Food!

So I've been meaning to do this post for awhile now, but am only now getting around to it. I wanted to highlight some of the really awesome food that my roommates have cooked for me, mostly of it's food from their home that I've never tried before.

Since Kelsey's boyfriend is visiting for the week, they decided to treat us to a Hawaiian specialty: Spam Musubi. Basically, it's fried Spam molded together with rice and wrapped with a strip of seaweed. Kelsey didn't have her mold on her though, so we ours was in the shape of sushi. It was pretty good. Like a variation on sushi with a salty meat slice instead of raw fish. I didn't get a picture of it, but here's what it's supposed to look like:

This post was originally inspired by all of the food that Aleja cooked last spring semester, most of it Colombian (though she can also cook this amazingly delicious lasagna). One of the dishes she made is arepas, which are little round bread things that are made out of corn and fried and then you split them to form a sort of pita-like shell and fill it with all kinds of stuff - cheese, peppers, meat, basically whatever. They also sell these at every New York street fair, but I've never tried them there. Here she's mixing the arepa dough:
This is what arepas look like once they're cooked and stuffed full of cheese
Another Colombian treat that Aleja makes is Natilla, which is a dessert that is mostly eaten around Christmas time. It's kind of like a flan but cinnamon and it's soooo delicious. I keep bugging her to make some more but she has to have her mom send her boxes of the mix. This is what it looks like once it has set:
And this is what a slice of Natilla with cinnamon looks like:
She also introduced me to green mangos. Basically you buy an unripened mango from the store that's still green and you cut it up, put some salt and some lime juice on it and eat it. It's really good and I eat tons of mangoes now.

Also, I figured I would show off some of my food: cakes! Below is not even close to all of the cakes that I have made in college, but just the ones that I have pictures of.

I made an oreo cake for my roommate Allison's 21st birthday. This isn't a very good shot of it since it's in the fridge, but it was delicious.
I also made this tiny individual-sized ice cream birthday cake for one of my coworkers at Emack and Bolio's two summers ago. My boss there still doesn't know that about it...
This is probably the most epic cake I've ever made. Totally edible and made completely by Kristin, Katie, and I.
And lastly, a pirate chest cake that Lindsay and I made over the summer (it says "Aaargh!" on top). It's revolutionary because it's yellow cake with a layer of brownie in the middle. Don't know why we were the first people to think of this, but it's so good.
A view of the inside of the cake.