Baked With Love

Toffee Coffee Cupcake-Homebaked goodness in every bite

Crumb Bake Shop-Los Angeles

These cupcakes at Crumb are delicious. It is moist and not to sweet. For those that are calorie conscious, you can break the cupcake in half (sharing with a friend) and the calories will fall out of the cupcake...This is a trick that I learned from a health conscious friend. I think that I can make cupcakes that tastes the same as these cupcakes. I am going to make red velvet cupcakes tomorrow! Hopefully they turn out good.

xoxo,
Kat

Perfection in Every Cup

Macchiato at Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea-Los Angeles

I am in love with the macchiatos at Intelligentsia! The expresso with milk is to die for. It is very strong, but good. Intelligentsia Coffee’s mission is to provide their customers, staff, and community with an unparalleled and complete coffee and tea experience.

Intelligentsia started more than a decade ago when Doug Zell and Emily Mange left San Francisco to open an in-store coffee roaster-retailer on Broadway Avenue on the north side of Chicago. At that time they were simply hoping to bring great, fresh-roasted coffee to their own coffeebar. Since then this has all evolved to a place they never could have imagined.

Intelligentsia now has three great cities to call home: Chicago—a city that is brooding, practical and reluctantly beautiful; Los Angeles—a city that views creativity as a birthright, is immensely vast, decidedly impractical and equally messy and marvelous; and New York—a city of paradoxes, hulking but chock full of intimate corners, timeless but achingly current, polished but decaying, worldly yet oddly provincial, all crashing together in perfect cacophony (or is it harmony?).

I think that coffee lovers need to try Intelligentsia. The service and quality of the coffee is pretty exceptional. I don't drink coffee often, but when I do I love a good cup of coffee. I usually prefer a latte or macchiato. However, I never knew the difference until recently...

The word “latte” is Italian for milk and naturally, in Italy, caffelatte is used to describe coffee mixed with milk. In other countries nowadays, particularly English-speaking ones, use the term latte to indicate a certain kind of coffee. In Italy, ordering latte will make the server give you a cup of milk and no coffee included obviously.

Macchiato is also an Italian word meaning, ìmarkedî or ìspottedî. Caffe Macchiato therefore, literally means ìmarked coffeeî. Originally, this came to happen because people ordering espressos want some milk on it. Serving waiters find it difficult to determine which is which since coffee, with or without small amounts of milk, looks just the same. The espresso with milk is then marked (macchiato) for easier recognition.

Macchiato, as an American invention, is typically added with foam, which in turn, confused a lot of people that the meaning of macchiato is îfoamî and foam is the actual marking agent in caffe macchiato. In truth, the original marker is simply steamed milk, nothing else. The caffe macchiato has evolved with the help of business marketing along with other factors.

Facts about macchiato and latte:
Latte, in Italian, means milk while Macchiato means marked or spotted. Latte is basically coffee and milk, Macchiato is coffee with milk but the milk is added as a visible mark. Latte, essentially refers to the ingredient of the drink while macchiato refers to the appearance of the drink. The ìnewî latte is served with milk on top of the espresso while the ìnewî macchiato is served with the espresso on top of milk.

xoxo,
Kat

Santino Rice and Matthew Morrison all in one night

Before coming home to Orange Country, I spent two nights in LA with my friend Christian and his family. I love meeting his sisters and extended family. It reminds me of my family and how I interact with my brother and sisters. Christian is another brother to me. We have been through so much together. We even physically fight and he plays dirty by biting me. I actually have a bruise on my arm from his bite. I also have a bruise the size of an egg on my hip from him kicking me on my leg. I hope I gave him some bruises too. He is such an instigator. He always starts the fight and plays the victim...He can be such a girl at times. He even takes showers longer than me. I usually am done getting ready before him.

Anyway, we went to Umami Burger in Hollywood since his mom suggest it to us. Umami is a Japanese term. In Japanese, umami is one of the five basic tastes together with sweet, sour, bitter and salty. It comes from the Japanese term umai ‘delicious’ and mi 'taste'. I got the Umami burger-their signature burger. It was good, but a little too rare for my taste even though it was medium rare. The sweet potato fries were delicious. They dust the sweet potato fries with cinnamon-giving it a little kick. If you savor the fries you can taste the cinnamon. The lychee soju was so yummy...It was not bitter. It was just perfect. The meal did not give me food coma which is good. I thought that eating a burger and fries would make me feel heavy afterwards, but the burgers here are not too big and not to small. It was filling. I was so surprised to see Santino Rice from Project Runaway sitting in front of me. He is bigger in life. I was just staring at him the whole time while he was eating. I did not go up to him and say anything because he is just a regular person trying to eat. Then I saw Matthew Morrison also known as Mr. Schuester from Glee. I couldn't believe it that I saw Santino and Matthew Morrison all in one night. It made my night seeing them. I would recomment Umami Burger to anyone that is visiting LA and is looking for a quick bite to eat. However, it does get pretty pack.

xoxo,
Kat

Wandering mind

I am so over studying. I have been studying for Dutch for the pass three days. I know the material really well and I am confident that I will do well on the test. I wish tomorrow was already here so that I may take the test. I just want to take the final and get everything over with so that I can go home for the holidays. Today my Dutch aunt, uncle, and cousin came over Holland. They are going to stay with us until the 30th of December. I can't believe that it has been four years since I've seen them. Four years is too long.

I'm going down to Southern California on the 16th; however, I am spending two nights in LA and two nights in San Diego. So I won't be home until the 20th. I can't wait to be in San Diego. I get to spend the holiday season with Miks and her kazoku.

Lately I have been in a funny mood. Every thing and everyone seems to be getting on my nerves. I think it is just because I am stressed out. I am really over school. I can't believe that next semester I am finally graduating! But the reality is scary. I have my moments where I get extreme anxiety attacks when thinking about what I'm going to do after college. I am scared. I don't want to be unemployed. As a result, this holiday season I will be applying for jobs. I'll be crossing my fingers.

To add to all of this stress, I am now a board member of LBSA. I am their historian and I am responsible for the monthly newsletter LBJ. I am freaking out because I don't have the program to put the LBJ together yet. Hopefully I will survive next semester.

I still need to pack to go home on Thursday! So much to do, so little time...

xoxo,
Kat

12 Days of Christmas

Today I turned in a take home final and now I only have one more final to go this Wednesday. I can't wait. I am so happy that I had two finals the week I came back from Thanksgiving. This gave me time to focus on my take home final and my Dutch final. I decided to take a break from studying Dutch and I came across this song from the Lupus Magazine. It is a spin on the Christmas Carol: 12 Days of Christmas. The song pretty much sums up, what most lupus patients go through.

source: http://www.thelupusmagazine.com/y-johnny-trash.html

Trash Talk

by Johnny Trash ©

Warning: Some language may offend!

Well a song for Christmas!

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me a visit to my rheumie

On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my Rheumie

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me six blood tests five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven useless doctors six blood tests five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my Rheumie

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me eight attempts at canulation seven useless doctors six blood tests five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me nine steroid injections eight attempts at canulation seven useless doctors six blood tests five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my rheumie

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me ten malar rashes nine steroid injections eight attempts at canulation seven useless doctorss six blood tests five drug that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my Rheumie

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me eleven stays on hospital ten malar rashes nine steroid injections eight attempts at canulation seven useless doctors six blood tests five drugs that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my Rheumie

On the twelth day of Christmas my true love sent to me twelve brain scans eleven stays in hospital ten malar rashes nine steroid injections eight attemps at canulation seven useless doctors six blood tests five drug that Ming four bouts of chemotherapy three prednisolone two knackered knees and a visit to my Rheumie


© Johnny Trash & The Lupus Magazine

xoxo,
Kat

An Existentialist Take on Happiness

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting all of this down.” - Woody Allen

xoxo,
Kat

New FAD: Alcoholic WHIPPED Cream

So on Monday I read an article from TIME, stating that alcoholic WHIPPED cream is the next fad. I think that it's funny that since they banned Four Loko, kids are going to get their hands on "other" products that are just as bad. The next new FAD is Whipahol. According to the Boston Herald, products like Cream and Whipped Lightning are appearing on liquor store shelves all over the country. They look innocent enough. But are they? They are canisters of whipped dairy, like the Reddi-wip. The alcohol-charged "whipahol" Cream packs a 30-proof wallop. That's 15% alcohol by volume. The canisters contains as much or a little less alcohol as drinks like Bacardi Mojito and Bailey's Irish Cream. Whipped Lightning ranges from 16% to 18% alcohol by volume, equivalent to the alcohol contained in three or four beers — that is, if you ingest the entire canister. I think that it is justified that public health officials are concerned that alcohol whip targets young consumers. Are whipahols really less accessible to underage drinkers? Yes, it is sold in liquor stores, but I think kids these days are very savvy. They can get their hands on things that they want.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/29/alcoholic-whipped-cream-another-binge-drink-in-a-can/#ixzz16wQ96YQ6

xoxo,
Kat

TURN THE WORLD RED

I think that it is brilliant that the RED campaign for AIDS is so active. I love their slogan: (BLOG) RED - BUY (RED). SAVE LIVES.
I think that they branded (RED)really well. According to the RED blog (RED)is a simple idea that transforms our collective power as shoppers into a financial force that helps those affected by HIV in Africa. It is amazing that to date over $160 million has been generated and 5 million people have been helped through global fund programs that (RED) supports. Did you know that when you choose to buy products from (RED) partner companies up to 50% of the profit goes towards eliminating aids in Africa?

source: http://blog.joinred.com/2010/11/join-us-in-lighting-global-landmarks.html (this is where I am getting my information)

Today, December 1st is World AIDS Day and we’re illuminating the world’s most iconic landmarks (RED) to raise awareness of the goal of an AIDS Free Generation due in 2015. It is sad to think that last year nearly half a million babies were born with HIV. But with access to medication a pregnant mother can stop the transmission of HIV to her child. With continued funding to organizations like the Global Fund, the number of babies born with HIV could be zero by 2015 – creating the first AIDS Free Generation in 30 years.

This World AIDS Day, cities around the world will light their most distinctive landmarks (RED). From the Sydney Opera House, to Paris' City Hall & Fountains, from the London Eye, to Cape Town’s Table Mountain, from Niagara Falls, to the Seattle Space Needle - the world will turn red to highlight the goal that by 2015 we can have a world where virtually no child is born with HIV. The Landmarks look very beautiful light up in RED lights.


xoxo,
Kat