Sunday, November 27, 2011

Edible Portmanteau

I have a strange fondness for "foods that shouldn't be"; last Thanksgiving, I was all delighted because my parents made a Turducken. A friend of the family ate Thanksgiving with us and afterwards sent me and my mom a link to an article about the Turducken of desserts: the Cherpumple.

"That sounds disgusting," my mom wrote back.

"Disgustingly awesome!" I countered.

So I've wanted to make a Cherpumple ever since.

A Cherpumple is:

Cherry pie baked in white cake 

on top of an

Pumpkin pie baked in yellow cake

on top of an

Apple pie baked in spice cake. 

Frosted all over with cream cheese frosting.

This Thanksgiving, I was invited to a big potluck and I am totally on picking up my dishes that I totally left there sorry about that. and I figured this was the ideal moment: if it was a weird disaster, there'd be other desserts; people could laugh about the cherpumple and still eat real pumpkin pie.

So: first you bake a pumpkin pie, apple pie, and cherry pie.


Thursday, November 24, 2011

Strange Clouds 2: Old Pictures of All Soul's

Edited to add some awesome videos from Jason! 

While I wait for my cherpumple to cool so that I can frost it, I thought I'd post some pictures from All Soul's. 

I hadn't been to the parade in years, and I had never dressed up. But thanks to my friend Natalie, who is actually artistically talented, I had access to lots of make-up and glitter and supplies.

I looked at some examples of what people did for make-up online, and then got started, sure I was basically just going to make a mess of my face.

First, I drew big circles around my eyes in eyeliner; then smeared on some generic body glitter. Then onto that I put on actual glitter from Michael's. So I learned something: When you want to put on body glitter that will actually last, use...actual glitter. You can keep it attached with the body glitter, but the real glitter looks so much better! Who knew?



Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Hello, Hello Giggles

Hello and welcome there, anyone reading this who came over from Hello Giggles. I have Julia Gazdag to thank for hooking me up there (the beautiful story of our meeting is documented here). Anyway, I'm writing a column there called "Adventures in Thrifting," in which I document (mis)adventures in the glorious seedy underbelly of secondhand shopping. My last column was about winter coats; I caused some very minor controversy by suggesting that warmth shouldn't be your #1 concern while picking out winter coats. As an "outtake," here's a picture of me in one of my winter coats that didn't make it into the post:


Saturday, November 5, 2011

Halloween Shenanigans: Strange Clouds

So I actually put in some effort into Halloween this year -- me and Bad Cholla spent an afternoon at Savers creating Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding costumes. 

For those wondering if the costumes were a little outdated (Jason: "Timely. What you going to be next year? Judge Ito?"), they were originally conceived of for a roller skating party. But then--ironically--the Tonya Harding to my Nancy Kerrigan suffered an injury, and we didn't go roller skating. While we eventually wore the costumes on Actual Halloween and I think they were successful, when I told people, "Originally, they were gonna be worn roller skating," the person always went from "polite about costumes" to "Oh! That WOULD HAVE been really clever!" So the true epic awesomeness potential was never fully unlocked, but I think we still did good. See?