Birds, cupcakes

The bird that Boy caught.
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Boy and Girl managed to sneak this bird through the kitchen door when I wasn't looking.  I thought I heard a car door shut, so I went to the office room and even then I didn't notice the bird!  Was it alive when they brought it in?  How long had they been playing with it?  George buried him in the grub-filled compost. 

On a more delicious note: I tried making some Mocha Stout Cupakes this past Wednesday.  I used a recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cake I found over here.  One of the local breweries does a mocha stout, so it seemed a natural, possibly superior, beer for the cake.  In the end I was left feeling, "Meh."  Some changes I made to the reicpe, aside from beer substitution, were using unsweetend cocoa and Dutch process cocoa (which resulted in halving the amount of baking soda called for - check it out: baking science), and using 1/2 cup less sugar than called for.  I was aiming for a less sweet cake that would let the stout shine through.  What I got was a cake that was less sweet but just sort of tasted like it had more sour cream than it actually did.  I think that in addition to reducing the sugar, the cocoa should've also been reduced - it's a mocha stout, duh.  Better luck next time.

Meh

It's true, most of my energy focuses on bagels. My boss is great vat of ideas but takes her sweet time implementing them so I've been trying to be really excited and really pushy about things at work. Next up: homemade organic marshmallow, the gateway to rice crispy treats. Other foods of note recently include some mediocre granola I made for breakfast this morning, the lemon tart slated for this afternoon and the earl gray cupcakes from last week. I went to the extent of using cake flour for them and was really pleased with how they turned out - light, airy, one may even say delicate. The earl gray flavor wasn't overwhelming and they weren't too sugary. The first few I brought home I just dusted with powdered sugar because George is never keen on the buttercream and after he, Yannick and James tried them we (me, Yannick) decided they really needed the buttercream which made them all the silkier.

I have yet to find a replacement for my bike and while I have a Schwinn to tide me over it's a completely different style of riding. Slowly I'm feeling more and more defeated, strangely outcast and sad about my lack of road bike, there's a fantastic freedom in zipping around efficiently and I miss it. Craigslist isn't helping and ebay makes me feel crazy and apparently everyone else in the Bay Area is looking for a 52cm road frame. Soon I may bite the bullet and just buy myself a *new* bike.

Yesterday I finished the back of the sweater I started, today I work on the left and right front. I knit and elephant and a piece of pie.

We're mostly exhausted and stretched just a little too thin. We'll be taking a quick trip to Portland mid-May with Liz and Yannick which can only be fun, exciting, refreshing, and exhausting. Liz and I are looking forward to rollerskating.