Photos /Updates

Update: My camera is being returned and was repaired under the warranty! YAY! So more baking & photos to come. Maybe I'll make something special for the occasion. Can you say birthday cake? (Does anyone have a birthday coming up?)

But I survived without a camera, and Ginny took some awesome photos of us at the Muddy Buddy.
Here are some links: Official Race Photos and Ginny's photos on my Picasa
And here are some highlights:

Nothing's great in Bangladesh

It's all just plain decent.

The cake I made the other day was more than decent even though it was a little wobbly.

And the Muddy Buddy was sooo way more than decent. I'd said we raced decently, definitely need to practice that mountain biking.

And my camera being broken? So entirely INDECENT.

Odds & Ends

Odds:
“Cooking is 80% confidence, a skill best acquired from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.” -Barbara Kingsolver from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which I thought was a pretty awesome book

NY Times's chocolate chip cookie article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/09chip.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
I still have frozen cookie bars in the freezer (duh), but now I think there are ways to make them even better. I'm now baking a cake this weekend for our office bake-off!

End: I broke my camera Tuesday night. ON MY BIRTHDAY. (And no I was not drunk... and the detail on my t-shirt that I couldn't photograph proves that.) I just hate to admit that I was clumsy enough to break it... Gah.
Oh well, on the way back to Canon to be fixed I hope.

(Back of the singlet.)

Icanhaslolcats

(Traffik light kitteh sez go!)
Because who doesn't love an LOLcat?

Boys like cookies

And girls like cornbread.

Uhhh, what? So, no, no strange social commentary or anything, just:
Last Thursday I did a LOT of baking. There were also 2 boys in the house who ate a lot of the finished (and unfinished) product....

1. Oatmeal almond lace cookies via Cooking Light








2. Oatmeal scotchies via the butterscotch chip bag









Interlude: The mess, post-cookie. (And I actually cleaned it all myself after!)









3. Cornbread WAFFLES!
OK, these were really awesome. Basically I mixed up cornbread batter and poured it on the waffle iron. They looked almost exactly like waffles (I used white cornmeal) but didn't crisp up. The nice part of that was that when we had them for our potluck lunch the next day they hadn't lost crispness because it never existed in the first place! Whoo-hoo. Also, we had some excellent salads, vegetarian chili, and brownies with the cornbread and cookies. (We need a repeat.)

But again, the cornbread was totally totally awesome. :)

Foggy Bottom Fresh Farm Market

a.k.a. I heart tomatoes!

I walked over to the Foggy Bottom farmer's market after work yesterday. I think I've said it before in this blog, but I'll say it again - the French bakery is AMAZING!

After this Gatorade, breakfast is hot coffee and a chocolate croissant.

I also got some delicious (but "Ugly") tomatoes. Well tomatoes, I don't care what you look like, I love ya. SB & I ate through about 4 tomatoes last night before dinner.











And! I got pretty sunflowers. They're in a vase on the counter next to these bell flowers I got at the Courthouse market on Saturday - where I also bought (finally!) a pineapple sage plant.

That's Not What I'd Call MY Store, But...

So Ben* in his round the world travels, sent me this photo, in an email titled "World Campaign":
It's not what I'd name my bakery, because who really wants pastry that's just decent? I much prefer sweet, flaky, gooey, etc to decent when I talk about pastry.

BUT. After reading this article from the Washington Post, I decided I needed to find a good word to become viral. And that word was DECENT.

Decent
Main Entry: de·cent
Pronunciation: \ˈdē-s^ənt\

Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin decent-, decens, present participle of decēre to be fitting; akin to Latin decus honor, dignus worthy, Greek dokein to seem, seem good
Date: 1539

1. archaic a: appropriate b: well-formed : handsome
2 a: conforming to standards of propriety, good taste, or morality "decent behavior" b: modestly clothed
3: free from immodesty or obscenity "decent language"
4: fairly good : adequate, satisfactory "decent wages"
5: marked by moral integrity, kindness, and good will "hard-working and decent folks" "it's very decent of them to help"

synonyms see chaste

— de·cent·ly adverb

I'm going to say my use of decent would be definition 4 or 5, possibly with a little more emphasis on fairly good. When I say decent, I say it bolded and in italics, like this, "That was some pretty decent baseball we just watched, guys."

For the ladies, one #46, Jacoby Ellsbury, getting on base:











Anyway, apparently it is getting viral, because Decent Pastry is keeping it real in Bangladesh. The real question is, how were those pastries? Decent?

Update, in fact - Ben says:

we went in there, basically to steal AC

and it was, in fact, totally decent.

not outstanding. a little pricey. not too too much variety. all in all, decent.

*Ben's blog, for more on round the world travels, is here: www.bengaddy.com/blog