Put a lime in the coconut...

This is my new colleague, D. We just had eaten a wonderful meal of homemade Indian food, and I was to bring dessert. When I got back from having a pedicure (yay, pedicure before school starts!), my plan was to make a coconut cream cake. But, I had no cream cheese, and I kind of wanted trifle. So, I made this recipe up. First, Ophelia and I made a white cake with macerated coconut. Then, we began toasting some coconut for texture. Then, we made some coconut pudding, and some whipped cream. Then, we put it all together. And seriously, it was amazing. I might have had, um, 3 servings. Normally I don't like anything we make that much, but this was really light and good and coconutty. YUM.

We were a little late with this post this week -- lots happening! It's meetings week here, and I sent off my first full article for review to a journal! I am sure it will get rejected, but those who know me know that even just sending it off was a big deal. I'm still working on syllabi, of course, because when do I not work on things up until they are due? I also finally have my office set up, I think -- now I just need to put some pictures in it.

Tomorrow I head to Chicago to see T&A (yep, that's right) and go to a Train concert. Should be great. I have missed Chicago, horribly, and will be glad to drive up Lakeshore once again. It's good to be a gangsta. Wait, I meant back in the Midwest.

This week also marked my Grams' 87th birthday. She visited our new house, and even commented on how nicely the kitchen color matched Ophelia. And she ate a cookie or two -- Ophelia was flattered.

More to come next week -- we sound so boring these days! We're tired; sorry. Hopefully once we get in the groove, things will get a little easier and we'll be a little more humorous. :)

More soon!

Love,
M&O Productions

Good, Good, Good, Good Intentions...

Well, O. and I started out with good intentions. We made a carrot cake, earlier than the deadline we gave ourselves for the year-o-cakes. Then I ran out of time to decorate it, so we thought we'd wait and make another. We thought we'd bookend with cakes we knew we were good at. So, our second was a chocolate and peanut butter cake. Yum. And these were pretty good, although it's clear we are still getting used to the new stove (which burns SO hot, whoa). But, again, we ran out of time for decorating. Why? Well, let us tell you.

Painting. Painting takes SO long. Well, so long when you're not exactly color adept and think you keep your paint swatches straight, but you so don't. And since we've moved in, we've painted four rooms, one of them twice. The sheer stupidity of that astounds me, but we're both much happier with the second kitchen color, which you'll see in the next post.

These cakes were good for our first cakes in our kitchen. Some new colleagues got to taste both of them, and they seemed to like them. I am still having a thing for the cookies, however. Oh those cookies, those sweet, chocolatey cookies...

We'll tell more in our next post -- we've been making cakes, just not writing about them! Sheesh.

Love to all,
M&O Productions