cake

Not so little known factoid about me...
My prior career was in the event/wedding planning industry. I used to bake wedding cakes, sew wedding dresses, create floral arrangements, and cater parties. At some point in the late nineties I gave it all up for coding and haven't really looked back since. Dealing with a computer is way easier than putting up with a BrideZilla.

Nonetheless, I get cravings to get back to my creative culinary roots, especially the sugar iced kind. Lucky for me it's birthday/cake party season right now and I have 3 cakes in 1 week.


Cake #1 is for my friend Jen's 30th. We held the party at a sushi restaurant and so what better to theme the cake with than.... SUSHI!

The cake was yellow pound with a fudge filling, butter cream frosting and light almond fondant

I decorated the borders with hand painted fondant bamboo and metallic centered sugar blossoms






The top was sushi created from twinkies and ho-hos wrapped and iced to look like dinner complete with hand sculpted soy dish full of "gel"-soy and fondant sculpted ginger and wasabi. Coconut rice and jelly belly Ikura and all.


I will post cakes 2&3 later this week :) Full pics of the cake construction are on FaceBook

Tastes like RepGen

If you know me.. you know that the two non-human loves of my life are code and food. So is it really all that surprising that I spend a great deal of time posting randomly on those two subjects?

A few years back the two merged and became RG - FOOD. A specfile html decision engine for lunch determination. Lately I have been consumed with other more relevant projects at work, so I use my twitter and facebook outlets to handle my food porn addiction.

While having lunch yesterday, a coworker questioned my iPhone picture taking of a bowl of rather tasy Pho. I tried to explain the food porn/blogging/posting thing and they clearly did not understand. The comment "you're a programmer, aren't you supposed to eat crap/" struck a nerve.

One, that's a horrible stereotype and two, most programmers I know have a great palate and enjoy eating yummy delicious stuff as much as I do.

I also know plenty of people who do get me and my love of being a foodie - and even more who love benefiting from my obsessive need to counter my workaholic nature with marathon kitchen therapy sessions and ten course tasting menus.

So in honor of that.. I proudly post my top foodie finds of the week:
all of the items below have arrived at my desk this week in gift form for random geek performed tasks such as coding work or PC rebuilding in my spare time. It's not even my birthday yet! I feel loved!

I need a sign for my office "will perform geek tasks for food porn inspiration"



Coconut M&Ms... yes it seems that even the candy industry is attempting to re-invent a perfectly good thing into something it's not. Luckily for us the M&M company is good at making exceptions! Coconut m&ms are sweet and tropical. Think island paradise where you are being fanned with palm leaves and tended to by Grecian sculpted bodies.... okay.. maybe not that good, but close.


Wild Cherry! They are made with a dark semi sweet which puts them at the top of my yum list. They are rich and decadent and worth indulging with each luscious bite.

Thanks to anonymous CU gifter for sending me samples of chocolate yum.





Danzka Vodka! Stright of the plane from Norway (Thanks Brenda)
The bottle is "made to chill" and goes great with pool parties.

This vodka is one of my favorites for making martinis.
Try this recipe:
1 part Danzka
1 part cranberry juice
2 parts grapefruit



Pink Oranges!!! I got some of these as a gift Monday and had to run out and buy an entire bag.
I'd heard rumors of this new hybrid fruit and sure enough the local Costco brought in a shipment.
I pulled out my desk paring knife (how weird would it be to carry my chef's knife case to work?) and revealed pink flesh. Pink! Glossy, tiny little sacs straining with sweet citrus. I took my first bite.

You can forget the overdone blood oranges and boxes designer mandarins and Clementines and leave off the plain old orange-oranges. THIS is an orange, if not THE orange to beat all other oranges. My teeth pressed into the rosy flesh, bursting through the skin. Sweet juice squirted into the air hitting me on my nose, running down my lips around my chin and along my neck. The whole fruit disappeared in seconds and I instantly wanted more. Pink Oranges are my new favorite citrus fruit!

random

Don't get me started about the shoe blocking.. I got blocked shoe shopping in PA during symeast.
Shoe store blocking is just wrong!

And no, not moonlighting...
"Adele Services" is the actual merchant... I saw it come up on Digg.com a few months back
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Adele_Services

They are trying to steal my name :-P
There can be only one.

Although I could be convinced to leave programming forever for Adelle's job on Dollhouse.
http://dollhouse.wikia.com/wiki/Adelle_DeWitt

and I could go on for days about how mad I am over the cancellation. Finale this Friday at 8pmCST. Yay Tivo or else I would have had a scheduling conflict with Star Trek.

Beastie Boys featured in Star Trek? Yes! I can't wait.

ELA projection errors are giving me a headache... I think I need some caffeine to focus.




as seen on SMUG

Airline madness

Not sure how well blog and iPhone work together without an app, but with who knows how much time on my hands, why not try?

American airlines had cancelled all flights into SA this afternoon. After flying in from philly, I was planning for the worst. The turbulence on the first flight was by far the worst I have ever experienced. We were coming up out of our seats and banging around for the last 30 minutes of that flight. Some people got sick which caused others to get sick. It was simply awful. We landed and were then told we could not get off the plane due to severe lighting (which was very visable and loud)

We finally got off the plane and were told lots of flights had been cancelled. I ran over to baggage which directed me back to the ticketing counter. They told me I was not likely to get my bag in order to drive the last 4 hours home, but if I could run, they could get me on the last flight leaving for SA. I agreed and ran as fast as I could from c16 to the d terminal gate 34. I had to go back through security. They decided to confiscate my mini pink leatherman and without time to argue I decided not to attempt to argue with them.

I made it to d34 just as they were about to close the doors. I got to my seat only to hear the captain announce that when loading bags the mechanics had detected damage from the storm. So here we now wait on the plane. Waiting to see if the damage is reparable or if this flight will get cancelled like the rest. I am concerned about my luggage, but more concerned about making it home in one piece and before tomorrow.

SymEast was so great this week. I have to say this is the first bad thing to go wrong for me all week! Oh well. At least no one is vomiting and we are all safe and still :)

Themed suites for SymEast

How do you top a trip to sun studios in Memphis, TN?

check out this link: fanatsy suites

The hotel has 20 "themed" rooms.

Some how the symeast group seems to have been placed in the majority of them.

I am in one of the 20 for the next 2 nights, switching to another theme on Thursday thanks to the front desk staff. Should make for an interesting week. I think we'll be doing room tours later so everyone can take a look at the 1970's themed decor.

I have a red jacuzzi that seats 4! LOL

One Saturday I took a walk to Zipperhead

Okay, so it was Monday and not Saturday, but I did finally make it to Zipperhead. Crash Bang Boom has actually been moved around the corner, but the signature zipper ants are still on South Street.

There was very little Dead Milkmen memorabilia, but I did pick up a few cute souvenirs.

One Saturday I took a walk to Zipperhead
I met a girl there and she almost knocked me dead

Punk rock girl
Please look at me
Punk rock girl
What do you see?
Let's travel round the world
Just you and me punk rock girl

The flight in was pretty non-eventful, sans the woman eating bell peppers as if they were apples fresh off the tree. This is not appropriate airline passenger behavior. What's next? Hey let's bring a pot of menudo on the plane or maybe some beef kidneys? What smelly food item can I eat in a closed confined area where it impedes the personal nasal space of the passengers around me?

Made it to the hotel in time for dinner, ran back up to my room to log in and work on some code reviews and email catch-ups. Then back to the bar to get a couple hours of socializing in. With SEC going virtual this year, I have lots of sym-socializing to fit in this week and in May. Networking in the community is one of the most valuable resources out there. I can't stress the benefits of user group attendance enough.

Woke up bright and early this morning, took a nice jog around valley forge national park, saw a few deer, and headed back to start my day.

On today's agenda is RepGen roundtable. Ray is stuck in Atlanta, so Ron is flying solo this morning - and doing a great job. So far the topics have been imaging, symform, PRN, and collection note creation. There's a great group attending the class this year. All levels of expertise and experience. Makes for a great discussion.