[Inez] Cherry blossoms and caipirinhas

Elise came to visit. She's only been gone a month (feels like ages longer), but she couldn't stay away from us.

Also, she came a little bit because the cherry blossoms are going HEY LOOK AT US.

We got to the tidal basin a little late, but the sky was pretty.

The cherry blossoms were okay too, I guess.

By which I mean they were stunning. As usual.

Then after our fingers got cold and we couldn't really see the blossoms that well, we (Elise, Stephen, Ranajoy, Colin, me) went to Colin's house for dinner and caipirinhas. Caipirinha is the Brazilian cocktail, made with cachaça.


First step is to cut up an entire lime. Mash it up.

Then add a teaspoon or two of sugar -- we used rapadura (the same as tapa dulce; whole sugar without the molasses taken out yet) which is why our drinks ended up brownish tinted (and delicious, for the record). Also add a shot and a half or so of cachaça, depending on your taste. In Brazil, Anna and JP had some homebrew stuff that JP's brother (?) made, which I think I preferred because it tasted more like sugar cane and less like straight alcohol. But we couldn't bring any back with us because we weren't checking any bags. Stupid TSA. Anyway, add the cachaça. Then add ice and top it off with water or seltzer, and ta-da! 

"It's like the best drink ever," says the inimitable Ella Willard-Schmoe. You heard it here first.

[Inez] Compost cake... in Brazil

Yeah.. I went to Brazil. I made a cake while I was there. I made a ganache to go on top of it, with coconut milk and chocolate. By the way, coconut milk does not interact with chocolate the same as cream. You know when you add the chocolate to the cream and as you stir it gets thick and mouth-droolingly delicious? Yeah, that doesn't happen. Well, the delicious and the drool definitely happened. Anyway, cake: