offshore cpa: on the home front

Here's a post with a touch of randomitis: Homemade crepes and homegrown coconuts! And I'll throw in a couple comments on Picasa's new functionalities as well, just for fun.

Homemade crepes

Who doesn't like a crepe? The first time I ever enjoyed a homemade crepe was when my best friend visited me in our first tiny New Jersey apartment and taught me how to make the simplest breakfast ever, using just flour, eggs, and milk. After that, NS and I enjoyed the delicious, all-natural crepes prepared by Simply Mediterranean nearly every time we visited our Williamsport, Pennsylvania home. I didn't make my own, though, until our couchsurfing hosts in Paris allowed us to experiment in their kitchen.

Recently, we "splurged" and bought a proper crepe pan from A.L.Thompson, which is basically like a normal nonstick skillet but with really short edges.

For my crepes, I used a fail-proof recipe provided by RL: 110g flour (yes, I got out my kitchen scale), 2 eggs, 1 c. milk, 2 oz butter, pinch of salt (adjusting flour/milk as needed for proper consistency).

The trickiest part of the process is the flip. It took me several tries to flip it in the air, flap-jack style. I did do it. But there were no witnesses. So you'll have to take my word for it.

Perhaps the most interesting part of crepe-making is choosing the filling. I've had all kinds of crepes, both sweet and savory. Nutella is a crepe staple, and since this was a breakfast crepe, I added yogurt to the base.

The third ingredient was key: Fresh sliced strawberries.

Now, for a comment regarding Picasa 3.9: Picasa is doing away with Picnik, its online photo editing software, but in doing so, they've incorporated a lot of the special effects that Picnik allowed right in the Picasa interface. One complaint I had about Picnik was that every photo to be edited had to be uploaded to Picnik, which took a couple minutes for each photo, presumably due to file size. Now I can get a number of special effects, like the Cross Process look above, without having to worry about online interfacing.

The final step of crepe-making is eating the fruits of one's labor!

The photo above was edited in Picasa using the Lomo-ish effect, which imitates the Lomo toy camera. Picasa just took my addiction with free photo editing software to a whole new level!

Homegrown coconuts

It's no secret that there are palm trees galore on this island, and our condo complex is no exception. I was out by the pool one weekend, and a guy with a machete was busy trimming the palm trees of excess leaves and, of course, coconuts. Before long, a whole row of perfectly pale green coconuts were lined up on the coral wall, just waiting to be consumed.

So while I waited for an available coconut, I took a photo of the parent tree, which I (surprise, surprise) edited in Picasa using the Lomo-ish effect, once again.

Soon enough, I was sipping the good stuff. See that little hole in the top? That was custom-made for a straw, but I went old school and just drank it straight out of the coconut. Natural and refreshing.