let us never speak of this again

some of you may recall the beloved stego cake. we recall it every few days. justin's brother, who is interested in marine biology, had a birthday. so we said, let's make him a hippo cake! (better than a fish, ew). we had many ingredients to work with - devils food cake, leftover brownies, leftover buttercream icing, leftover cupcakes, and white icing with assorted food dyes. as we assembled the hippo, we found that we were actually making a turtle, so we changed course. this is the result.

laura and i decorated the cake while justin was at the gym. when it was finished, we felt sorry for it and laughed heartily. i laughed so hard that i cried real tears. we have ambitious plans but we always make hideous things. when justin saw it he said it wasn't as bad as he expected. justin's brother smiled at it when we showed him. here is a close up, detailing the turtle's festive expression and party hat.

we also made bacon cups, which were justin or laura's idea, i don't remember. they cut bacon strips in half and wove (ewewew) them together into a latticed cup: then they baked the cups in muffin tins. we chopped some arugula and put some blue cheese dressing on it and halved some grape tomatoes and voila:
these are the pools of grease remaining in the muffin tin after baking:
it was an exercise in creativity and trans fat tolerance.

ikea had some kind of sale, so they offered free breakfast. we attended and sang a lot of ABBA. in the future we will try to blogwrite about free events we plan to attend so others may partake as well. if you change your mind on the first in line, honey i'm still free, take a chance on me. ABBA has made some stunning contributions to the world of music videos. i encourage participation.

for lunch today (we are back in DC) i went to negril, a lovely jamaican eatery with a few dmv locations. i got a giant container of rice and peas (beans) with chicken gravy ($2.95), which comes with a salad. i splurged on a big ol piece of coco bread ($0.85), which was doughy and unhhh. i ate about half of the rice and will eat the rest for lunch tomorrow.

in completely unrelated news: The Complete Guide To Finding & Winning Travel Grants