Cupcake Economy

Just found out, through a post on Buzzfeed, that Google Trends shows that the world is far more interested in “cupcakes” than “financial crisis.”

Cupcakes FTW.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge cupcake fan. Recently, on GigPark, I decided to recommend my two favorite cupcake-makers in the world so that more people can revel in the wondrousness of their baked goods. Here’s a quick look at them:

Sugar Baking (Toronto, Canada)
Cupcakes are definitely the “in” thing right now, and nobody in Toronto does cupcakes like Sugar Baking. (Trust me, I’ve checked.) Catherine is not only one of the most pleasant people I have ever met, but she has immense skill in blending exotic flavors to make every cupcake delectable — all at a great price.

Lola’s Kitchen (London, UK)
Tasty cupcakes and an easy-to-use website ordering system aside (and that’s a lot already), the people at Lola’s are wonderful. When I had a problem, they not only answered my question immediately, but they fixed their entire ordering system to meet my needs. Plus, you really can’t go wrong with the delicious pastel icings they use on their cupcakes.

If you order cupcakes from either of those two places, let me know — and more importantly, recommend them on GigPark. We need to spread the cupcake love.

On tipping

I have a few friends who work as bartenders to supplement their income while they finish school. One of them works three nights a week and makes enough money in wages and tips to pay for her apartment and generally keep her out of debt. The other works four nights a week and barely makes enough to pay for his books.

This got me thinking about the places they work, the audiences they serve, and how that makes a difference on their financial situation.

In a stroke of good timing, Sasha Frere-Jones most recent article in The New Yorker addresses these same issues. Worth a read, if you ask me.

For what it’s worth, if you’re not tipping a dollar for a beer and two for hard liquor at minimum, I don’t know if I can be your friend anymore.

Unsolicited Testimonial: Mighty Leaf Tea

Mighty Leaf Tea is an artisan tea company that sells regular and specialty teas in handcrafted tea pouches. Their tea is available for purchase at stores across North America and also via a very easy to navigate website.

The Experience

The first thing you notice about Mighty Leaf Tea are the very pretty and perfectly woven silk tea pouches. Intricately hand crafted, the pouches let the hot water seep into the fresh herbs and leaves within in order to create a five-minute pouch brew experience that rivals most steeped teas. The leaves and herbs themselves are fresh and aromatic — whether you buy them in the pouch or loose — so that every different kind of Mighty Leaf Tea (and there are several!) packs a ton of flavor into your cup.

The quality of the tea aside, one of the other strengths of Mighty Leaf Tea is the diversity of leaves and herbs that they have for purchase. Their website arranges all their teas by region, caffeine content, and type, and each tea has extensive information about its ingredients, history, flavor, and use.

The Mighty Leaf tea pouches are biodegradable and environmentally friendly, and their loose tea blends — while flavorful on their own — are perfectly suited for mixing with your own herbs before steeping.

The Gotchas

It is hard — actually, almost impossible — to say anything negative about the tea itself, so I’ll focus on the web ordering experience. While the website is easy to navigate, the shopping bag is still a clunky application and doesn’t allow for payment by PayPal. Other than that, there is very little to say about Mighty Leaf Tea that isn’t complimentary.

What It Costs

If you’re used to buying the cheap Tetley Orange Pekoe boxes, Mighty Leaf Tea might seem a bit expensive. For those of you that have purchased good tea before, Mighty Leaf is moderately priced and provides tons of value for the money. If you decide to purchase a pack of 100 pouches, you’re looking at spending just under $60 Canadian. You can also purchase loose leaves for a good price.

Recommended If You Like

Tea, hot beverages, silk pouches, fresh herbs, great packaging design, a great way to spend a solitary weekday evening.

This Unsolicited Testimonial has been inspired by (shamelessly stolen from?) Anil Dash’s series by the same name. Please see that post for more information and background.

Lunch Money Day

Even though we live in a relatively affluent society, there are still many people in our own city that are still going hungry every day. Second Harvest is an organization that helps bring food to people that don’t have it, and on February 21, they are holding their 10th annual Lunch Money Day campaign:

On Lunch Money Day, February 21, 2008, Second Harvest asks Torontonians to brown-bag their lunch and donate the cost of a bought lunch to Second Harvest. Every $5 provides 10 healthy and nutritious meals to people in need, including children, men and women in different programs across the GTA, including at women’s and homeless shelters, school meal programs, food banks and more.

If you want to do more than just simply donate money, Second Harvest is also looking for volunteers:

Volunteer teams are stationed across the city in specified public places, including 15 subway stations, 2 GO Stations in Mississauga, as well as several downtown PATH concourse locations, collecting donations from people and spreading the word about Lunch Money Day and Second Harvest.

For those of you in Toronto, join me in packing your lunch on the 21st and helping the needy this month.

National Peanut Butter & Jelly Day

I would like to apologize to all of you for missing National Peanut Butter & Jelly Day yesterday. Do know that in honor of the glorious day, I made myself a PB&J sandwich for breakfast and savored it thoroughly. Next year, if someone can send me a quick reminder the day before, I promise a post about the best PB&J memories I have throughout my life. It might not sound exciting right now, but trust me, a significant chunk of my life has revolved around this simple yet delicious sandwich.

All that being said, Serious Eats was much more astute and observant than I was, so they had a full range of coverage regarding National PB&J Day. In fact, I think they covered the day better than most major news networks cover Election Day, so kudos to Serious Eats. One of the best reports they had was their scientific analysis of how to craft the perfect PB&J sandwich, a method I then used to craft my sandwich this morning. Here’s a quick excerpt:

Armed with measuring spoons and a knife, I discovered, much to my surprise, that the suggested servings printed on the peanut butter (2 tablespoons) and jelly (1 tablespoon) jars were perfect when spread on two slices of the Pepperidge Farm white bread. As you can see here, we were using classic scientific techniques in our serious PBJ experiment.

Adam and Meg pointed out that the Pepperidge Farm bread we had purchased was sliced thinner than many other brands. If thicker slices of bread were used instead, they cautioned, the same volumes of PB and J would not produce comparable results. They advised me to measure the relative thickness of all components with a ruler to determine a ratio that could be used with any bread thickness. That ratio is 1 : 0.6 : 0.3 : 1, as seen in the illustration here.

And there you go. The secret to the perfect PB&J sandwich is revealed. Needless to say, I had a wonderful breakfast.

(Infographic taken from Serious Eats, without permission. If you guys want me to take it down, let me know, but hey, I really do love your site.)

Fire Up the Grill

There’s something about throwing some charcoal on the old-fashioned grill, dousing it with lighter fluid, and then burning the hair off your hand as you throw the match in, that makes me feel good about summer. I mean, summer isn’t my favorite of seasons — scratch that, it’s my least favorite season — but there are a few key things that you can do during the summer that have more of an impact in the hot sun than in the cold snow; barbecuing is one of them.

That being said, everyone these days has one of those fancy gas barbecues where all you have to do is press a button and throw on the meat, which is great when you’ve got company over and all you need the grill for is to make some quick burgers, but when the focal point of your gathering is a barbecue, nothing really beats slapping some meat on an old rusty grill with the charcoal slowly ashing up as the smoke fills the air. Barbecuing at its best.

So for those of you in the southern hemisphere, I apologize, but for us up here in Toronto, it’s not summer. It’s barbecue season.

On a very awesomely related note, Greg Story of Airbag just wrote an amazing weblog post on the charcoal barbecue. Check it out. Also, there’s no real better thing to have after a barbecue than ice cream. For those of you who have trouble scooping it, here are some tips, via Lifehacker.

In Search of Fair Trade Coffee

Inspired by this post at green LA girl, I decided to take the Starbucks Challenge and see which location will actually serve me fair trade coffee as indicated in their company policy.

I visited three locations in Toronto, each with varying results:

Bathurst & Wilson (October 30, 2005)
The barista at this location had never heard of fair trade coffee. She didn’t even know what fair trade was. So after a 30-second lesson on the concept, she went to the back to ask her manager. The verdict? Starbucks “doesn’t sell that kind of coffee.”

King & Yonge (November 1, 2005)
The barista informed me that they only serve one blend of coffee that was “certified” fair trade, but Starbucks ensures that all their coffee blends are obtained through fair trade practices. That being said, they didn’t have any of their “certified” blend available, so I settled for a cup of Sumatran.

Yonge & Eglinton (November 3, 2005)
When I asked for a cup of fair trade at this Starbucks location, the barista blurted out, “yeah, I should have some now too, I’m about to go on break.” Whether she was flirting or not, I can’t say, but she did look around and realize they had none in the back. The problem was solved when another employee went around the counter, grabbed the bag of fair trade whole-beans they were selling in packs on the display, and asked me if I could wait for a few minutes while he “grinds the beans and brews a fresh pot.” And wait I did, and then joined the lovely barista for a cup of fair trade coffee on her break.