Diana and I went out camping last weekend as well as visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We didn’t know if we’d be able to find a campsite as we hadn’t reserved any so we had a back up plan of just hanging out at the beach and then staying overnight at her Father’s. Sunday morning we got up packed the truck and headed for Santa Cruz and the Big Basin State Park. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find out they did have open sites, it turned out a lot of them. We set up camp, went on a little hike in which we saw a small waterfall, then drove to Santa Cruz to walk through the mall and have dinner at a great British pub in Aptos. After dinner we drove back up to camp and went to bed. We got up early on Monday and drove into Monterey where we spent the day at the Aquarium. It goes without saying that this was awesome! Lucky us the aquarium right now has a juvenile great white shark in their largest tank, which we were able to see and perhaps take a picture of. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to see it, that it’d hang out in the back of the tank but a number of times it swam right up to and past the glass, affording everyone there a great view of the fish. I took some pictures but don’t know if they came out as flash photography was strictly prohibited. There were plenty of other things to take pictures of though! I went through 3 and a half rolls of film, mostly on jelly fish and otters but other things as well… I can’t really speak for Diana but I can tell you that I love the aquarium and could spend all sorts of time there, my only complaint was the penguin area of the aquarium was closed for remodeling and the semi-hordes of children getting in my view, we just so happened to arrive on home-schooling day. I think Diana had a good time… :). I fell in love with the entire weekend, the camping, the hiking, the shopping and the sight seeing, I hope our outing at the end of this month to Big Sur is as exciting!
Category: adventure
Cooking Adventure!
Diana went home to Santa Cruz this weekend, so I have had no one to hang out with and listen to my inane ramblings… I did have a recipe though and a mother who wanted to make sure I made it. The recipe is for Kitty Litter Cake.
Yummy, no? By the way that is a real cake that you can eat, a cake which I made today. I’m posting the recipe here at the end of this entry, and I’ll also tell you what I changed.
So I can’t eat cake out of a litter box, no matter how good it tastes, so that’s out as is the scooper, next I got rid of the ‘turds’, heated tootsie rolls. I want my meals to be aesthetically pleasing on some level and fake turds are not pleasing in any sense of the word, ever. On a side note, I want anything I own or look at to be aesthetically pleasing. I know this statement destroys all modern and post modern art, but such is life, this cake is ugly and so is your art. Also, the recipe called for baking two cakes separately and then crumbling them together. I am lazy, so I mixed my two boxes of cake mix and cooked them together and then crumbled them. I also don’t know how they got the cookies to look like find sand, unless I used the wrong cookies, the recipe is kinda vague. Oh, and soy milk might not be the best thing to use when making instant pudding, mine never set up quite right. So, the second picture is how mine turned out, don’t say it’s dark I used a flash! A complete visual catalog of the ingredients can be found here. All in all it took two hours to make, mostly because the cake recipe was so large and then I had to let it cool before I could crumble it. If I could do things again I’d try to get the Oreos smaller and save more for the topping, maybe a little more pudding as well. Oh, and not use 1 box of white cake and 1 box of chocolate, spice cake would have been better, too chocolaty.
All in all it was fun and I enjoyed making the cake, it doesn’t taste phenomenal but it’s largely a gag dessert anyway, so I wasn’t expecting much. It’s nice and sweet and when it comes to cake isn’t that what matters?
Here is the recipe and all the directions I got with it with my notes, I’m leaving out the lame story that comes with it:
Cake Ingredients:
1 box spice or german chocolate cake mix (I didn’t find spice or german choc cake mix at the co-op so I went with just chocolate)
1 box white cake mix
1 package white sandwich cookies (I assumed these were Oreos)
1 large package vanilla instant pudding mix (I don’t think I had enough)
A few drops green food coloring (I Skipped this, see aesthetic comments above)
Serving Dishes: (I skipped all of this, again see above
1 new cat litter box
1 new cat litter box liner
1 new pooper scooper
1) prepare and bake cake mixes, according to directions, in any size pan. Prepare pudding and chill. Crumble cookies in small batches in blender or food processor (I did this by hand). Add a few drops of green food coloring to 1 cup of cookie crumbs. Mix with a fork or shake in a jar. Set aside.
2) When cakes are at room temperature crumble them into a large bowl. Toss with half of the remaining cookie crumbs and enough pudding to make the mixture moist but not soggy. Place liner in litter box and pour in mixture
3) Unwrap 3 tootsie and heat in microwave until soft and pliable. Shape the blunt ends into slightly curved points. repeat with 3 more rolls. Bury the rolls decoratively in the cake mixture (don’t ask me what the difference between burying decoratively and just simple burying is…). Sprinkle the remaining white cookie crumbs over the mixture, then scatter green crumbs lightly over top.
4) Heat 5 more tootsie rolls until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with crumbs from the “litter box”. Heat the remaining tootsie roll until pliable and hang it over the edge of the box. Place box on a sheet of newspaper and serve with scooper. Enjoy! (it goes without saying I did none of this, I guess it’d be a good gag at a Halloween or April Fool’s party).
Getting Lost
After work last night I came home and ate dinner, it was delicious. Then I went on a walk with Diana. We decided to take a walk along the green belt in Northern Davis, we’ve walked there before, it is very nice, calm and cool at night. So we parked close to my old place (on Isla) and started walking. We paid no attention whatsoever while we walked. We were just enjoying the sights, our conversation, and the company of each other. We took about a half hour walk and then decided to head back to the car, in a round about way. In short, we got lost! For the record this isn’t the first time we’ve been lost in the Green belt, every time we go we get turned around. We came out on Anderson, but didn’t realize we had crossed under it earlier, so we took a right when we should have taken a left. We walked to the end of Anderson, stood there a while trying to figure out where we were and how we got there, turned around and eventually found our way back to the car…
This is a bad sign, as Diana said, “We’re not going hiking or camping unless we have topographical maps, compasses and can orient ourselves correctly.” Getting lost in our own town is one thing, getting lost in the wilderness is another! What is sad though is that I like to think that I know where the cardinal points are, that I have a good sense of direction, but everything around me tells me that isn’t the case! Oh, well, good thing we have maps!
I bought books!
So I had twelve dollars of credit at one of the local book dealers here in town, Bogey’s Books. This isn’t the best used bookstore in town. The owner doesn’t know where anything really is and he isn’t the nicest guy, definitely needs to work on his customer support skills. Diana and I (Hi, Diana!) recently found another local bookstore in town, right next to the Co-Op. Sweet Briar books, was a nice little bookstore, the proprietor of the store was friendly and helpful, she was able to help with all of our questions. The only trouble we had was with some dick customer who felt that he could say whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. I wanted to use a brick on his head, Diana, always the wiser, dissuaded me. We bought a couple of cook books and then moved on…
Back to Bogey’s, I had 12 dollars of credit and I wanted to get as many books as possible. I originally had planned to pick up a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged but they only had a mass market copy that I wasn’t willing to pay 4.80 for. I ended up in their sci-fi/fantasy section, where I found a number of the books that are on my immensely long list of books to read, one of which I got for 50 cents! Score! I grabbed Foundation, Rendezvous with Rama, Wit’ch Fire, and Childhood’s End. I took them up to the register and he totaled me up, it came to 12 dollars and 70 odd cents. I had about 12 dollars and 60 odd cents in credit. He looked at me, I looked at him and he said good enough. I don’t know why I’m so excited about getting these books, my backlog only continues to grow. That list to the right, the one that lists maybe 7 or 8 books, is only the beginning of a very long list that has no real end in sight…
In other news, there is no other news for now! Of course things are happening but I’m not going to post them until something happens.