cee

Some Boston institutions:

Acadia National Park

Lots of rocks and sunsets:

saffron

Sort of fulfilling my meadow of wildflower dreams in Maine:

cornwall

Haven't seen a sunset this spectacular since Exeter:

one

Mom's birthday dinner:

This sponge cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi is the most difficult cake I ever made, and perhaps not so coincidentally is also the cake with the shortest ingredients list I've ever made. It's just flout, sugar, eggs (and salt & vanilla extract, but these aren't structural). Aka a recipe to witness the power of eggs. I was super skeptical when pouring the 300g of sugar into 6 egg yolks, thinking it'd just be yolk coated sugar clumps, but it did in fact turn into a texture that falls as billow-y ribbons off the whisk. That's the good news. The bad news is that I completely messed up folding the stiff-peak egg whites in, mostly because I didn't think to switch to a bigger spatula to minimize the number of folds until the very end. Don't be stupid like me. Regardless it's not easy trying to fold clouds into concrete. So the final cake is not quite spongey, but still delicious with some strawberry compote and a generous dollop of softly whipped cream.

yvr

Vancouver photos are up across various places (but also consolidated here!):

• Whistler (1, 2)
• UBC
• Van Dusen gardens
• Waterfront

Many more photos (with people's faces, appropriately) on Facebook.

matriculate

Things I ate before I graduated:

 米线with mom at another place that provides overly generous portions

ice cream with Jeff, but he's really a cheesecake monster

#ffffff

Browsing through "curating" my pintrest is always fun.

In anticipation of wearing a white dress for convocation:

dots

views from Whistler and the drive there

Mountains are good for perspective.

mall

A visit to UBC, where the aesthetics of each department's building roughly matches UofT's.

 CompSci

 Civ :(

Pharm

weeping

A visit to the Van Dusen botanical gardens. It was not on my radar, am very glad Angela wanted to visit. We had lots of fun photographing there, and naming various sad looking trees. The highlight for me is definitely the giant rhubarbs, which I will definitely plant in my front garden for their menacing looks.

Lunch at the Shaughnessy restaurant, 10/10 for ambience. Loved how they provided scones instead of bread for brunch, but they could've been more generous than a tiny piece per person.

conifers

More Whistler road trip sights:

 Brandywine provincial park

 Looking to Backcomb

Looking down at the valley from the Peak2Peak gondola, very impressive ride

...

The lighthouse provincial park is also very impressive looking with its gigantic trees, but we were rushing and did not stop to take photos for once.

north

A couple of photos from last night's walk around the Vancouver waterfront.

This series is typical in concept and fairly poor in execution, but the contrast of the reflections in the black water is appealing to me:

I was trying to take a photo of a building adjacent to these houses, but upon reviewing the photo decided that these look far more appealing:

Bonus windows on the walk back

tracing

Second time was the charm to catch the sunset at English Bay.

 Sort of swirly bokeh?