Green Tea Strawberry Cake: National Dry Cake Day

I was reading an article the other day via my twitter feed about the fact that we have a "Food/Animal/Normal Thing Everyone Does Day" for essentially every day of the year now and how it's particularly driven by social media. Oh! It was in the NYT I think, because the very first 2 sentences were about some 13 year old from like Palo Alto looking forward to National Watermelon Day so she could post a picture that she took weeks ago of herself eating watermelon. This is what triggered my memory of the NYT because 1) Lol California is so far away from NY and 2) Lol this article is about a 13 year old from a fairly affluent part of the US.

Anyways, the article just spends a very long time talking about how people feel that its weird to just post a "random picture" of themselves unless they can caption it to tie-in with a a national event/day. My second favorite part of that article was when they described this 13 year old's watermelon picture, particularly emphasizing just how boring and uninspiring the picture was. As a quote below (clearly I've become so invested into this article that I of course looked it up and will now link it here):

Ms. Khan does not “have a special thing about watermelons,” and the picture of her eating one was not a momentous event. It was a hot day in June. She and a friend bought a watermelon. Someone took a picture.

Isn't that just magical? To be fair, you probably could go off the deep end here and make a reasonable point about how these random national holidays are favored because they make your watermelon day part of a greater community of watermelon days and obviously at our core, we're social creatures that like to feel that we belong.

I bring up this entirely forgettable article about how social media works because I'm a bit culpable to it myself. When I have no idea what to talk about for a post (ie here), my train of thought usually goes along the lines of "what season is it, how can green tea and or strawberries be relevant to the fact I'm horribly sunburnt and musing about the fact I just bought a sun cookie cutter because I could make it into an astrocyte cookie too." And darn, green tea and strawberries have nothing to do with any of those things! Arg! If only there was a national green tea strawberry cake that looks great but is actually too dry day.

Unfortunately there is not a day (yet) for such a holiday, so you'll have to just savor these relatively pretty pictures without a "btw it's green tea and strawberry cake day!" caption. As I alluded to earlier, this cake didn't actually turn out as great as I wanted it to due to the fact I continue to suck at baking cakes. I probably could have soaked the cake in a bit more simple syrup to counter the dry factor, and there was likely some fishiness going on with my egg whites folding and integrity. But the color contrasts between the red, white, and green are appealing regardless. So you know, if you suck at baking cakes like I do, just put this out as decoration, but bring out like ice cream when you need to actually serve people dessert.
Recipe from La Fuji Mama, with an added 1 tbsp of matcha/green tea powder to the dry ingredients.

Throw Back: Teacher Appreciation via Cupcake Appreciation

This edition of old food photos brought to you by June 2010 and high school graduation. 

You know how people talk about how hindsight is always 20/20? Or how things always look better through rose tinted glasses (pretty sure I've used that cliche before on this blog)? Well, I have a serious case of that. Anyways, there's been a lot of reflecting and skepticism going on in my life right now, made more complicated by the fact that I know that my opinions will probably 100% change in the next 5 years. 

I mean just look at high school. I was by no means a cheerleader or a cool kid in high school (#stereotypes), but if you asked me today about high school, I would probably say that high school was a pretty good time for me. God forbid that I am part of the cliche though and I've already hit my peak (but seriously, it's a worrying thought when you're currently near your low). Yet, if you went back 4 years ago and asked me about high school, I would have probably cited the aimless wandering at lunchtime to find a place or friends to eat with and the already growing distance between my two closest friends who started having relationships with boys as reasons I couldn't wait to get out of high school. This sentiment hit quite a peak around prom/graduation where dateless me had to leave prom crying after 5 minutes of just standing there feeling ridiculous even if though I brought along my close junior friend as my "date." Then I had to spend "grad nite" at Disneyland hardcore 3rd wheeling the entire night, essentially being babysat by one of my friends + her respective boyfriend. So yea, I would have easily said high school was terrible back then. But today? I would have easily cited the high quality public school education I received and the many formative social and leadership skills I learned while running cross country as reasons why high school was great.

Likewise, I'm at that point in my college education where reflecting back also brings up many of the unpleasant memories in addition to the formative ones. The thoughts of having to go through commencement being told over and over again that these were the best times of your life, how this college, this class is unique and how the everlasting ties of college friendship will stand the test of time makes me want to puke. This probably is highly disconcerting, depressing, even insulting to many of you, and I apologize if it is because I by no means want everyone to think college was a terrible time. But if high school was any indication, I am positive that in a few years I will fondly look back over these experiences. That's the wonderful thing about the faultiness that is human memory. Overtime I'll eventually filter out the small things that annoy me now and end up with a coherent memory of college that doesn't cause the conflicting, dissonant thoughts currently making this post nonsense. Or, you know, tuition will continue skyrocketing to a healthy 100k a year as classes continue to increase with fewer faculty hirings so that geez, 50k was a real bargain and maybe I should be grateful that my hardworking, generous parents only had to spend a small house to educate me.

I suppose the overall point I am trying to boil down is that being forced to be grateful (and forced to be grateful in a highly specific, mass-mongering way) only leads to more bitter resentment, even if it's resentment that may be unfair in the long run. Given time, the gratitude that I'm sure all fine institutions of learning probably deserve in helping people understand things like, creationism is a hoax or that the earth revolves around the sun, will be given. Though, evidently, they did not teach me how to control my run on sentences. And as another general note, I'm just tired of the cult-atmosphere that seems to engender any positive experience made at college.

Plus, when gratitude means something, it's certainly worth much more. Such as these fancy little cupcakes that I stayed up till 2 AM on the last day of classes to finish for my 12th grade era teachers. Sure, cupcakes can't fund a pizza study break, or some highly contrived, unnecessarily expensive key system (dude, getting rid of your mouse problem >>>>> important than helping students who forget their keys. one is a health hazard and the other is not), but I like to think that when it comes to showing gratitude, it's the sentiment behind the donor's action that matters, not the participation percentage or monetary sum.