Weekend Achievements

I think that overall I had a pretty good weekend. On Friday, Susan and I decided to blow work early and go to Cooking Uptown, a fabulous cooking supply/classes joint off of 7th street that I am obsessed with (side note: anyone want to take a pizza and calzone making class there on May 24th?). I needed to buy a bundt cake pan for my upcoming adventures in baking. I also ran into about 1000 other things I wanted to buy but talked myself out of because my birthday is in June, so I can just get other people (Blake) to buy these things for me.

I wound up with this adorable little mini-bundt cake pan. As you may know, I LOVE making tiny desserts because I have what I like to call "portion control issues." This is also why I shouldn't be left alone at a buffet (especially at the Golden Corral). The pan is just so damn cute and it makes these tiny delicious cakes. The cakes will be discussed in more depth in a future post once I get my pictures uploaded.

I also went to Borders, where I of course spent way more money than I wanted to. I got the Everyday Italian cookbook on Susan's recommendation. Giada is fabulous, and she has three cookbooks and it took me a really long time to settle on one because they all looked amazing. I went with this one because it included a recipe for tiramisu, which I have been wanting to learn how to make. I also got the Williams-Sonoma Mastering: Cakes, Frostings, and Fillings book. I've been wanting to learn to do serious baking for a while, and this is how I'm going to do it. It shows you all sorts of basic recipes and several ways to change them up, and it presents the easiest recipes first, which is key. Next weekend I will be making a pound cake. Regular pound cake is a really easy recipe that I'm pretty sure I can handle, so I'm going to make a chocolate-espresso version I think. The people I work with are going to hate me for bringing them cake every Monday, but they'll deal with it.

I successfully went to the gym both on Saturday and Sunday mornings (yay me) and I did most of my cleaning...I have to mop the floors tonight because I got lazy yesterday. We never made it to the boat because of the crappy weather. But look how pretty this rainbow was! It was right outside of our window. The picture quality's not great, but it was really a pretty sight.

I also finished reading Wicked. It was good, but it was long, and I'm not sure that the whole fairy tale thing is really my genre. I may try the sequel book still though because it was a good story. I started reading a book I got at Borders by Jen Lancaster "Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office." This is more my style. It's mindless and funny, which is how I like most of my reading this time of year. Once I'm super bored in the summer I'll get into smarter stuff.

I think that's about it for the weekend. I'll post again later with Bundt cake fun and perhaps a few new kitty pictures since I just unloaded my camera for the first time in about 6 months. Happy Monday everyone! :)