Griddle Cafe

So on Saturday, my sister and I went to Griddle Cafe to meet up with a cousin who is in LA for the time being interning for a film company. Because he lives in Texas we don't interact with each other very often. Anyway, we decided meet up at Griddle Cafe. I looked up the ratings on Yelp, which were pretty good. I also have a slight inkling that Sabina, my old roommate and great friend, had mentioned the place to me before. I saw pictures of the pancakes and french toast. The size of these things is incredible. I salivated just looking at the pictures. I was ready to kill.


9am. Saturday, Sep 25, 2010. We arrived. The place was packed. It was quite a sight. I ordered a Black Magic (an oreo pancake) and my cousin a red velvet pancake. It was monstrous! The first bite of the black magic was like magic, black magic! It was heavenly, definitely endorphine and dopamine inducing. So good! The only downfall is that it's so large, you get sick of it quickly. But it was delicious none the less. I shared with my sister, and we were only able to get through half of it (albeit, I pretty much finished the rest at home). Saturday was just not my morning, because when I woke up that morning, my stomach was not happy with me. After consuming this giant type 2 diabetes pancake my stomach revolted against me. The ride home was the most painful ride I ever. I had the perfect, most legitimate and truthful excuse for the police if he was going to pull me over for speeding.

Anyway, the point is I think I like giant pancakes from Griddle, but only if four people come along to help me destroy the beast. It also didnt hurt that the server was incredibly cute. He really was.

I should be studying for my stupid class right now, but I decided to do this instead. Also, I just realized my pictures are really bad. The lighting was dim, and the flash on my computer just made things worse. Note the juxtaposition of my sister's hand next to the pancake. It really was as big as you think it was. 3 layers of pancake filled with oreos topped with some amazing whipped cream or butter or whatever it was.

New Direction (Ranting Included)

As some of you know, I am attending LATTC, a community college, for Culinary Arts. My school schedule wears me down from Monday to Thursday. I have to wake up at 5am and get to school by 6:30. On Monday and Wednesdays I am at school until 7:40 PM. Absolute torture, considering I am not a morning person in every means. I wake up feeling exhausted and I continue to feel exhausted throughout the entire week, even throughout the weekend. I dread going to school and I look forward to Thursday. I feel like I am not learning anything. I am essentially free labor for the school. Cafeteria workers? Oh, no such thing. Here, the students make and serve the food on the cafeteria line as well as for any special event. Each week students are on a station and follow the recipes listed on a packet. Screw that. Screw it all. Anyone can follow a recipe. If this is what school is about then screw it! I can follow recipes at home. I don't need to wake up 6:30am in the morning, feeling like absolute crap on a daily basis, to follow recipes and not learn anything. The point is I hate school with a fiery passion right now. It is currently the bane of my existence. I am struggling with the thought of quitting everyday, especially since I do not think Culinary Arts is what I truly want to pursue.

WHAT? After the fast day of school in this semester, I decided that Culinary Arts is not for me. I love food, dont get me wrong. I love to cook too, but I realized I dont want to do it professionally. I rather just cook for my family and friends. I dont want the business side of things. I dont want to be yelled at and belittled while making minimum wage. I dont want to feel exhausted every day, causing me to snap at my mom over petty things. I've decided I am going to go to graduate school to earn my PsyD degree (a doctorate in psychology). I've always wanted to help people in my career path. This doesn't mean I abandon cooking. Not at all. Even whilst pursuing psych, I can still cook and eat, which is the beauty of all things. And I will still be updating my blog on food stuff. Heck yes I will.

But the dilemma still remains: to quit school or not to quit school? I'm heavily leaning towards quitting.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Tradition in my household has been for me to cook during special occasions, such as birthdays. Today, being my mom's __th birthday, of course, I naturally decided to bake a cake and make dinner. My sister and I decided on a red velvet cake, a daunting but delicious task indeed. I decided to make bolognese with fresh pasta using ground turkey. I wanted to make a beautiful, absolutely flawless cake. Long story short, that didn't happen. It came it quite unappealing to the eye. I'm not good at making things look pretty. The taste was pretty good, as my dad said, and I quote, "It's good than it look." My parents were beyond perplexed why anybody in their right mind would make a red cake. I licked up so much of the batter and frosting, pre-assemble, I'm pretty sure I came dangerously close to developing type II diabetes right here on the spot.

(I , being the genius that I am, wore white pants.)

They will no longer be perfect white, ever.

Post-Bake

The cake was a little lopsided and I did my best to capture a nice angle for the cake to look good. It was a near impossible task. I ground up some of the cake into crumbs for and put sprinkled them onto the sides of the cream cheese frosting that I had made. Spreading the frosting was so hard! That's the part that threw me off. Later, I took on a "Screw It" attitude and grabbed handfuls of crumbs and just roughly put them on there. Then with a finishing, artistic touch, I prettifully (probably not a real word) sprinkled it on the top.

Cake DONE!

Dinner Time!

Roll out! Pain#1.

Cutting is a pain #2! Sometimes I wish i had a pasta roller.

All cut up and ready to go into the boiling water of doom.

Guess Who???

Wrong! It's Angie-Pretending to be cooking. She was just

helping me stir the noodles into the sauce.

Finished. So full. So fat.

Happy Birthday, Mom.