Category: food

having my cake

I got to have me some cake this week.¹ I ate it, too. And this cake-having inspired me to think about cake. So I’ll be serving up a list of cake-oriented things for this week’s ThThTh.

Bon appétit!

A Cake List

  1. Cakes are used for lots of holidays and celebratory events in many cultures. Some examples include birthday cakes, going away cakes at office parties, French bûches de Noël or German stollen at Christmas. Also…
  2. Wedding cakes. Usually elaborately decorated multi-tiered cakes meant to serve all the guests at a wedding. They can be quite tall, and easily knocked over or smashed for comedic effect in movies or sitcoms.
  3. stripper in a cake. A tradition (if it really happens outside of TV and movies) of having an exotic dancer jump out of a large cake-shaped container. (You can make your own, if you like.) (I toyed with making a list of movies/shows where you see a stripper cake, but could only remember “Under Siege,” where the stripper fell asleep in the cake. Anyone have any others?)
  4. sexy cakes. A sketch on Saturday Night Live with Patrick Stewart as a baker of cakes decorated with erotic images. That is, erotic if you have similar ideas to the baker as to what’s “sexy”. (The video seems not to be up on the SNL website, but you can read the transcript. Come on, go read it. It’s funny. Especially if you imagine Patrick Stewart’s dignified stentorian voice for the baker’s lines.)
  5. “Let them eat cake!” A phrase attributed to Marie-Antoinette, reflecting her insensitivity to the hungry masses who could not afford to buy bread. It was likely not really said by her. (And certainly not in English.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of someone using a similar phrase under similar circumstances in 1767, several years before Marie-Antoinette even arrived in Versailles.

  6. the icing on the cake. An expression meaning an additional bonus, benefit, or other desirable thing. As in something good on top of something else that’s good.
  7. cupcake. A small individual serving-sized cake. Also an endearment.
  8. babycakes. Another, even cutesier, endearment. (Want to see something creepy? Check out this YouTube video of someone making a realistic sculpted baby cake. Perhaps not as deeply unsettling as bread made to look like dismembered body parts, but creepy nonentheless.)

  9. Pat-a-cake. (or Patty-cake). An English nursery rhyme. Also used for a clapping game.

    Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
    Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
    Pat it and roll it and mark it with “B”
    And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

  10. a piece of cake. An idiomatic expression meaning “easy.” As in “eating up all that chocolate was a piece of cake.”
  11. have your cake and eat it, too. An expression describing a desire to have things 2 different ways that are not compatible. More along the lines of “save your cake and eat it too.”
  12. takes the cake. An expression meaning “the most extreme example,” such as the winner of a contest or other comparison. As in “I thought Martin was a geek, but his brother Andy really takes the cake.”
  13. Cakewalk. A game, set to music, where the winner gets win a cake. I hadn’t realized it had origins as an actual dance:

    Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.[1] It has since evolved from a parody of ballroom dancing to a “fun fair” like dance where participants dance in a circle in the hopes of winning a free cake.

  14. Cake. A band. My favorite song of theirs is probably their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.”

—–

¹ Actually, what I technically had was a celebratory fresh fruit tart, with a preamble of a couple of donuts holding some candles. But these were symbolically cake:

sweet tarts?

Here’s something else I wanted to share that I came across in Brazil: this package of little snack cakes. Not so much the snack cakes, but the packaging:


A package of Bauducco Gulosos, Bolinhos Sabor Morango (Strawberry-flavored little cakes)

Recognize the the cartoon characters?

Bubbles, is that you?

In case you are not familiar with the Powerpuff Girls, a animated TV series from Cartoon Network, this is what they usually look like.

The Powerpuff Girls looking more like sweet-looking little girls. (image source)

However, it would seem that in Brazil, the little kindergarteners are not quite sexy enough to sell snack cakes. So they have been tarted up a bit.¹

This is, of course, not the first time the little superheroines have been given a more grown-up makeover. In Japan, they were transformed into leggy anime teenagers:


The girls from Powerpuff Girls Z: not in kindergarten anymore. (image source)

Anyhow, my package of snack cakes unabashedly displays both the Cartoon Network and Powerpuff Girls logos. The transformation of the characters is somewhat mysterious to me, and is possibly only snack-cake-related. I haven’t been able to find any other similar images of them. Even on the Bauducco website itself, the same product is shown this way:

—-
¹Anyone else reminded of Xuxa, the scandalous sexpot hostess of a kids’ show?

(By the way, this post title is in part inspired by a recent post I read involving a whole hell of a lot of Sweetarts.)

Brasil, dia 6 e 7: out and about in São Paulo, and out

Here is the last installment about my recent trip to Brazil. Sorry it’s so long, but I thought I should wrap up rather than drag things on. I also have some pictures from the last 2 days posted.

Dia 6:

I ended up choosing a moderately nice hotel in a moderately nice part of town. I felt like I splurged a bit, but the cost was only 129 Reais per night, which I think converts to around $80 (US dollars) a night.

I had grand plans to sleep in Saturday morning, which were disrupted by what sounded like a gaggle of teenage girls in the hallway from 7:00 on. I took my time getting going, anyhow, and went down to breakfast at 9:00. I was good and ready to eat, having actually skipped dinner the night before, almost unthinkable after my week-long binge of large meals every 2 to 2.5 hours.

A portion of my café da manhã: café com leite, pastries, watermelon, papaya and persimmon.

I went back to my room afterwards, and mostly lounged till it was time to head out for my 1:00 rendezvous with C, the student from the conference. Our plan was to go for lunch and then do some touristy and museum-oriented things afterwards. We met at the metro station from the previous night, about a 15 minute walk from my hotel. She was a bit late, and told me that her boyfriend would be meeting us, too. Once he showed up, we headed down to a vegetarian restaurant that he’d heard was nearby.

Lunch was very pleasant, and the restaurant (called Cheiro Verde, or “green smell”) overlooked a park across the street. We each got panquecas, pancake-like things filled with vegetables and baked in little ceramic dishes with gobs of cheesy sauce. Mine had some mandioquinha in it, a tasty yellow tuber, along with other more familiar vegetables. I also had a fresh juice with orange, papaya and passion fruit. We were treated to some live samba-type percussion music streaming in through the window, from a large group having a lesson in the park.

After lunch, and a brief stroll to check out the source of the music, we hopped on a couple of buses¹ to go to Ibirapuera Park, where we planned to visit the Afro-Brazilian museum. Since we started lunch late and hadn’t rushed, it was a few minutes after 4:00 by the time we got to the door of the museum. To discover that they had just changed the hours to close at 4:00, instead of the 5:00 that was posted on their website.

We dropped by the MAM (Museu de Arte Moderna, or Modern Art Museum) instead, also in the park, which had an exhibit of contemporary Brazilian and Japanese art, which I quite enjoyed.² (Interestingly, there was also a Contemporary Art museum in the park, which appeared to be hosting a modernist exhibit.)

It got dark promptly at 6:00 p.m., and as there is virtually no twilight, it was very dark when we left the museum to head back to the bus. C and her namorado invited me back to their home for dinner, and I accepted in spite of being tired. They ordered out for pizzas, one of which had corn as the topping, and C made some fresh juice (acerola and then star fruit). We hung out chatting, eating and watching a bit of TV, and then they were kind enough to call a cab for me.

Day 7
The next day I spent running around by myself. My flight was at 9 p.m., and I planned to head for the airport by 4. I wanted to head to some outdoor markets and try for a bit of shopping, as I hadn’t managed any so far. I went to the market held under the MASP (The São Paulo Art Museum), but it turned out to be all antiques, most of which appeared to be European and North American. And also expensive.

The feirinha under the MASP.

I then hopped on the subway to go to the Praça República, for a large outdoor market known for crafts and stones. I bought some stuff from a few stalls in rather a hurry, and then rushed back to the hotel to pack the new items and check out by 2:00.

Since I still had a couple of hours, and didn’t want to waste more time than needed sitting around, I left my bags at the front desk and I went out for one last jaunt. I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and I wanted to stop by a grocery store. I strolled up to and along Avenida Paulista, in search of a place to eat. I ended up having a rather disappointing (and slow) lunch at a lanchonete with outdoor seating across from the MASP. (I had a grilled cheese sandwich and some overpriced french fries, but also some tasty fresh coconut juice.) It was later than I planned when I headed back to the hotel, but I did still stop by a small grocery store on my way, and loaded up on Brazilian chocolates and goodies for gifts.

I was going to take an airport bus from another nearby hotel.³ The hotel called me a cab⁴, and when I mentioned I would be taking the airport bus, the cab driver offered me a deal to take me directly to the airport. Things were slow due to it being Mother’s Day, he said, so he offered a fare of 60 Reais instead of the usual 90. I took him up on it, and thus got the airport much faster, and before dark even. It gave me a chance to take a few more photos on the way out of town.


—–

The last 2 days made a good end to my trip, and made me feel more like I was in Brazil rather than just being at a conference hotel. Also good for me was that I spoke almost no English the last 2 days. My Portuguese was starting to come back. (However, it did get harder for me to find words as the day got later.)

—–

¹ The public buses made for a wild ride, by the way. It was a bit like being on a rollercoaster without being strapped in. Happily, there were no upside-down loops.

² You can see some photos and short movies I took at the exhibit. You can also see a photo of me looking pregnant in that batch, in case you are curious.

³ I had toyed with the idea of taking the subway to a bus station, but I was pretty beat from running around. And realized it would be insanity to try to lug my luggage up the long hill to the Metro stop, followed by the 3 subway trains I’d need to take, and who knows what other obstacles.

⁴ “You’re a cab!” they said…

Brasil, dia 4.5: feasting, and food for thought

Here are some bits that I wrote up while still in Brazil. I hope to fill in the last couple days soon, too, and share more of my photos.

(more of) Day 4:
The conference banquet was on Thursday night, and I was excited about going to it largely because it was held at an old coffee farm. It was a cool building, from what I saw, but it was already well after dark by the time we even left the conference hotel. So I saw very little.

I did enjoy the banquet, though the food wasn’t terribly exciting for me as a vegetarian. I got to eat a couple of hors d’oeuvres, the salad, the rice and the vegetables. I did like the couve (sauteed, finely shredded collard greens) and some sort of little dish of polenta with mushroom sauce that came in a ramekin (and looked like chocolate mousse). We also got to have this traditional Brazilian dessert:

The white bit is cheese, the orange is a sweet made from pumpkin, the green is made from orange peels, the red is a goiabada (guava paste), and the brown is doce de leite (basically, a dense caramel).

I had been commenting to people that I had yet to hear even a little bit of Brazilian music on my trip so far, so I was pleasantly surprised that there was a live band at the banquet playing MPB (“musica popular brasileira”) and various other Brazilian styles. (When the buses arrived at the farm house, there was also a guy with a saxaphone playing Garota de Ipanema/Girl from Ipanema, which actually made me laugh a bit. It seems to be the anthem played especially for foreigners.)

I got to sit next a new Brazilian friend of mine, F, and her husband. The music was so loud that I couldn’t actually have a conversation with anyone else at the table. But it was cool to sit with my new friends. We talked a bit about poverty in Brazil and the US, and I got to learn some things. For example, that there were about 40,000 people that had moved to Campinas since 1997 or so, and set up favelas just out of sight of the resort where the conference was held.

I tried to see the favelas from the hotel the next day, but the resort has high walls and trees all around the perimeter that block the view from the ground level. As I walked around admiring the gardens, I thought a lot about the contrast of the 5-star resort, with its sprawling recreation areas and mounds of expensive food, being so close to thousands of people living in cramped quarters and stark poverty.

Brasil, dia 2: getting my conference on

Hi, again. I’m back online for a few minutes at the conference, where I don’t have to pay through the nose. However, there will shortly be a line for the ethernet cables, so I should be quick. Here’s what I wrote last night:

It’s the end of the first day of the conference, and I’m back at the hotel. It’s been a good day so far, though I have seen nothing but this hotel, the conference venue hotel, and the complicated twists of streets, on-ramps and rotaries that connect the two. But I have eaten a lot of food.

Breakfast at the hotel is pretty good, and much more elaborate than the more typical coffee and roll that I remember. (But the coffee is not as good as I remember…) There’s a full buffet with various stations: cold cuts and cheeses (including Romeo and Juliet), fresh fruit (small papayas and pineapple seem to be in season), breads and pastries (including more pão de queijo and a gooey chocolate cake) as well as scambled eggs and various breakfast meats.

They are feeding us lots at the conference, too. There are two coffee breaks, featuring different baked goods and also fresh squeezed juices. Morning juices were either orange or watermelon, afternoon had orange or pineapple. There was also a big lunch buffet. The more interesting things (to me) were okra salad and palm hearts. The hot food was very salty, and shockingly, had a vegetarian entree (gnocchi in cream sauce).

Also, did you realize that I was not just down here for the food? There were actually some talks and posters going on today. Plus I’ve gotten to see a bunch of people I don’t see often, and I’ve met some cool people, too. Including some Brazilians. I even have plans to meet up on Saturday with a woman who lives in São Paulo. (I’m hoping to get her help making a hotel reservation, which I still don’t have…)

I still have no pictures to share, due to some technical difficulties. I’ll hopefully solve these tomorrow.

Now I need to get to sleep, as we need to get up early tomorrow. You know, for the breakfast. Oh, right. And the conference. Our poster is tomorrow, and all.

Moosewood!

I got to eat dinner at Moosewood! Having long appreciated their cookbooks, it’s been a dream of mine to someday make it there for a meal. And, as it turns out, the restaurant is only a couple of blocks from the hotel where I’m staying. Here’s the entree I had. (And yes, it was yummy.)

Filo Roll Primavera:
Flaky savory pastry with a creamy tofu filling of leeks, spinach, & arugula seasoned with fresh basil; served with marinated minted carrot salad.

I also got to have chipotle hummos, portobello and cheese filo rolls, as well as fresh bread, salad and olives. Plus a black rice pudding made with coconut milk for dessert. And some really good ginger and lemon tea.

I’m having a great time on the trip so far. Cornell is really beautiful, with some striking scenery and views, and it feels like Spring here. I had fun presenting the poster, and have heard loads of good talks. The drive out yesterday evening was fun and festive, and went pretty fast. (Only 7 hours!)

I am pretty wiped out, though. Really, what I should be doing now is sleeping. But I got to eat at Moosewood!

going bananas

With work keeping me crazy busy, and life in general pulling me in all sorts of directions, it’s no wonder I feel I’m going a bit bananas. And what with yesterday’s big banana-related news, it’s no wonder I’ve got bananas on the brain. Seeing as I don’t have a whole lot of time tonight, this ThThTh list may be on the short side. So please feel encouraged throw in your own bananas.banana_bunch_1.png

A small bunch of bananas

  • banana split. An ice cream sundae characterized by a banana that has been split in half lengthways.
  • The Tattooed Banana: a blog devoted to “the emerging appreciation of banana art.”
  • Banana Yoshimoto. A Japanese author. Not actually a banana. Her first novel was Kitchen.
  • Bananarama. An 80s musical group. They weren’t bananas either. Actually, the members were all female.
  • “Yes, we have no bananas.” A song that was a hit in the 20s. (…we have no bananas today…)
  • “The Banana Boat Song.” A song made famous by Harry Belafonte. Here’s a clip from the movie Beetlejuice with the song:
  • top banana. An expression meaning “head honcho” or “big cheese.” Has origins in burlesque performances.
  • slipping on a banana peel. A common slapstick-type sight gag. (cf. this batch of cartoons.) For further insights into the phenomenon, check out this insightful post, which also led me to this fabulous banana-peel-slipping-related dialog from the 1966 Batman movie:

    Batman: [reading a riddle] What has yellow skin and writes?
    Robin: A ball-point banana!
    Batman: [reads the second riddle] What people are always in a hurry?
    Robin: Rushing people… Russians!
    Batman: So this means…
    Robin: Someone Russian is going to slip on a banana and break their neck!
    Batman: Precisely, Robin!

  • Banana in the tailpipe: a prank involving shoving a banana up the tailpipe of a car, causing the engine to stop. Made famous by a scene with Eddie Murphy in the movie Beverly Hills Cop (1984).
  • This may come as a shock to you, but I find the word banana itself to be funny. (Yes, much like the word pants.) I might even go as far as saying that I find banana to be an inherently funny word. This may be part of why bananas are featured in a lot of jokes. Some of them remarkably silly. I found a page of banana jokes that someone posted on a joke blog, and lookie what I found there:

    Knock knock
    Who’s There?
    Banana
    Banana who?
    Banana Pants.

    • banana_peeled1.png

    What’s on the menu?

    I ate a bunch of peeps this morning. It was not my intention. But the onslaught of references to peeps I have seen in the past few days has pushed me over the edge. I bought a single package of the things last week, intending to put them in Phoebe’s Easter basket, as her one candy item. (She gets really wired from chocolate, so we tend to avoid it.) But then I didn’t actually manage to get a basket together, barely managed to even dye some eggs, and so I still had this package of peeps sitting around. I don’t often eat marshmallows, due to the gelatin. But I do love their squishiness. But after the 10 seconds that it took me to shovel half a package of them into my mouth, I am left with an extended feeling of ickiness.

    Aside from that, I’m feeling a bit queasy from the many other things going on in my life. John has been uber-busy with his work. And I’m feeling the pressure of work, too. I mentioned that various subsets of my research group have been accepted for 3 conference presentations. Well, two of these will be at the same conference, which is now just over 2 weeks away.

    The third presentation will be in early May at a conference in Brazil. Currently I’m in the process of getting my visa application together. (Because they don’t take American Express.) The process makes me a bit nervous, as I fear that if I don’t get the application right, things will be delayed excessivley, and I won’t get to go. I’m also both very excited and somewhat nervous about the trip.

    Phoebe has also been serving up some challenges lately. She has been crying and whining a lot more than is her custom. She has now started crying when I drop her off at daycare. Last week, things were apparently not the greatest at daycare. I thought it was because she was a bit sick. But she’s back in good health now, from all other indications. Even at home, she will sometimes cry, for example, when I say I have to go to the bathroom. As you might imagine, this is a fairly frequent occurrence. And it doesn’t even matter if I say she can come with me. I think this may be contributing to my overall level of tiredness, which leads to me sometimes falling asleep while telling Phoebe her usual post-bath, post-book, in-crib bedtime “stories.” I say “stories” because often she just wants me to tell her about dogs, her playgroup, Grammy’s house, or (and thankfully this is losing favor) the radiator at daycare.

    Another thing on my mind is the appointment I have tomorrow for my big 18-week ultrasound. While I am, of course, concerned with the health and well-being of the creature within, and will be glad to have reassurance that it is not some sort of tentacled alien spawn, I am also terribly curious about the other information that they will be able to determine. In a recent comment, Mme. M asked whether I would “…be finding out if the little peanut has a cheeseburger or a hot dog?” That is certainly my general intention. But rather than go for the meat (bi-)product metaphors, I’ll go for some fruit imagery instead.

    So, which will it be?

    papaya_no_border.jpg       banana.jpg

    Life of Pie

    The Pi Pie Extraordinaire, aged 3 days, finally left this world after a brave struggle against consumption. The brave Blackberry-Apple Pie made it into Pie-hood against the odds. Conceived in late-evening silliness, assembled in the mayhem of a chaotic kitchen with the disadvantages of a severely cracked top crust and a shortage of frozen blackberries, the Pie still reached that coveted state of golden brownness, and emerged from the 400 degree oven only slightly marred. Born in the later hours of Pi Day, the Pi Pie proudly bore the mark of Pi. Those closest to the deceased knew the Pie as being a warm and tender individual beneath the crusty exterior, with a sweetness that was only accentuated by the tartness of the Berry heritage.

    The Pie is survived by the Tokens household, several dirty plates and forks, and a disposable aluminum pie pan. “It is better to have loved Pie and lost Pie than to have never eaten Pie at all,” said Alejna, sadly brushing a tear from her eye and a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

    ——————–

    This slice of silliness is being served to you as part of the current Monday Mission, which ordered up posts in the form of an obituary.

    In other news, I’m pleased as pie to share that my caption won the most recent Teeny Manolo caption contest.

    Winners receive the coveted TeenyManolo iAward Air, a virtual prize of stunning hypothetical magnificence and staggering imaginary prestige.

    Go have a look and see my award-winning caption.