f u l f i l l m e

The Official Watchmen Trailer


p.s. They used the Smashing Pumpkins' The End Is the Beginning Is the End! I know it was originally written for Batman & Robin, but whatever. Thanks to a_wol for sending me the link to this!

( Here's my bag, now see what's in it. )


This was my bag last Sunday. The bf a_wol and I had a pizza lunch at Sbarro, watched The Dark Knight, went shopping a bit, and then met up with our friend berrymix for coffee at Starbucks. [Click here to see the photo with notes.]

*cross-posted to the What's in your bag? Flickr pool.

Download the visual planning worksheet for lunches packed in the Laptop Lunchbox here at Lunch in a Box. I picked this up last weekend at DooF-a-Palooza, a kids' cooking event where I met one of the co-founders of Laptop Lunches. Event details and photos at the blog entry.


Planning worksheet for the Laptop Lunchbox

Little Yuzu Just Finished Reading The Mystery of the Third Lucretia Susan Runholt

I crocheted a couple of cupcakes last week using this pattern. They're chocolate-strawberry and red velvet, and they're just slightly smaller than real-life cupcakes. The first cupcake has a vanilla flower on top, and the other has a chocolate flower. I used worsted-weight, 100% wool yarn and Swarovski crystals. They turned out kind'a cute, and I'll probably end up making more. They're really quick to make (save for the sewing parts).

I just finished reading a young-adult mystery novel called The Mystery of the Third Lucretia, which I really enjoyed. It takes you through the streets of London, Paris and Amsterdam along with two teenage girls who uncover, well, a mystery. ;P If you like Dutch art, European travel, or books about friendship and mother/daughter relationships, this is a good read. I don't typically read mystery novels, but the cover art on this one appealed to me at the library (click the thumbnail at the beginning of this entry to see a large version of the cover). I really am a sucker for good cover art.

The Dark Knight is f*cking amazing. It's bleak, mildly disturbing and full of despair, but it's also freakishly entertaining. It messes with the mind in a such a fantastic way. Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, even Maggie Gylenhaal and most especially Heath Ledger kicked major ass in this film. Christopher Nolan outdid himself with this one. Damn, it's brilliant.

Hi. I'm staying away from the Internet for a while because I don't want to see Dark Knight spoilers. Well, I can't go offline completely so I'm just going to avoid places where I know I can get spoilers. In the meantime, I'll be doing some yoga, offline journaling, and other productive things. I'll get back online when Aleq and I see it on Sunday. See ya later, peeps.

Morning prep time: 13 minutes. Full details and an additional bento lunch here at Lunch in a Box

 

Lunch in a Box marked its 1,000,000-visit milestone today, and created a new listing of all current contests and blog events for packed lunches. I'll also be at BlogHer '08 in San Francisco this weekend and an open food blogger get-together on Sunday. Details here at Lunch in a Box.

Little Yuzu is Listening To The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Harry Gregson-Williams

In celebration of France's national holiday, I brought some wannabe French treats to work today. Almost everyone knows of France's famous little sweet, the macaron. Inspired by My Paper Crane's wannabe macarons, I baked my own version of the treat. Several of my coworkers were even fooled by their appearance, thinking they were real macarons! But you can totally tell upon closer inspection that they're not...because they have no feet. =P

Click image for bigger version


©2008 Little Yuzu

They're sugar cookies sandwiched together with frosting. The brown ones are chocolate, the pink are raspberry, the green are pandan, the yellow are yuzu, and the violet and teal ones are almond-flavored (I ran out of other flavorings). With the exception of the chocolate "macarons", I used bottles of pure extracts to flavor the cookies and frosting. I cheated on the frosting and used the store-bought kind, but I changed the flavor up a bit to match the cookies I paired them with. The longest step in the process was mixing the food coloring to get each section of cookie dough (and frosting) the right color, but I'm really happy with how colorful and flavorful these turned out.

Cross-posted here at cute_food.

This post is long overdue. A bunch of chocolate pictures have piled up in my notebook over the past few months, and I only got around to posting them now. Anyway, everyone knows that I'm a chocoholic, and I love plain or fruit/alcohol/flavor-filled chocolates. My favorite is probably Hershey's Plain but I like all sorts provided that they don't have nuts or white chocolate in them. I came across a few recently that got me so addicted it wasn't funny.

One is Cadbury Snack, which I got in Subic and can't find in Manila anywhere, ugh. It's a huge chocolate bar that's halved into squares, and each square has a different filling inside it. You get six different flavors - strawberry, pineapple, orange, coconut, and Turkish delight. It's like a box of gourmet chocolates in one chocolate bar. How awesome is that?

Meiji on the other hand, is one of my favorite chocolate brands ever, not just because it's a Japanese brand, but because the chocolates are fun and interesting. I've always bought their dark chocolate bars or their strawberry-tipped chocolate cones, but a few weeks ago I decided to try their sample pack. It includes five boxes of different kinds of Meiji chocolate. There's Marble, the candy/chocolate-coated circles filled with fruit flavors inside; Apollo, the strawberry-tipped chocolate cones; Coffee Beat, these coffee-bean shaped, coffee-flavored chocolates; Choco Baby, which are milk chocolate cylinders; and another variety of Marble, but the candy/chocolate-coated circles filled with chocolate this time. These are all absolutely awesome and so fun to eat.

Goya Dark Mint is very popular with my Plurk and Lj friends, and it's easy to explain why. The 9-piece box only costs P24, and it's filled with yummy dark chocolate mixed with mint. It's so good it's easy to polish off a box in one sitting. Sometimes even a box doesn't cut it, but because it's so inexpensive, scarfing down another box is okay. It's great that a local brand finally produced affordable, quality chocolate.

Now, Lindt Classics was the best treat I had lately. My aunt brought me a box, and I was so thrilled because I love gourmet chocolates but they're just too expensive to eat everyday. This Classics box had seven different kinds of pralines inside. There were dark pecan caramel classic, dark hearts, dark raspberry gems, dark orange gourmet truffles, dark gourmet truffles, dark caramel chews, and dark vanilla gourmet truffles. They were orgasmic! Haha. I always feel like I'm in the computer game Chocolatier when I have a box of chocolates like this.

On my last day of work, I chose to have lunch with the first friends I had in the company. Most of them moved on before I did, but they were part of what made me stick to the job for so long. Irish, Jaja, Sean, Abby and I ate at Cafe Bola and then we had coffee at Cafe Breton. They made me forget that I was leaving. It was a fun fun fun lunch. Thanks peeps!



The Girls
( Food and Friends )

I've been holding back from buying toys because, well, I'm a bum now, but luckily, I received a few toys as gifts recently. These will tide me over nicely until I'm out of frugal mode. What can I say? I'm addicted and need my toy fix every now and then. Anyway, here go the pics!



( Munny! )



( I Love Animals Wolf )



( Yummy Breakfast )

Bye to me!
( Friends, toys, food, coffee, etc. )


Last Monday, my officemates gave me a surprise send-off. I knew there was a dinner planned, but I didn't know that it was specifically for me. I didn't even know where we were going until a few hours before we left the office. I was actually having second thoughts about going because I'm on frugal mode these days. My officemates are sneaky bastards! They were so good at making up stories and hiding their preparations from me. This involved letting the Fresh Domani owner in on the plan, lying to me about all sorts of stuff, hiding the toys in drawers, and chatting behind my back. Not that I was paying attention anyway. Julls: "What was I doing all this time that you were planning the surprises?" Officemates: "Um, Plurking?" There you go.

So they rounded everyone up in Editorial, Art, and Online, treated me to dinner at Tempura Grill, gave me toys (a Munny urban vinyl fig that they customized and an I Love Animals designer plushie!), and then we capped the night off at Starbucks. I wasn't super close with some of the people who came, so I really appreciate the fact that they did that for me. I'm glad I was able to at least connect with them enough in some level while I was in the company. What they did made me really sad that I was leaving, but it was a fun night.

I was really touched and speechless. Thank you so much to Clifford, Luis, Billy, Sean, Chris, Deb, Cielo, Jen, Pao, Mick, Eugene, and most especially to Verns, who organized the whole thing. Astig kayo!

Kamei in San Francisco now stocks ten different kinds of high-quality Hakoya-brand bento boxes. All are priced at US$10.50, regardless of size or design. (I have no commercial affiliations with Kamei or Hakoya.) Full details with box info are here at Lunch in a Box.