I’m just a sweet chimney cake…from traditional Transylvania

October 3, 2016 Comments Off read Canada, Masticating With Mellzah, Travel

I’ve done precisely zero research on the matter, but it is my understanding that Transylvania has two main exports: vampires and chimney cakes. I never drink…wine. But I do eat cake. Maybe too much cake, but that’s really neither here nor there. So when I happened across a Vancouver bakery specializing in Romanian pastries, including the aforementioned chimney cake (or kürtőskalács), I knew I definitely wanted to incorporate it into my next visit to British Columbia, as a trip to Romania proper is a bit more involved than taking an afternoon jaunt across the border. A chimney cake is made of yeast dough which is wrapped in a spiral around a wooden dowel and baked, similarly to meat on a spit. As it rotates, it’s basted with butter until the sugary outside caramelizes into thin, golden, crackle-y perfection, which can be further augmented by rolling it in other toppings like chopped nuts. When it’s served hot, steam vents out the top like a little chimney and it’s charming as all get out.

There are two (one, two, ah ha ha ha) bakeries in Vancouver that make chimney cakes: Transylvanian Traditions, and The Kürtősh Cafe. Of course, I had to go to both. First up was Transylvanian Traditions. Transylvanian Traditions makes a variety of pastries including the chimney cake, and the chimney cake is offered in only one flavor. When I arrived, I got one hot and fresh from the oven, steam merrily venting from the top. The cake is a revelation–soft and chewy toward the center, crisp on the outside, tangy with lemon, and light like a raised doughnut.

The Kürtősh Cafe is the newer of the two bakeries, and they specialize solely in chimney cakes, offering it in a wide variety of sizes, flavors, and combinations, including savory cakes and cakes smeared with nutella and stuffed with ice cream. Jason got a chimney cake with nutella and almonds, Tristan got a cinnamon sugar chimney cake, and I got a half size coconut matcha chimney cake. The cakes are beautiful and well presented…but just not that good. All three of the cakes were cold, a sign on the cafe’s table proclaims that they use no butter in the cake, and between those two things, you end up with a cake where the outside is chewy rather than crispy, more like the outside of a bagel. None of us were really taken by any of them, which was really a disappointment, because I never want to say anything negative about a cake. I’d be open to trying them again closer to when they open in the morning in the hopes of getting a hot cake for a fair comparison.

So basically what I’m saying is, like blood, you want it hot and fresh.

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Scootin’ San Juan Island

November 9, 2015 Comments Off read Attractions, Pacific, The Great Outdoors, Travel, USA, Washington, West

Almost a year to the day from my last visit, I set sail for San Juan Island, this time to explore more of what the island itself had to offer. Rather than take my car across on the ferry, I elected to rent a scoot coupe: a two-seater, three-wheeled moped that tops out around 40 miles per hour. The only thing standing in my way was the fact that my moped experience was limited to riding on the back of my second host father’s scooter in Taiwan–I’ve really always been more of an indoor kind of rebel, saving my leather wear for goth clubs and looking cool rather than for anything that might require that sort of protection.

My rental place did go over the ins and outs of driving a scoot coupe: don’t leave one of the buttons pressed in or your battery will drain. You have to manually disengage the turn signal because otherwise it will just keep blinking forever. Always put the wheel chock in front of a tire when parked. Always engage the brake lock when parked because of the inevitable kids playing on and around the coupe and their tendency to dislodge the chock. There is no reverse, one of you will have to get out and push in a reversing situation. Don’t go on any road that’s not on the provided map. Don’t try to u-turn on any of the roads because your turn radius is so enormous you’ll end up in a ditch. Speaking of which, pull over when cars are behind you so you don’t impede traffic but don’t just pull over blindly or you’ll probably end up in a ditch (don’t end up in a ditch). Got all that? Ok, drive that baby across the parking lot. You now have ten feet of experience and out into traffic you go! Of course, I immediately got flustered and missed the first turn, which meant poor Jason had to figure out the map and shout the new directions out at me because those big ass-helmets they have you wear are not super conducive to hearing. Or my ears clamp shut when I’m in a panic-type situation. Maybe both.

Once I got the hang of things (which actually happened fairly quickly), I had a lot of fun driving the scoot coupe. It felt like I’d somehow escaped a carnival with a souped-up bumper car, and had a great time careening around corners with the wind blowing in my face. It was late in the year, so there wasn’t a ton of traffic on the roads save for other scoot coupes, and we always honked and waved, which made me feel like I was part of a tiny adorable gang.

Since you can essentially drive around the island in one big loop, my first stop was at American Camp. As I’ve briefly talked about in a previous post, San Juan Island was the site of a territory dispute between the United States and England, with the island’s strategic position between the United States and Vancouver island, and as a result, both Americans and the English attempted to settle it. One day, an American farmer, Lyman Cutlar, found a pig digging up and eating his potatoes (not for the first time, either), so he shot it. The pig turned out to belong to an Irishman, Charles Griffin. Cutlar offered Griffin $10 for the loss of the pig, Griffin demanded $100, the British threatened to take Cutlar into custody, and in response, the other Americans on the island called for American military protection–thus sparking what is now known as the pig war. There was a lot of saber rattling on both sides, warships circled the tiny island, but ultimately no shots were fired. An American camp was established on the south of the island and an English camp was establish in the north, and eventually outside arbitration from Germany determined that San Juan lay within the boundaries of the United States. AT&T, however, still disputes that notion as I received a text message welcoming me to Canada and helpfully informing me that I’d be charged out the wazoo for data.

At American Camp, in addition to the visitor’s center and some historical buildings, there are a good number of walking trails that take you down to the various coves and the lighthouse at South Beach. I ended up taking one of the trails to Grandma’s Cove after briefly seeing what there was to see in the visitor’s center–it was too gorgeous out to stay inside for very long. I didn’t end up hiking to the lighthouse because I was concerned about spending too much time in one spot on the loop, so after a bit more time checking out the laundress’ and officer’s quarters, it was back into the scoot coupe to putt to the next destination: Pelindaba Lavender Farm.

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Happy 33rd Birthday to Me!

April 22, 2015 5 Comments read Projects

I turned 33 yesterday, and had my most sacrelicious birthday celebration yet: Mellzah’s Last Supper. A group of us met up at the Lunchbox Lab and indulged in a stupidly decadent meal that may or may not have involved tater tot and milkshake communion. Yes, I’ve totally gone there for a different birthday and I don’t even care that I’m repeating myself, but I am a little bummed that The Last Supper Club couldn’t hang on juuuust a little longer because it would have been the perfect venue for this theme.

For her 31st birthday, my friend Boolia came up with a really impressive list of thirty-one things she wanted to do in her 31st year, and I watched in awe as she checked them all off–go skydiving, fly a helicopter, basically be a badass for an entire year. What I think makes it so much better than a bucket list is that you really have no idea when you’re going to die, so it’s easy to put off all of those experiences and goals with “someday,” “later,” “maybe next year,” whereas the one year deadline is hard and fast. Either you make it a priority and do it, or you don’t. Some of these things are big, and some are small–I can’t cram all of the huge experiences I want to have over the course of my life into the next year because there are always time and money constraints, but I can make sure this year is both exciting and fulfilling for myself instead of wondering where in the hell the last year went…which I’m kind of doing this year. I mean, when I really think about it, I did do a lot of stuff last year– I united some friends in mawwage, packed in a bunch of activities in Denver including the world’s most exciting restaurant, was miserably sick in and around NYC but still managed to have my mayoral photo taken, took SoCal by storm, took a day trip to Vancouver, went to some museums, checked out some festivals, read a bunch of books, wrote some stuff, cooked some stuff, did some house renos, made some stuff, and saw a hell of a lot of roadside attractions,while still leaving time for all-important puppy cuddles. But there’s always that drive to do more, that fear that I’m wasting what little time I have. I think I’d have that fear even if my consciousness was uploaded into an indestructible super-robot. “Why didn’t I go and see the Florida Keys before the ocean swallowed them?” I’ll moan on my 300th birthday. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

33 things I’d like to do in my 33rd year

~~Finish that app I’ve been working on~~ hahahaha no
Swim with sharks
Become confident using my camera in full manual and overall improve my photography These days I use manual more often than not, and I feel like I’ve improved but there’s always room for more improvement.
Go somewhere I’ve never been (city, state, country…I’m open! A new restaurant or grocery store does not count.) New Orleans. Iceland.
Become more comfortable with having my picture taken I’m getting there. Slowly.
Fill a sketchbook from front to back. Not necessarily good sketches or things I’d want to show people, but make the time to draw. I made good progress on this one but didn’t finish. I will, though!
Float in a sensory deprivation tank
Hike in the Olympic rainforest
Make myself and Jason an awesome Halloween costume I did this, eventually I’ll post about it. Who doesn’t like really out of date Halloween posts?
Feast at Camlann Medieval Village
~~Have a lifecast made of my face so I can…~~
~~Learn to make foam appliances~~ FAILED I waited too long to get started on these two, I wanted to mostly lose the weight first so I’d have a better cast to work from (if I’m doing it, I want the stuff I make to work with my face for more than ten minutes) and since I’m still losing, it’s not yet time.
Visit the dinosaur town with volcano toilets
Go to Diablo Lake
Check out an actual ghost town
~~Run a 5k~~ FAILED
Plant a tree
Try an average of one new recipe a week to avoid boredom and advance my cooking skills. I had a huge success with this, I tried so many new things and techniques, and I feel like my cooking has improved a lot and I’m not as reliant on the same couple of tricks.
~~Achieve my ideal weight~~ FAILED This one is not going to happen–while I’ve lost in the neighborhood of 70 pounds this year, I still have more to go. I did well, but some things just take a little longer.
~~Fly in a hot air balloon~~ FAILED. I booked a trip to fly over the tulip fields, and two weekends in a row, I woke up at the asscrack of dawn, only to have the weather shut the operation down…and then tulip season was over. I am hopeful that this is something I can do next March–if I’m going to spend the money to do it, I want it to be special.
~~Learn a new language or take my Chinese or Spanish from utterly pathetic from disuse to closer to fluency~~. FAILED. I worked on both Spanish and Chinese this year but neither are close to fluency. I will keep plugging away.
Take a hike before dawn that ends with a spectacular viewpoint for the sunrise
~~Dye my hair a fun color~~ FAILED. I wanted to wait until I was less fat and then time got away from me. It’s still going to happen, it just didn’t happen this year.
~~Indoor skydiving (baby steps!)~~ FAILED. I bought the pass but I just did not get it scheduled before my birthday. Soon, though!
~~Go river tubing~~ With the drought this year, this one is not going to happen. Instead, my goal is to fix the back deck so I can have parties out there without fearing that it’s going to crumble right off the house and kill everyone. Hey, not all of them can be exciting. DONE! And holy balls, it was expensive. But worth it.
~~Get to the point where I can hold a freestanding handstand.~~ FAILED. That’s another thing that I wanted to wait to do until I got thinner so it would be easier and as it turns out, I still have more weight to lose.
Throw a party that doesn’t revolve around movie-watching (I love B&G&P&P but it’s a very passive kind of party and it feels like the only kind I’ve had recently)Done, I had a good Halloween party. It *did* feature a power hour, but the point of the gathering was not to watch TV.
Go to Tillicum Village
Go to Cape Disappointment
Go horseback riding on Orcas Island
Have afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress (Scheduled but past my birthday, the place is currently under renovations and if I’m going to do it, I want to do it right, by gum.)
Go on the Elk bugling tour at NW Trek Done, post coming eventually.
Go to Viking Fest

I’m already excited!