Month 4 day 4: Charlotte Russe, kind of

Today we didn't really cook. For brunch I went with the dorm to our officer transition brunch, where we're meant to impart all of our wisdom to the next group of officers. As I am no longer going to be an officer, this is my last transition brunch! End of an era...

In the afternoon, I made G's birthday cake!!
Charlotte Russe with Raspberries, Food Network May 2010

In progress

It doesn't look at all like the picture on their website. We couldn't find ladyfingers anywhere, and though I've made them before I don't think they're all that great, so we decided to go with a graham cracker crust instead. Hopefully this doesn't make it impossible to remove it from the springform or something :-P And we bought strawberries instead of raspberries.

But I am happy to say that despite SO MANY BAD REVIEWS about it not setting up, I think mine is pretty well set up. In fact, it set up too fast, so it might be lumpy; we went to Harvard Square for a quick iced hot chocolate for G's birthday treat, but were waylaid by the "May Fair" festival that we stumbled upon. Then G wanted to go to the bookstore. So by the time we got home, it wasn't "just begin[ning] to set" but instead was fairly set. Without the whipped cream mixed in or having been transferred to the springform pan. So I remixed it as well as I could, but it had lumpy bits. So take that, other reviews! Hopefully it tastes good too. The part I licked off of the spoon was good :)

For dinner we didn't cook either, because we went to Chef's Whim at Craigie on Main. I was a little scared because sometimes fancy restaurants serve really weird cuts of meat and things. But we lucked out. Neither of us are big on oysters, but our amuse bouche was an oyster-- that just tasted like lemon and green onions. First course was a cerviche with mustard, kim chi, and ramp on sweet pea coulis. Second course was tautog fish over split pea puree with curried (?) spinach topped with crab (and flowers). Third course was grass-fed sirloin over mashed potatoes and (really salty) kale with an onion puree and oxtail pastrami. Dessert was carrot cake with candied walnuts and cream cheese sorbet and flourless chocolate torte with popcorn and banana-muscovado sorbet. We were very full by then end.

The funny thing is that for a class, we were supposed to write down everything we ate today and estimate the calories. Today is probably the worst possible day of the year for that assignment for me :-P I'm going to go with yesterday's food, for which I have the exact calorie counts, because everything was straight out of Cooking Light. An unexpected benefit of the cooking challenge!