Charleston, South Carolina

Who knew Charleston was such a foodie haven?!

The south is known for grits, fried okra, biscuits, and BBQ. Traveling around Charleston, almost everything emphasizes the Lowcountry territory: the marshlands, pretty piers, street names like "Sweetgrass Blvd," plantations that have been featured in movies, and gorgeous 3-story, pastel colored, old-fashioned houses casually clustered in downtown.

But do a quick yelp search for any eatery in Charleston, and you'll see the most incredible (and accessible!) restaurants, cafes, dessert bars (yes, there are literally places to eat dessert and sit outside by the waterfront), and sooo many more.

chocolate zucchini bread.

Spring Break!!

I could've been blogging this from the sunny, sparkling beaches of PCB or Mexico or Cancun. Of course, if I were in any of those places, I wouldn't be blogging - I'd be letting the sun's warm rays blotting my stresses away. That blue sky breeze would be welcome, not just another hurdle to run through. And my only worry would be whether the waves would reach my chair on the shore.

At that point, I'd be obligated to play Knee Deep [by Zac Brown Band].

As it is, I'm still wearing a sweatshirt, am still hesitant to shower for fear that maybe this will be the time I dilly dally a little too long & lose an appendage to hypothermia, and would still rather stay in my warm bed than do anything else. The latter works perfectly with my recent House of Cards obsession.

red wine chocolate cake.

I recently bought this wine - it's called Sweet Red and total college budget level (Carlo Rossi anyone?). Wine is definitely growing on me, especially red. I mean no big deal that I can't pair it with food or make any knowledgable comment about it whatsoever, but I'm slowly learning!

So this Sweet Red. I tried it, and was like, yeah it's totally sweet! Then I looked at the label and was like oh yeah. It's totally less than 10% alcohol. So it's sort of like juice. Right?

Ha ha. Kidding. But that's more sugar than I would want in an occasional drink with dinner. So I decided that it must be put into cake. It made perfect sense to me. And apparently to Deb from Smitten Kitchen, too, because that's where I found the recipe for this delicious cake.

lamington bars.

As of late, I've been having difficulty keeping up with blogposts. Everyone is aware of the usual reasons - it's time-consuming, there are many other things going on, school will get busy soon, etc. So instead of proffering a ton of excuses & still continuing to blog extremely minimally, I have decided to find a working medium.

Instead of my usual rambling posts, I'm going to post mainly pictures & recipes. This will keep the the posts shorter, but still allow me to get everything to you.

Speaking of, let's get to these bars.

single serving, guilt-free molten lava cake.

Have you ever had those mornings where you wake up super early, for seemingly no reason?

You're dreaming and then suddenly, you just drift into awakedness. You don't want to open your eyes for fear of losing your chance of falling back asleep, so you keep your eyes squeezed shut and try to think of the most boring things ever .. like taxes and school.

But eventually, you can't take the suspense anymore, because really, what time is it anyway? Is it acceptably late enough to wake up yet? So you open your eyes.

And it's pitch black darkness. You hear your dad in the shower, and you know your dad wakes up at 5:30am everyday. Damn it.

millionaire's shortbread.

Doesn't the name of these bars sound fancy? You don't need to own a yacht (or yachtmaster!) and wear  limited edition $50 Gucci t-shirts to make / eat these.

They have a shortbread crust, similar to that of my recent eggnog cheesecake. Its high fat to flour ratio makes for a crumbly, absolutely delicious base to the bars.

Sweetened condensed milk is reduced until thick and slightly golden in color, before being poured atop the buttery crust. The milk turns into a light, milky caramel that is sweetly fragrant, and firms as it sets.

Finishing off the entire bar is a layer of chocolate, melted down with just a touch of ghee (butter is traditionally used). That last little addition prevents the chocolate from hardening to a stiff, un-cut-able shell, and lends a silkier mouthfeel to the chocolate.

oreo truffles.

These are quite unphotogenic - just know they taste amazing.

It's good to take breaks sometimes. Enjoy life, ya know.

Wake up at 9 am instead of 6 am.

Take time to eat a relaxing breakfast of steamy oats + pumpkin + banana + cinnamon + chia seeds + walnuts.

Flip your phone over so you stop seeing that maddening green blinking light, indicating a notification, out of the corner of your eye.

Get off Facebook. (Unless there's a huge message thread with some old friends you lost touch with.)

chocolate pumpkin pie bars.

So I had the weirdest dream ever. If you could care less about my random mental thoughts when I sleep, go down to just before the recipe for a review. If you do care (AW THANKS), keep reading.

Quick preface: I have had lucid dreams before. I dream quite a bit. My dreams are usually vivid. But this one was particularly unusual.

I was home for the weekend and taking a nap. I quickly entered dream-mode. I was at my university, in the library. The usual dream sequence passed, but then something weird happened.

cornmeal buttermilk cake + chocolate frosting.

Haha.

That's my response to life right now. Junior year started a week ago, and I just realized I have zero expectations for the year. Initially that seemed kinda sucky.

But then I recalled a conversation I had too many times with too many people last year about how unspontaneous and boring our lives had become. I felt like an old person who had nothing to look forward to in life.

So maybe this unpredictable-ness is a good thing!

tell me about: "Alter Eco" Dark Chocolate Quinoa Bar!

When I become a billionaire, I'm going to spend all my money at Whole Foods. Kombucha tea? Chia seeds? Make-your-own almond butter?

Yeah, definitely. At that point, I won't be circling the store in awe for half an hour, or covertly munching on large amounts of the caramel apple cinnamon popcorn and guacamole with chips that were put out as samples because I would already have all those things at my own home, stocked in cute containers, ready for delicate snacking.

In the meanwhile, I'll have to settle for little things I can afford, like this unusual chocolate bar.

dulce de leche brownies.

Summer has officially started! It seems to also be the season of new houses. So many visits to friends' new homes, particularly when you find yourself with extra time, after your MCAT class got cancelled because the teacher went to the wrong city, 40 mins away.

These brownies are easy enough to make before you have to leave for any housewarming parties, though. Remember I mentioned that the dulce de leche would come up again?

Yeahhhh man .. right here. Right now. Kitchen. Go. 

homemade oreos, rose + peanut butter filled.

So I was eating turkey chili just now before I sat down at my laptop to start writing this post. Of course I got distracted and checked up on the food & fashion blogs I regularly read, all my email accounts (way too many), and tastespotting before finally arriving hurr.

Then I got back up to get my new favorite "chapstick" because my lips were simply parched, and I saw that I hadn't finished all my chili .. !!!

Best feeling. The same thing happened with these oreos. I'll explain.

layered chocolate birthday cake.

I just backed up my computer. I feel so accomplished .. for two reasons. One, it's break. Almost everything qualifies as productive. Fix my hair? Awesome. Change my clothes? Go me. Leave the house? Woah I'm wild! And will need to sleep by 10pm to compensate for the exhausting day I had.

Secondly, I feel like backing up a computer is something that's always advised to do, and no one really does it.

I'm trying to do things I should be doing more. Like backing up my data. Not eating PBJ's everyday. Exercising. Stimulating my brain. Keeping up with responsibilities. All these things juxtapose what I said earlier, my idealized vision of break.

But long term .. they'll help me, right?

chocolate cake + coffee buttercream.

It's April 28. The year of the Dragon. As classes wind down, the apathy rises.

Sounds so dramatic, right? Reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe. He was quite the depressed individual .. his work was so macabre. Have you seen the commercials for the movie based on his short stories? I can't watch the trailers. Too creepy.

But anyway. The amount of work I need to do and the time I'm actually spending working ... theoretically should be a direct relationship (with a correlation coefficient of 1, if you want to get precise) but that's not working out so well. The number of times I bake does go up, though!

cookie dough stuffed chocolate cupcakes, with cookie dough frosting.

I can't believe it's Tuesday! This week was supposed to be crazy filled with work. I haven't yet done said work ... which is probably an issue.

I did make these beautiful cupcakes as promised on Monday night, however.

crazy brownies.

These brownies are crazy. Why? Because there's crazy things going on with them.

As a corollary, there have been lots of crazy things going on with me, too. Corollary .. coronary .. artery .. heart attack.

That's my train of thought, without fail, when I hear/see/say corollary. I guess heart attack is kind of depressing. But doesn't everything lead to cancer anyway?

chocolate cream pie.

Dudes. Not going to lie, I am blatantly using this chocolate cream pie to reflect on things that have been going on lately.

This weekend, I had probably the craziest, most ridiculous, and most rewarding experience of my undergraduate life. Rutgers University Dance Marathon was this weekend, from March 31 - April 1. You can read about it at marathon.rutgers.edu.

I was (originally wrote "am" but realized it's over now ... well AD apps are out next week, so we'll see!) part of Catering, which is a job of incredible manual labor, dedication, and hard work.

vanilla browned butter cake with truffle frosting.

It's been a long (very) Fat Tuesday. Fat, because my roommate and I totally went HAM on the bread pudding served at the Mardi Gras dinner at the dining hall tonight. And then Andrea and I devoured half this browned butter cake in approximately 30 minutes, max. Long, because I had an exam this past Sunday and today, and a ton of other things on top of that. Thankfully, that higher power up there was looking out for me and caused the physics page to crash today. And so my physics online homework was delayed!

And so I proceeded to use the remainder of my time researching HTML. Because I wanted to add a Recipe Index to my blog and didn't realize it was so easy! You just go on "Pages" on your dashboard and make a page with whatever name you want.

But here's the tricky part. You need to make sure to SHOW your pages! This is the most difficult part. But I'm warning you guys now. Cause I'm such a tech pro. I'm soo ready to answer questions to work in the computer labs. And also prepared to bake enough cakes until they accept me just for my food.

nutella cheesecake layer cake + truffles.

Remember Andrea? We've made awesome french toast (I actually made her a heart french toast on Valentine's Day morn teehee) & gone secret santa shopping together, and she also decided what my last surprise birthday cake would be. Well, today's her birthday, and that means one thing: make a more awesome birthday cake than the last one.

Which is kind of extremely difficult, considering this was the cake from Andray dray's birthday last year ..

"lighter" brownie pie.

Inspiration is a funny thing. It hits you when you least expect it, and when you are totally unprepared. But it gives you the motivation to do what you know you need to do.

It's even funnier in that it's difficult to describe. What exactly is inspiration? And how does it affect you? Interesting questions. But yet, you are aware when you are inspired. You realize just what you want to do,  and everything just seems to fall into place. It's a complex feeling that brings such clarity.

Each creature has a place in life. I have a friend who believes that maturity is the realization of one's place in the cycle of life. Regardless, each creature also has one thing to offer to the world - themselves. I just watched the most recent JennaMarbles video, and weird as it sounds, that, along with a couple of other things, happened close enough in proximity to inspire me. To do what? Not sure. But I definitely feel a heightened sense of responsibility, maturity, and direction.

It all hit me after I ate a piece of this brownie pie with some warm milk while chatting with my little brother.