Good Sunday morning! Thank you for joining me. Let’s get some drinks! Coffee? Tea?

I’ve been drinking quite a bit of ginger tea this past week, often with honey or lemon. Once you get used to the kick of ginger, drinking this tea really brings a whole lot of health benefits.

Anyway, enough of that, how’s your week?

This week has been a busy week for me from baking cupcakes and macaroons to learning to dredge and bread chicken tenders to learning to slow-cook a rack of baby back ribs. It was a week filled with food and learning.

I spent the beginning of the week cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen cabinets and pantry, tossing out the expired spices that had somehow made it to my new pantry during the migration last summer. There were seasonings that dated back to 2009. I mean, why do we still have that? I tossed out I believe 4 cans of expired baking powder with expiration dates ranging from 2012 to 2015. No wonder my past cakes were failures.

According to the Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, using expired baking powder will cause the cake to deflate during baking. That was why the center of the cake sank in my previous attempts and probably why I’ve been having successful attempts lately, because I bought fresh baking powder.

During my cleaning and reorganization, I discovered a thermometer in one of the cabinets. I wonder why I’ve never seen it before. Anyway, this thermometer came in very handy when I was making the silk meringue buttercream frosting for my coconut cupcakes. In one of the steps, it told me to boil the sugar and water mixture until it reached 250°F and I wasn’t about to use my fingers to test that.

I was a little bummed on Friday afternoon though, after I received a phone call from the temp job agency informing me I didn’t get the job. The reason was stupid. It was because I was too truthful. In the interview, they asked me why I desired to work from home. I told them it was due to health reasons. I told them I periodically have to get to a doctor appointment to follow up. Somehow, they got this idea I have doctor’s appointment all the time and didn’t think it was a good idea to hire someone who’s always at the doctors.

So what if I have health problems? I’m human.

Whatever! I’ll just look for another job. There are plenty of fishes in the sea.

Though I wonder if there were other reasons like the way I looked. From their perspective, I probably look more like a child than a responsible adult but what happened to don’t judge on looks alone?

*sigh*

Onto a more positive note, I updated the blog with a new header, background, and font. I thought after three years, this blog deserves a fresh new look for spring. I even updated the home menu. I deleted some pages while added a few more categories. I still have some categories to add and probably will add it in the next few days.

In the sidebar, I rearranged some of the widgets while added some new ones like this blog’s Facebook page (please like!) and changing the Goodreads widget from Read to Currently Reading. I also updated the site icon. I love birds and balloons. I somehow think they symbolize storytelling. Hmm…🤔

What do you think?

If we were having drinks, I would thank you for joining me this weekend and hope to see you again next weekend.