A Case of the Runs

As much as I bake, when I come upon a recipe that mentions "yeast" -- and not nutritional yeast, I tend to click the "X" button and move on to something... easier. Besides the time-kill of waiting for dough to rise, I have a lot of childhood memories of attempting to use yeast, resulting in baked items that were as hard as rock, flat, and smelling extremely yeasty.  The smell still haunts me every time I open up a package. I saw a recipe for vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls on this site and decided to give it a go.  I made sure to get new yeast that hasn't been sitting in the cupboard for ages and went for it.  I covered it, put it in the oven with just the light on, and was surprised to see a rise! Earth Balance + cinnamon I followed the instructions and cut 10 pieces, but that was a mistake.  You can see the cramming of 10 instead of 9 that went on in here, probably resulting in less expansion (second-rise) and more dense rolls as a result. ...

EVENT: America's Finest City Half-Marathon DATE: Sunday, August 19, 2012 LOCATION: San Diego, CA RACE BEGAN: 07:00 am FINISH TIME: 02:13:48 I rarely take long in writing these reviews, but man, have these past few days been hectic.  I tried writing this post in a hotel room while eating late-night room service and in an airport using terrible wi-fi, but in the end, I had to be settled at home before this could ever get done. The last time I did this race, I was just barely starting to think of what I'd write for my Master's thesis, my sister and I were doing our first Triple Crown , "The Ukrainian" and I were in our very early stages, and frankly, I don't remember much else about it besides the fact that I fell and scraped myself in the early part of the race and that the drive to the expo was horrid. Once again, the traffic coming into the expo was ridiculous, but luckily, we had friends who drove and let us do a drop-and-roll.  The expo tent was hu...

I just consulted TimeandDate.com , and as I had sensed, there are less than 90 days until the wedding. We have just barely started distributing invitations.  I only have about a third of them done, but I am fairly confident that the rest of them will go out this week.  Apparently, even when you attempt to go simple on these, it does take time to actually assemble and address the darn things.  I guess I was procrastinating because of summer slothiness and traveling for work, but I think we're right on time on it anyway. The honeymoon arrangements are also finally completed.  By then, I think I will have just enough vacation time to take the three days off of work to go without sacrificing pay because I had to reserve an additional three days for my "bachelorette" festivities.  We're hoping to go out of the country at some point soon, but I can't see myself accumulating what I need for at least another year... and that will depend on the circumstances of ...

This post is the counterpart to my post on items that I've reviewed during this blog's tenure that I still use .  While I'm not going to cover every item that has just not caught my attention one way or another, I will focus on disappointments in this post. Yes, this probably means I've wasted a lot of money (or time, in the case of review freebies), but how do you know what you want if you don't know what you don't want?  Sounds like dating... The list begins with a lot of food/supplement items that make me wary, and the other half are items that are fine but never/rarely get used.  As a cliché disclaimer, what hasn't worked for me might work for someone else.  We're all different, after all. This is not to say that the products are inherently no good. The "Flops" 1) Vega Sport Protein Not to be mistaken with the Vega Sport Optimizer , which I think is great.  This stuff smelled and tasted like... rotting food.  I had such high expe...

I recently Tweeted about my love for glass tupperware (or food storage-ware, to be more correct).  I've been using these regularly for at least a year now, and I will never go back to plastic!!  I might be sounding over-enthusiastic or preachy, but these are things that I use all the time due to storing leftovers and packing lunch for myself and "The Ukrainian." For those of you who have not made the conversion, I'd like to give you a few reasons to do it: - Safety : I'm sure you've heard about BPA in plastic, so there's one reason to switch.  Of course, if you're afraid of breaking glass, just know that I have yet to break one, and I'm not the most careful person - Hygiene : Glass isn't porous like plastic, so tomato sauce will not embed in it and cause you to scrub; plus, smells (e.g., tuna, garlic, etc.) don't get trapped in there, ever!  The amount of time I've saved from scrubbing tupperware is already enough for me to sing p...

I have reviewed many things on this blog, and I have enjoyed trying all of them.  Many of the items are self-purchases, while some are sent to me... but it has always been about informing people who randomly search "review for X" on Google , since I do that very often myself. This blog is more than six years old, so I thought it would be fun to recap some of the items that have lasted "the test of time."  Pretend it's like "Oprah's Favorite Things," without the extravagant audience freebies. I was planning on including items that have fallen by the wayside, but this entry is already too long.  I think I will save it for a future post. Passed the Test 1) CLIF Builder's Bars After years and many bars tried, I still eat regular CLIF Bars and Larabars on occasion.  Nowadays, I only have the Builder's version in my pantry.  These serve as protein-filled meal supplements (20g), airplane food, and post-race-I-don't-feel-like-eating-...