Lemon Crumble Bars

This week's dessert was inspired by Sandra. She had been on a cleanse for over 14 days and had not eaten any wheat, alcohol, caffeine or red meat. I hadn't figured out what I was making for dessert night yet so I thought I'd take some suggestions.

Sandra said that lemon bars and crumble cookies were the things that she missed the most. I did some thinking and the usual Google searching for recipes and happened to come across this recipe for Lemon Crumble Bars. They are a unique combination of a crumble cookie with the filling of a lemon bar in the middle.

They were really tasty and not too tart which was nice. I have no pictures of this week, but I will say that they are really messy cookies. You should be prepared for lots of crumbling. Happy Baking!!

Strawberry, Mango & Blueberry Filled Pavlovas

This post is VERY late considering that I served this dessert on August 5th. I will keep it short and sweet.

Let me just say that pavlovas might just be one of my favorite desserts. They are light and crunchy on the outside and have just a slight chewiness to the inside. They are just slightly sweet but not overly sweet which is my favorite type of dessert.

In addition to being so tasty, these are super easy to make and people think that you did something amazing. They go really well with fresh fruit. Also, they can be flavored (ex. chocolate, strawberry) to add a slightly different twist.

Here's J enjoying one


If you'd like to make your own, go here.

Something to ponder...

I was on the search for a quote for my friend Courtney's wedding book and happen to run across this one...

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.
-- Joseph Campbell

Just something to ponder on this average Tuesday, especially as I'm trying to stick to an impossible plan.

I Can't Believe It's Already August?!?!?

It's just SOOO insane that it's already August. Were did all of the time go? It feels like it should be the beginning of July or even earlier! I was just starting to stop wearing sweaters to work (ok, maybe not since it's freezing in my office) and all of the summer fun was ahead of us.

Perhaps it's because I use the impending date of my birthday to judge how much summer is left and since it's already this weekend, I'm feeling like this summer is already over. It has been a busy summer. I've been home to Monterey probably about 4 times, maybe more, been to Colorado with J, been to concerts, birthday nights out, eaten tons of crepes at the best crepe stand in the city (thanks Alan for introducing us to it), and we're getting ready to go to Baltimore for the Virgin Mobile Music Festival this coming weekend. All in all, despite the speed at which life is flying at me, it's really good. I really like my new job a lot. I have a great set of friends that I've done all sorts of fun stuff with this summer.

In spite of all of the good things, it is a harsh reminder that I'm rather behind on a lot of the things that I wanted to do this summer. It's good for me to see my friends head off to their new adventures for the school yeah and either start business school, head back to law school or finally join the real world after finishing some sort of post-grad work. I see that perhaps that's something that still might be interesting for me despite the fact that I really have no reason why I want to go to business school anymore and this might not be the right time in my life for what I thought I wanted out of business school (but I'm not going into a philosophical discussion in this post, I promise).

I'm just shocked at how fast this summer's gone! I guess it's time to buckle down and start really making a dent in all of those things that I wanted to accomplish before the summer's officially over.

Officially a Twitterer

So after much resisting that I don't need another web 2.0 application, I was convinced to join Twitter. Apparently many of the crazy thoughts that go through my head are just perfect for sharing on Twitter.

Look for me @lazataz on Twitter.

"Tweet tweet!"

Chocolate Angel Food Cake and Fresh Raspberries

I was lazy again this week. Yes, I had no excuse like last week and this week I even went so far as resorting to store bought desserts. I am hanging my head in shame right now and promise to do better next week.

Nonetheless, this week we enjoyed a lovely Chocolate Angel Food Cake, care of Safeway's bakery, and some fresh raspberries. Sadly, there are not even pics of this yummy dessert. I was totally slacking this week.

Besides dessert (which was obviously not the focal point this week), Tara brought her newly purchased Tiny Toons DVD that we thoroughly enjoyed along with numerous YouTube videos.

I must also give a shout out to the new people this week! Neena and Kacy joined us. They went to college with Tara and J and I met them at Elizabeth's wedding two weekends ago. We're all glad that they've moved to the Bay Area and joined the Dessert Night clan.

Elizabeth's Wedding and a Weekend in Boulder

J's friend from high school, Elizabeth, got married on Monday in beautiful Lyons, Colorado, which is about 40 mins outside of Boulder. It was a great excuse to spend 4 days in Colorado, though who gets married on a Monday night. I did spend two months working in Denver, but I was excited about the opportunity to actually get out and see some of the state besides the airport and 2 blocks of downtown.

For those of you who are wondering, yes this was my first trip with J that involved a plane, but it wasn't nearly as big of a deal as some people have made it out to be recently. There were 6 of us total who traveled there from SF and then we met up with probably another 5 or 6 of Elizabeth and Tara's friends from college. Luckily, a couple of them just moved back here, so I now have new friends to hang out with here!

We did a fair amount of eating, relaxing, swimming in the hot tub, hanging out, and driving around in a giant Armada that seats 8. It was awesome. I haven't been at my new job long enough to accrue too much vacation time yet, so I worked two half days while in Colorado. That was interesting. I felt like I was constantly missing out on things both with work and fun stuff that was going on and I spent the entire day glued to my BlackBerry which is something that I don't like to do.

There are a number of fabulous stories from the weekend and lots of funny things to laugh at from David requiring ear plugs and an eye mask for a 2 hour flight to the great picture riddles that Theresa drew on both flights ("you make my heart tsunami" was my personal fav). David drank out of a fountain and didn't at all remember the next morning. But perhaps the funniest thing of the weekend was that after drinking out of the fountain, David yells, in front of everyone, to "throw that shit" to Elizabeth because she was holding a bouquet. Little did David know that about 3 hours earlier, Elizabeth tossed her bouquet and her sister-in-law's sister (not sure what that makes her), Anna, caught the bouquet.

All in all, it was a really great weekend. There was a good amount of fun, enough work to get by and a good amount of relaxation too (and LOTS of reading for J...I still can't believe that he finished 4 books in 4 days). You should definitely check out the plethora of pictures on Facebook if you haven't already seen them. I just included a few at the beginning of this post that shows some of the highlights from the main events. Now it's back to the usual...well, until the next weekend of insanity.

Up next, river rafting...