but I did make time bake a pie.

Whoo. I'm am so excitable lately. It's been a whirlwind with trying to get the store open, which we are hoping will be by next weekend. I think we are going to save the grand opening party for the weekend after, but it really depends on how a few things pan out. I'll keep you posted.
Despite all the commotion, I did take the time to bake a pie. Or a cake, really. I tried the Boston Cream Pie recipe from Damn Tasty! and it turned out mostly correct. But the key element that makes this a Boston Cream Pie is the cream in the middle, which I could not get to set. I don't know if it's the humidity here or what, but it was still soup after hours of cooling. I probably botched a measurement, who knows. But I wasn't about to let all that cake go to waste, so I whipped up some white cream by taking a typical frosting recipe (but using all shortening and no Earth Balance), and made it softer, and more...creamy. It was kind of like the cream inside those cream horns I remember as a kid. The cake was delicious, just not as authentic as it was supposed to be:



I also managed to create the perfect tempeh salad sandwich. I need to keep a batch of this whipped up at all times:



Ken asked what I wanted for dinner one night, and I said, "I want to make a club sandwich". He looked at me with that silent grin on his face when he thinks something I'm saying is goofy. I asked, "What?!!" And his reply was, "A club sandwich? You're going to put an olive and a toothpick on it, aren't you?"
You're damn skippy.

Oh! Other exciting food news is that Chinese Buddha is once again open for business! Honestly, I used to take this restaurant for granted when I worked down the street from it for six years. But back then it was in a damp, dirty old space, and the vegan soup looked like grey dishwater. And there was that one time I ordered the vegan sesame chicken, and I bit into real chicken. Icky. But, the food was usually pretty good, and they were open until 6AM.
So, the Buddha's back, and in a brand new location. The new place is pretty- in fact it's downright fancy. The prices are around $1-$2 more than they used to be, but the food and ambiance are much better. We dined there this past weekend, and I ventured away from fried stuff and had a lovely curry "shrimp". I'm a sucker for curries.



Here's our friend Jill with her General Tso's "Chicken". Ken had this dish, too. It's sweet, fried, and mmm mmm.



Our shipment of Dino's new cookbook came today. Of course, I bought one for myself as well. It looks like a pretty sweet little cookbook, and I'm looking forward to trying some of the recipes soon. I actually caught a glimpse of it on Saturday, when I so rudely snatched Laura's copy from her at the Vegan Meetup. Oh, the meetup lunch was nice, despite the ridiculously nauseating TMJ headache that I started out with that day. I did manage to stuff my cake-hole with a piece of the new Strawberry Shortcake at Cafe Sunflower though, headache or not. It was pretty great.
... I think about food way too much. Especially various forms of cakes. But I'm sure you already know that. Wow, this posts reeks of ADD. That's kind of how I feel these days. What day is it, anyway?