rely on her for inspiration in my baking endeavors.  And she's super sweet, I emailed her once asking about a madeline recipe and she got right back to me - I like that in a blogger. 

I made the cookie shells last night - I think I may have over mixed the batter though, it was a little thin.  Here they are, piped onto parchment paper, resting before they go into the oven:

There's really not much to the cookie shell itself - just egg whites, ground almonds and sugar...  Well that and a healthy dose of food coloring ;o)

It's the filling that starts to get interesting... I filled mine with raspberry preserves and an icing made up of mascarpone cheese, butter, sugar and a splash of rosewater (oh yeah, and more food coloring).  Here they are ready to be smushed together:



Ideally you'd let them set a for a day or so with the filling so that the flavors can mesh and meld and do whatever the heck flavors do, but I'm impatient and took them in to work today.  They went over pretty well, it's lunchtime and there's only 1 left!

Overall, you can't taste the rosewater, the icing is too sweet for my liking, and the cookie shells were a little flat and fragile, but I'm getting there!  It's a learning experience and one of these days I'm sure they'll come out like the ones I had bought in Paris.

Speaking of, I'll leave you with a shot of the one's available at Laduree (where I first had them ever):

 

Blackcurrant Violet is my personal fave!

Frustrated

Dear Server,

Why do you keep rejecting my pictures?  They're from the same source that most of the other one's are from - so why reject them now?  I woke up hoping to write a blog about something, but if I can't post my photos with it, so why bother?  I sincerely hope that you have this situation rectified prior to my coming home from work so that I can write the post which has formed in my mind then.

Sincerely,

A Frustrated Blogger

A Different Kind of Mani

A couple weeks ago I decided to try something new.

Sally Hansen makes these new Nail Polish Strips which pretty much are like stickers for your fingernails.  The kit is about $10 (depending where you buy them) and comes with:

16 stickies, a mini file/ buffer and a cuticle stick.

Pretty much you push back your cuticles with the stick, then buff your nails, then apply the best fitting sticky.  They make the stickies really long, but they tend to break naturally at the end of your nail - you then just take the file and smooth down the edge.  It's really pretty easy - I applied most of them while sitting in traffic on my way home from work.  They are supposed to last up to 10 days - mine lasted about 7 before I picked them all off.  You're also supposed to use nail polish remover to get rid of them, which I did not.  I think that if I had actually been spending quality time applying them, instead of just in the car, they would have lasted around 10 says, but what happened was - I did not get the edges down as best I could so they slowly were starting to peel up and driving me bonkers.  Oh well, I now know for next time I feel like splurging on them.  The color I used was "Blue Ice" and they come in all sorts of crazy colors and patterns and sparkles.  They're fun.  Try them.  I dare you.

My one beef with them though is that although they come with 16 stickies, you can't save them to fix eventual chips - they start drying out as soon as you open the package, and so there is no real way to fix a chip.