Sunday, March 29, 2009

Discupcakeaster

Not to be down on my oven, but something's going very wrong with my trusty six-minute cupcakes. Total failed batches now = 3. The first one was no mystery: I accidentally used vinegar concentrate instead of vinegar (oh NO). But last night's two? What is going ON? I'm desperate for tiny chocolate cakes and all I get are overdense, weird aftertasty dough lumps! Any suggestions?

See below for the saddest pic in the world. My sole consolation is that the cupcake wrappers match my wastebasket.


Monday, March 23, 2009

Claire and the toaster oven: a love story

Yikes! Has it been that long? I guess I was too busy making tiny muffins in my new OVEN! (*Wild applause, cheerleaders cartwheeling*) Chinese apartments don't come with ovens - even the lucky foreigners who think they've rented a place with one often find it's actually a little dish sterilizer. Alas, my kitchen had neither, and I've been stirfrying, boiling, and sautéeing (badly) for the past six months, staring pensively at the place where an oven should be. In the baking aisle of the imports store, I would slow down my cart, eye the baking powder and sigh disconsolately, knowing my kitchen could produce nothing that needed puff.

But then! Two weekends ago, Poppy and I were at a Huaihuai Lu (French Concession shopping mecca) department store and found a scratch-and-dent table bearing highly discounted appliances, including a very reasonably-priced, generously-sized toaster oven. Poppy graciously listened to me pro-and-con for ten minutes before basically suggesting that I do the only sensible thing and buy it. Which I did. I haven't looked back. Especially as I now have a reason to buy hundreds of the great cupcake wrappers I found at a wholesale place down the street.

Any recipes not involving too much butter or chocolate welcomed; it's hard to think of what to make without them, I know, but they're really expensive here.


Photos:

1. There she is, at home in my pantry!
2. Check out my balanced meal. That's macaroni and cheese (cheddar AND blue cheese, snap)
3. Darling cupcake wrappers
4. Eee, carrot-pineapple muffins!







Wednesday, March 11, 2009

And the winner is...

(winner sneakily revealed in photo, which unsneakily reveals the amount of fun I have running contests from my apartment)


Congratulations

On the excellent use of

"Undulating" - wow!


(Secretly, the word

has always made my skin crawl -
But love the haiku.)

Just send the address
To which your favourite book
Should be delivered!


Ahem. Back to the random syllables of everyday speech/text. Thank you, everyone, for your wonderfully entertaining and syllabically satisfying submissions! Maybe we'll do sonnets next time. Which would be perfect, because as you'll see tomorrow, I recently made a purchase so exciting that it deserves every manner of amorous poetry. Stay tuned!



Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A haiku celebration of Chinese notebooks

Hi everyone!

Hands down, one of the best things about China - and, it seems, Asian countries in general - is the plethora of adorable stationery to be had at pleasingly inexpensive prices. It's hard to express the kind of excitement generated by particularly excellent finds of the paper variety (Aunt Maureen, I know you understand), so I've resorted to that old standby, haiku. Actually, it's not my old standby. But it sure will be; I seriously feel ten times more Zen than I did twenty minutes ago. Please feel free to use your own 22 syllables to vote for your favourite book - the winner will receive it in the mail, because I love sending stuff home.


When I am depressed
The notebook store cheers me up
Zebra bums: so cute!

Gambol's so stylish
"Most outstanding achievers"
I hope they mean me

The big fat pink "M"
And the blank pages are great
Also, it has weight





I hate computers!
iPhoto won't flip these pics
Sorry they're backwards :(

Also just realized
You can't see the Gambol text
Okay, here it is:

"Gambol notebooks, made with future technology, for tomorrow's most outstanding achievers."