Only a few days left to get your entries in! I know you’re super creative and can come up with a great business name for me. Who wouldn’t want to win 2 dozen cupcakes (or cake mix and fondant decor if you aren’t local)?!

It’s official… I’m in the cake business.  It’s become a fun hobby of mine, so I thought I’d take the plunge and make it a side business.  If you live here in the Bay Area, please consider ordering some delicious cakes from me.  I’ll even let you do a taste test before placing your actual order.

I’m so super excited!!  My boobies took first prize in the Nippular Cookbook Contest.  I win 3 awesome cookbooks and I’m so jazzed!

I got a coupon today from Planet Organics.  It looks to be a company (here in the Bay Area) that delivers locally grown, organic groceries to your home.  You go to their website, complete your order, then it comes to your house.

Are there any other Bay Area peeps out there who use this service?  I have to admit that I’m not super impressed just by looking at their website.  Things seem really expensive, even for organic.  Like $5.30 for a bunch of beets.  $4.75 for a pint of strawberries.  This seems awfully high to me.

Not Exactly Bento is giving away some free bento gear!  For a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post here.  The contest closes very soon (March 20 @ 8 pm to be exact), so get those comments in!

If you don’t happen to win this bento set, maybe you can win the one that I will be giving away in April. 

The durian is the fruit of trees from the genus Durio belonging to the Bombacaceae. Widely known and revered in Southeast Asia as the “King of Fruits”, the fruit is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow up to 30 centimetres (12 in) long and 15 centimetres (6 in) in diameter, and typically weighs one to three kilograms (2 to 7 lb). Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale-yellow to red, depending on the species.

The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Regarded by some as fragrant, others as overpowering and offensive, the smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The odour has led to the fruit’s banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in Southeast Asia.

The durian, native to Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, has been known to the western world for about 600 years. The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace famously described its flesh as “a rich custard highly flavoured with almonds” in the 19th century. The flesh can be consumed at various stages of ripeness, and is used to flavour a wide variety of savoury and sweet edibles in Southeast Asian cuisines. The seeds can also be eaten when cooked. The name durian comes from the Malay word duri (thorn) with suffix -an.

There are 30 recognised Durio species, at least nine of which produce edible fruit. Durio zibethinus is the only species available in the international market: other species are sold in their local regions. There are hundreds of durian cultivars; most of them have a common name and a code number starting with “D”. Many consumers express preferences for specific cultivars, which fetch higher prices in the market.

I used to watch shows like Bizarre Foods and No Reservations all the time.  Every time the hosts were in Asian countries, they always had durians.  The host of Bizarre Foods, a man who will eat the grossest of gross things, spit out durian– a seemingly harmless fruit.

I was totally fascinated and have wanted to try durians ever since I saw it featured on these shows.  My chance to try it came this weekend when we were in Sacramento spending Tofurkey Day with the family.  My hubby and I found some at an Asian market and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to finally try it.

First, the smell.  When you cut into the durian, the smell is horrible.  My dad and Matt couldn’t smell it at all, but my mom and I could.  The smell is very faint, but gross.  The best way to describe it is a stinky fart smell covered up by the aroma of a lit match.  There is definitely a sulfurous funk.

Splitting the durian open reveals a gooey, light yellow inside that is soft like a custard.  The taste is nothing like I’ve ever had before.  It is disgusting!  The only way I can describe the taste is this:  if I were to assign a flavor to a gross, sulfurous-smelling fart, it would be durian fruit.  Why people eat this is beyond me, but I’m happy to have had the chance to finally try it.  Interested in seeing me take a bite?  Check out the video:

This is pretty funny.  You have to watch until almost the very end to get the soy milk reference…

Yesterday was the absolute best weather!  We couldn’t have planned it any better.  My friend, Ginger, and I took our girls to the pumpkin patch in Half Moon Bay.

Then we kept heading west to the beach, where we had a nice picnic and watched the surfers.

And on the way home, Emma and I stopped at one of the many produce stands along the highway and bought half a flat of strawberries, some organic blueberries, organic oranges, and 5 ears of corn for the bargain price of $10.50!  Driving home, my car said that it was 87 degrees outside.  That’s crazy for it almost being November!

I have a TON of food things to blog about, as well as a TON of photos taking up space on my camera.  The problem is that I’m so super duper lazy that I haven’t gotten around to any of it.  I hope to get to some of it tomorrow, so hang in there!  I didn’t want you all to think I’ve gone off on another vacation. 

Speaking of vacations, Norwegian Cruise Line sent me a rather lengthy post-cruise survey for them to get my thoughts on our recent cruise.  I absolutely took advantage of the opportunity to tell them how disappointed I was with the food and the lack of vegan items aboard.  I also said that a selection of organic fruits and vegetables would be great for those who prefer it.  I hope it makes a difference, but I can’t help but think that it probably won’t.  Most of the cruising population is just happy eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, and chicken or prime rib for dinner.  I guess I would be too, if I weren’t concerned about my health at all.

For those vegans and/or healthier eaters out there considering a cruise with NCL, I highly recommend taking some snacks and such with you.

That’s all.  No more laziness from me, I promise.  I’ll be back in action with some food tomorrow.

As you all know, I totally welcome any comments to anything I write here.  I’ve recently been getting spammed like crazy with comments that bear no relevance to anything that I write on my blog or even to a vegan diet.  I’m usually able to catch them before they actually get published on my site, but spammers are now trying to find ways around my filter.  Having said that, I had to change my settings so that the only people whose comments are immediately posted are those who already have an approved and published comment (i.e. are already trusted commenters).  First-time commenters now have to be approved by me before the comment gets published.  I don’t like to do it this way, but I have to for a little while until (hopefully) the spam dies down.  Just wanted to fill you all in on what’s happening in case you’re wondering why your comments aren’t being immediately posted.