02.14.2011 1:41 p.m.
My twenty-first birthday. I finally settled my fairy self down for a moment’s rest after being up and actively doing things since 5:00 in the morning.

02.15.2011 7:00 a.m.
I had the most amazing, magical, sparkling, flowing, tiring, sugary, warm, cold, loving, happy, thankful, magnificent twenty-first birthday anyone could ever hope for…

I woke up at 5:00 in the morning to catch the rising of my sun over the east hill while perched precariously on a frozen (but quickly thawing) waterfall in lower Robert Treman State Park with Lyca and Damaris, and was welcomed at 8:12 a.m. into the twenty-first year of my life by these two amazing people (one who I have known for quite some time; the other I have recently become acquainted with).

We celebrated the earth, the day, the sun, and the warmth with an amazing collaborative photo shoot involving frozen water, pouring water, shoes and socks, fire, sun, dry ice, and cold fingers and frozen toes. The air around us was soft and pleasant, and caressed our bodies as we carefully positioned ourselves on the ice, trying our best not to step through (although we did, and it was cold). We watched the sky change from dark gray to blue, slowly progressing through lighter and lighter hues with each passing moment. The progression of the colors of the sky and earth as a result of the sun’s greatly anticipated arrival was truly magical. When the sun finally broke free and rose over the horizon, we greeted it with upturned faces, smiles, and thanks.

We warmed our toes on the ride home, and decided that cheesecakes (yes, cheesecakes, plural) would be an appropriate breakfast. Since Lyca doesn’t have a coffee grinder, we took the cheesecakes in my picnic basket to Gimme Coffee on Cayuga Street, and sat there eating delicious chocolate currant and vanilla bean cardamom ginger cheesecake and drinking amazing, fresh coffee. One of the women in the coffee shop was staring at our cheesecakes, and we offered her some and found out that it was also her birthday! She kindly declined the offer, which made me a little sad, because I think she would have really liked them!

After the cheesecake picnic at Gimme, I drove Lyca home and went to visit Varya at her apartment, toting my picnic basket upstairs with me. I gave her a slice of each cheesecake (which she was very excited about!) and she shared some of her Limoncello (very delicious citrus liqueur) with me. I offered to drive her to class, which gave us more time to spend together, so we decided to go downtown briefly because I wanted to buy some flowers for friends. We stopped by a beautiful bed & breakfast at the bottom of Buffalo Street because Varya wanted to inquire about reserving rooms for graduation weekend. The inside of the B&B was beautiful, and the woman we talked to was adorable and gave me a piece of cake and chocolates for my birthday (Varya told her it was my birthday; Varya ended up taking the cake and chocolates to studio with her because I couldn’t eat the cake and I had already had my fair dose of sugar for the morning). After visiting the B&B, we went to Bool’s Flower Shop (the flower shop that Ginger Babel lived in for the month of December) where we were the only women in a store filled with men (not counting the ladies arranging the flowers behind the counter). It was hilarious, and we had a great time fluttering from bucket to bucket, choosing the perfect flowers. I bought Hope and Varya each a rose (red for Hope, light pink for Varya), a beautiful purple iris for Karli, and a giant bunch of bright assorted flowers for Laura.

After I drove Varya to studio, I stopped by to visit Laura at work (she works in Rhodes hall on campus), and she was very surprised and happy to receive cheesecake and flowers. I shared my cheesecakes with her officemates, who were also very appreciative.

Once I had played the part of Laura’s personal cheesecake fairy, I took a trip to the Cornell Plantations where I wandered around taking pictures and rang the gong three times in celebration of the day. I sat for a while on the long, curved bench at the top of the hill, looking out at the plantations below. The sky was dark gray and threatening rain, but it was pleasantly warm and calm. After a y feet were soaked again (I changed my boots after the photo shoot because mine were soaked through with ice water), so I stopped home to grab some food, dry socks, and another pair of boots. I then went to 140, distributed more cheesecake, and picked up Karli so we could pay Hope a visit. Hope was all dolled up in her Valentine’s Day best, and looked absolutely adorable. We visited with her for a little while, and afterwards, Karli and I went to a wine store where we encountered an adorable little girl named Saffron, and then wandered aimlessly around the commons until we needed to go take a nap.

Birthday dinner consisted of vegetarian sushi making (we used cucumber, carrots, avocado, and apples) with Karli and Lyca (even though Karli and I were very out of practice at rolling sushi) and was very tasty! It was the perfect dinner to balance the many pieces of cheesecake I had eaten earlier in the day ☺

The cheesecakes I made very tasty, and I personally preferred the vanilla bean/cardamom/ginger/fig jam cheesecake to the chocolate currant cheesecake, but some people liked the chocolate currant one better… different people like different things I guess!


Cardamom vanilla bean fig cheesecake with walnut crust

Crust:
2 cups walnuts
3 teaspoons butter, melted
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ tsp cardamom powder
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons molasses

1 jar of fig jam

Cheesecake:
32 oz cream cheese, room temp
4 large eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1 vanilla pod, cut in half and scraped to get the beans
1 teaspoon ginger


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the bottom of a springform pan with aluminum foil, assemble the pan, and wrap the foil around the outside. Cover the outside of the pan with more foil so that water doesn’t get into the cheesecake when it is cooking in the water bath.

Process the walnuts in a food processor or blender so they turn into a coarse meal. Mix in brown sugar, cardamom powder, ginger, and cinnamon. Add maple syrup, molasses, and butter. Mix until all of the walnut meal is coated with the sticky liquid ingredients (butter, molasses, and maple syrup). Press into the bottom of the springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of the oven and carefully spread a layer of fig jam on top of crust.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar, and blend until smooth. Add cardamom powder, vanilla beans, and ginger, and then eggs, one at a time, beating with hand-held mixer until smooth. When batter is a uniform consistency, pour into crust.

Bake cheesecake in a water bath (I used a larger skillet filled with water with the springform pan inside of it) for about 1 hour (it took mine a little more than an hour) until it has set. The center will still be a bit wobbly, but will set in the fridge. Remove from oven and let sit in the water bath for a couple of minutes, then remove the cake from the water bath and let sit on counter until cool. Place in a refrigerator over night (or for about 6 hours) to let it set. Once cheesecake has set, remove from fridge and spread jam on top and sides, then eat!

Cardamom Purple Sticky Rice Pudding & Gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies

The inevitable consequence of always trying to come up with recipes and experimenting in the kitchen is that you have to be your own taste-tester, and generally, you are your own harshest critic. That being said, I am positive that I have eaten more cookies now that I know I have gluten intolerance than beforehand. Why? Gluten-free baking is so much more fun and exciting than regular baking. The chances that your recipe will fail are so much higher with gluten-free baking than regular baking and the suspense when you wait for your freshly baked goods to come out of the oven perfectly plump and delicious is amazing.

I have been meaning to try making a sweet coconut sticky rice/rice pudding for a really long time (ever since I tasted it at Taste of Thai Express in Downtown Ithaca), and have really been dying to come up with a recipe that does not include many cups of sugar. A recipe where you can actually taste and appreciate the flavor of the rice. I like to try to sweeten things with maple syrup or honey as much as I can, so I decided to try a purple sticky rice pudding with Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk and Grade B (dark) Maple Syrup (from Greenstar’s bulk department).

My good friend, Hope Rainbow introduced me to cardamom last semester when made a delicious sweet coconut cardamom wild rice dish for breakfast in sculpture class (we had leftover supplies from our Ginger Babel project). I really love cardamom, and have been trying to use it frequently.

Coconut Cardamom Purple Sticky Rice Pudding Pudding:
1 cup purple sticky rice
1 cup water
1 cup Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
8 cardamom pods, whole

To drizzle on top:
½ cup coconut milk
4 tbsp maple syrup

In a medium sauce pan, combine 1 cup purple sticky rice with 1 cup of water, 1 cup of the coconut milk (before you open the can, shake it to make sure the coconut milk is not chunky), and 2 tbsp maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir once in a while until rice is cooked and water & milk have been absorbed.

When rice is done, in a separate sauce pan, heat up the rest of the can of coconut milk (should be about ½ a cup) with 4 tablespoons of maple syrup and stir until combined and boiling.

You can serve either hot or cold (I prefer it hot). Scoop some rice into a dish, and pour the maple coconut milk on top, or you can layer the rice and the maple coconut milk. Yum :)


I am so happy that my friends are finally all getting back from break!! It was very peaceful and relaxing to have Ithaca all to myself for an entire month, but after a month of limited social interaction, I am ready to start hanging out again (at least until my school work wrenches me away from my friends). Yesterday, I went to Salvo with Varya & bought a large canning pot, and can't wait until the things start growing again.

Last summer at the farm, the tomatoes were so perfect and ripe that they fell off the vines and into my hand when I touched them. Bob had a hoop house full of tomatoes (to protect them from diseases) and a bunch of trellises outside, but the hoop house felt like a magical land. The trellises inside lined both sides of the hoop house, and as the tomatoes grew, we trained them to grow up, up, and up. Eventually, the vines growing on the trellises met at the top of the hoop house, forming a beautiful, bright tomato tunnel from the entrance to the far end.

Even with the trellises, the tomato vines were hanging so low that even I had to crouch down at times to get through. At the entrance of tomato heaven, there were gorgeous, gigantic heirlooms of all sorts of colors, shapes, and sizes. Some of the heirlooms were so large that I was surprised the vine could withstand the weight without breaking, even with the help of the trellis. Farther back there were sungolds and other smaller, pop-in-your-mouth varieties. The grape tomatoes were really interesting because they grew in bunches similar to grapes and were also shaped like small but long and slender grapes. Personally, my favorites were the sungolds. Hope and I spent way too much time picking those little orange beauties straight off the vine in the hot sun and popping them into our mouths, but they were so delicious and addictive that we had a really hard time not eating them.

Here is a (terrible) picture of some of the beautiful tomatoes from the farm (although the picture really doesn't do the tomatoes any justice):

After Salvo, we went to Wegmans & then down to the commons with Lyca. It was nice to walk around, but really, really, really cold. The wind was biting my face and I was happy to seek shelter in the stores. I ended up buying a new pair of running sneakers from the Finger Lakes Running & Triathlon Company, which are going to be really helpful because I have been running on roads in trail sneakers, and now I finally have a pair of road shoes.

The same night that I made the purple coconut rice pudding, I also decided to make some gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies (very, very long name, I know). The first batch came out completely flat, but tasted AMAZING, so I added some more flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, another egg, and some chocolate chips to the recipe, and it came out really good.

Here is a rough version of the old recipe which didn't work out:

Gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies

2 tbsp coffee beans
seeds from 6 cardamom pods
2 chocolate hunks (goya chocolate)
¾ tsp xanthan gum
1 ½ tsp bk sda
½ tsp bk pdr
pinch salt
*Wow, I forgot to write down how much flour and I used.... I think I originally used about 1/2 cup buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, 1/2 cup butter, and about 3/4 or 1 cup of a mixture of light & brown sugar

**To this I added (after attempting to bake batch #1 and it came out terrible)

½ cup buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon bk pdr
½ tsp x gum
1 egg
a bunch of chocolate chips

Well, obviously, this recipe is a mess and I need to figure out the correct proportions. The main thing is the cookies were really good, and the combination of the coffee, cardamom, chocolate, and molasses was very interesting in a cookie. The cookies were nice and soft, and I think the addition of the chocolate chips was essential. I also really liked using the Goya chocolate instead of 'regular' baking chocolate. **Need to work on recipe!**

The sunset yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. I was driving home and had to park my car and get out to take a picture of this building on the engineering quad because it was glowing: