Brb.

As reflected in the recent depletion of inspiration and, let's be honest here - lack of effort in the past few entries, it seems that I've lost sight of... whatever it was that gave birth to this blog. It all started with my aunt's banana nut bread recipe. I had everything that I needed to make this bread. Bananas, flour, baking powder, sugar, butter, even walnuts. I just needed to buy some baking soda and a loaf pan. This was about a month ago. I oscillated between "to bake" or "not to bake" about a dozen times. And that's when I realized it: I really didn't care to make this banana nut bread.

I flipped on the Food Network channel to see if any of my favorites were on. They were, but I didn't want to watch. I wanted to watch "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" instead.

I think I've hit a dead-end. And hopefully soon, I'll turn around and take a detour. And hopefully soon, I'll find new recipes to try and new occasions to cook. But for now, I think I just want to hang around here for a while.

Bake cake.

Leave it to our generation to make cupcakes trendy. I must admit - I'm no cupcake expert. (Savory over sweet, remember?) But I have tried the obligatory Sprinkles cupcakes and Crumbs cupcakes. Eh. It's basically a cake in a cup, right? Big whoop.

I had read about Big Man Bakes before, but I just assumed that it would be like every other overpriced cupcake shop: "moist" from being made with a few dozen sticks of butter. I had an occasion to cater desserts to, and having recently adopted downtown LA as my new habitat, I decided to check it out.

Sure enough, there was the Big Man sitting in front of his dainty cupcake shop on Main Street. Guesstimate? 275 pounds? BIG man. I bought 3 mini carrot cupcakes, 3 mini red velvet cupcakes, 1 "XL" coconut cupcake, and 1 "XL" rum raisin cupcake, the special of the day. I only got to try a quarter section of the rum raisin, but that was enough to compel me to blog about it. Like any other quintessentially American dessert, there was plenty of sugar and plenty of buttercream. But the difference here was that though moist, the cupcake didn't leave a giant grease print in my napkin. Big man bakes.

For a long time now, rumors have swirled about downtown LA's aspirations of becoming the next NYC. Doubtful. But, to its credit, downtown has noticeably changed and the different neighborhoods within the City have really started to develop character and charm. I recently took the subway from Union Station to the 7th St/Metro Center station. That familiar smell of the subway tracks transported me back to Tokyo and made me feel like I was in a big city again. I still haven't been able to shake off that persistent itch to go back to Tokyo or to move to a non-LA metropolis, but maybe downtown LA's about to change my mind.