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| Since moving to the left coast, I've noticed a number of interesting food obsessions and trends -- slow cooking, gourmet coffee, farm co-ops, organic free-range cucumbers, among others. That's not to say that obsession with food is unique to here. But what amazes me is the creation of new markets out of seemingly nowhere. For example, Kara's Cupcakes and Sprinkles companies have somehow elevated the humble cupcake, itself comprised of common ingredients, to the status of gourmet delicacies.
Now consumers have the privilege of not only purchasing exquisitely packaged cupcakes from retail stores, but also buying cupcake kits to bake at home. As for the latter, all you need to do is carefully follow the included instructions, supplying your own cupcake foils, eggs, milk, butter, and vinegar. Oh, and there's also the frosting you have to make from scratch from cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. What's in the special powder? The one I got from Sprinkles had flour, cocoa powder, vanilla powder, red #40, and salt. The package also comes with trademark candied dots that will adorn each finished cupcake.
Here are cupcakes I made from Sprinkles' kit and following its instructions to the letter.
Yeah, they're as tasty as they look, and they are painfully sweet, especially with the frosting recipe. They also get the trademark dot. For a Sprinkles cupcake, this counts as a success, as an equivalent quantity of cupcakes would have cost $46 from the store. But now I have a kitchen stained with red #40 to mop up. | | |
| If you use Gmail on a Mac, do NOT upgrade to the latest Safari browser (version 3.2.1). Stay with the older Safari. Accessing Gmail using the new Safari browser results in cryptic errors like "Bad request error 400". They have something to do with invalid cookies. Clearing the cookies solves the problem, but only temporarily. It's been two weeks and the problem has yet to be solved by Apple and/or Gmail. | | |
| Now here's a car that's making waves. Ford will be selling a hybrid version of its Fusion mid-size car in Spring next year. It's remarkable because it's a decent mid size car that gets astonishing fuel economy and costs like a regular car, that is $27K. How's this for real-world fuel economy: An auto journalist drove one around LA traffic for a few hours and averaged 52 MPG. You might be saying, big deal, the Prius can get that, and you'd be mostly right. But the Ford Fusion Hybrid doesn't look like a space capsule and it's roomier and more powerful. What Ford did right was advance upon proven hybrid drivetrain technology (currently used in the Ford Escape hybrid) to bring a realistic, livable car to the market. There's a lot of technology tricks to make this possible, but nothing exotic or expensive, unlike GM's much-hyped Volt.
You may argue that with gas being $1.50/gallon now hybrid cars are irrelevant. But if there's anything we should have learned about oil prices these past few years is that they are volatile. Prices are down now only because of a global economic slump, but consumption is sure to continue unabated. Plus, people are more concerned about environment and consumption than before.
The other nice thing about Ford bringing a car like this to market is that it shows that the American car industry is still capable of churning out decent cars, able to go head to head against some really formidable foreign competition. Long ago I wrote off American cars after living with their crummy build quality short life spans. Now with increased globalization (e.g. platform sharing) and stiff competition, American brand cars are not so different from foreign cars.
LA Times review | | |
| More random, non-personal musings...
Rechargeable batteries come in a few flavors -- NiCad, NiMH, and Li-ion. NiCad=cheap, low capacity, memory effect. (Memory effect means it loses it charging capability over time if you don't fully discharge it.) NiMH is preferred over NiCad, has some memory effect. Li-ion has the best energy density, but it can overheat.
Anyways, laptops and cameras with special (proprietary) batteries tend to go with Li-ion because they offer highest capacity for the physical size. From reviews I could find, brand doesn't seem to matter. A no-name generic will generally do just as well as brand name.
With NiMH batteries my personal experience has been that brand does matter. The Duracell NiMH rechargeable batteries I bought for my camera flash have so far been really great. I charged them up months ago and left them in the flash, and it still has a good charge. The Energizer NiMH batteries, on the other hand, seem to lose their charge over time. | | |
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