Baking, Cooking, and Butching It Up

Here are my hordes of cupcakes, ready for the greatest moment in any young girl's life: Cupcake Day at work! I did this last year with the other summer students. I bake the cupcakes, everyone else brings in a topping, and the decorating begins. The results can be used either as a Dadaist experiment, or to illustrate to disgusting (but delicious) consumption of Western culture. Now, my parents have a few old adages, and one of their most cherished is that People who use baking mixes are morally suspect. So don't tell them that I made these from a mix, and from the cheaper brand with the strangely irradiated, glowing tulips on the box. Usually I'm militant about making everything from scratch, but I can never muster that sense of righteousness for cupcakes. The baked part is just a holding pad for an inch of toppings anyway.


This is a photo from last Thursday, of a salad I made for a Last Hurrah for Guelph Party, a dinner/murder mystery before we all went back to school. It started out as an attempt to make Marian Burros's Farro Salad with Tomatoes and Corn, after I combed the archives of The Wednesday Chef for a salad that would be quick, simple and vegan. I figured the farro, an ancient, hearty grain, would be somewhere next to the kelp and the agave nectar at the Stone Store, the local purveyor of all rations hippie, so I sent my poor Dad down- the day of the party. A few hours later, we had no farro, and burnt quinoa that was supposed to be a farro-replacement. However, we did have one bag of orzo, a pasta with pieces the size of rice grains. So, it became Orzo Salad with Tomatoes and Corn. The only almonds in our house had to be slivered by hand, and the white wine vinegar replaced with a mixture of red wine and rice vinegars, but it turned out rather tasty. I do think it missed that certain nutty element of the farro, and next time I would replace it with spelt or bulgur but it was a qualified success.

Unlike my costume. I got to the party only to find out that I was supposed to be a woman. Which meant the twenty minutes I spent drawing on a mustache were wasted.