Couch to 5k

I know, two baking entries in a row, but I really do need to write down my riffs and recipes when I make them so that I actually remember what I did! Especially when I use up the tail end of things I don't always keep in stock. So playing a little bit of catch-up here.

For choir baking this week, I started with Nik Sharma's Spicy Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies, and King Arthur's recommendations for making drop cookies into bars.

( the process of riffage )

( spicy hazelnut ginger bars )

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I also made Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Toffee Cookies for the first time in awhile.

( everything is riffs )

( chocolate toffee cookies, modernized )

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I had a glut of carrots, so I tweaked Serious Eats' Brazilian Carrot Cake recipe to fit a 9x9 pan.

( riff notes )

( carrot cake in a blender )

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Cramming one last recipe riff in here while I'm thinking about it: yet another choir bake, furikake marshmallow bars. Basically crispy rice cereal treats with added furikake, black sesame, and a little sesame oil.

( furikake marshmallow bars )

hyounpark pinged me from BART this morning with the sad news that Fugakyu is closing, after 27 years.

It feels like I've been going there forever, even though honestly the last time I went there was probably when we still lived in Boston. But I'm like 80% certain I've gone on dates there with all of my major boyfriends (if I dated you for at least a year, that's the defining line in my headcanon). A bazillion times with hyounpark during our Boston era. Plenty of times with noghri, both while we were dating and then when we became friends. I thought I'd brought kallmir2000 there, but I double-checked and it was Ginza I was thinking of. (Which makes sense because Ginza was within walking distance of my old Fenway apartment). Where, admittedly, I'd also eaten sushi at with even more of the people I've dated, hahaha, including both Punsterboy and Choirboy! 😁 (Even though Ginza's been gone for well over a decade now.) And theconvictor and I had our Valentines' Day 2000 dinner at Fugakyu when we spent the weekend in Boston on a romantic getaway from campus, feeling ever so grownup, removing our shoes to sit at one of the traditional low tables in the fancy embedded booths.

Fugakyu was even where I introduced multiple friends to sushi (fes42, jennifer, david_grana, Adam); where my girlfriends took me after devastating breakups and meh second dates, because sushi would be followed up by ice cream at JP Licks, and then a visit to a certain little shop down the way (also long gone, alas; I'm hoping this recent rise in romance-specific bookstores brings an appropriate replacement to the neighborhood) because that was definitely better than moping over guys!

And now it's closing, for "personal reasons."

Damn, am I gonna miss their pinetato (pineapple and sweet potato) maki. And the kinuta. And the hotate hokkayaki. And the giant boats of sushi that I would split with my friends. I know where to get sushi; honestly I may just pop down to our neighborhood sushi joint before the trick-or-treaters start arriving. But mostly, finding out that Fugakyu is closing next week is just making me miss everyone in Boston. Even knowing that many of the friends I mentioned don't live there anymore, like us.