Late post awesomeness!

Okay, this post is about 2 weeks overdue....but better late than never! I went to this amazing anime convention a few weekends ago up in Atlanta and I didn't have much to eat...I was was too busy having fun and geeking out on the manga, music, and cosplay! Well, it was AWA (Anime Weekend Atlanta) and it's been going on for 15 years! I found out about it from the wonderful B-chan of Nippon Music Champ when I was talking to her one week, and I immediately went to look at the website. I decided right then and there that I would be going, come hail or high water! One of my friends, my dad (poor guy!), and I went, and we ran into people we knew there too.

My friend and I went to the Maid Cafe on Saturday morning and stood in line for forever! I think we were standing there for about 45 minutes or so....But it was so worth it! At the cafe, we sat with some other people and we had an adorable maid! It was her first time working for the cafe, and she was so adorable while she was trying to get used to the whole setup! *fangirl squeal* We got a drink, a pastry, and played a Domo-Caption This! game with her for a while. My friend had hot chocolate and a fruit and cheese array, and I had green tea and key lime pie with raspberry sauce. They were delicious! And we were super lucky- a special chorus group cosplaying as some characters from an anime/manga series came and sang anime theme songs for us! Woot!

Here's my tasty piece of pie!

Here's my friends food:

Here's our maid! *squeals*

She was sooo nice!

Here's the maid from the table next to us:

I was so sad when the event was over...But we went back upstairs and hung out in the dealers room and went to do some other things-like hanging out with Peelander-Z, meeting PikaBelleChu, going to a lolita fashion show, a cosplay contest, and an awesome Japanese concert with Omodaka and Peelander-Z! And Yuka-chan from the 6%DokiDoki fashion label came and performed with Omodaka! The next day, we got to hang out with Peelander-Z again (they actually remembered me!) and I got to meet Omodaka and Yuka-chan. YAY! We ran around the artists alley for a while, went to the dealers room for more Pocky and HelloPanda's, made some friends, posed for pictures(I can't believe people wanted my picture...), and went back to the artists alley. When we were walking around here again, I found a table that had cute food inspired stuff. But I was out of money! I managed to scrape some change together-about 27 cents- and got a banana split charm made out of clay and I traded a box of ChocoPocky and some Strawberry HelloPanda's for an uber-cute heart-shaped pastry made out of pink and red felt that I'm going to turn into a hair accessory. Yay for desperate hungry people! Hahaha. We didn't do much after that, and it was so sad when we had to go! *cries buckets in the car*

I must have an apron like this in pink!

Here's Pikachu in an adorable outfit:

We had a great weekend, and we can't wait to go next year! Haha. My friend and I are volunteering for Maid Cafe next year-I want to be a maid, and he wants to be a butler man. Hee-hee. It's less than a year away! Hopefully I'll have enough time to find the perfect maid outfit. Bye!

Here was one of the funniest pictures:

A random ninja!

Desperation!!

Okay, in our house we have no self control when it comes to tasty baked goodness.  So when we crave something, we have to have it.  This week, my mom was craving cherry pie, but we didn't have everything to make it.  Nor did my dad and I receive her text message telling us to pick some up for her when we were at the store.  So I had to remedy the situation as soon as I found out.  With the encouragement of my mom and her friend, Tori Sunshine, I whipped up a pie out of what we had.  

  I made a pie crust out of nowhere, since we didn't have everything to make my regular recipe.  I used a pinch of salt, 2-1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup of Earth Balance, and some water, and whirled it up in the food processor.  I couldn't believe it, but it rolled out better than any pie crust I've ever made before(I had an incident with butter-flavored Crisco one time...).  We didn't have any of the Comstock cherry pie filling that my mom loves, with the unnaturally colored gel.  We did have a can of Oregon dark cherries in heavy syrup though, so I drained the cherries into a cup, and made a gel on the stove.  I used the leftover syrup, added about a 1/3 cup of sugar and 2-1/2 tablespoons of arrowroot powder, then cooked it until it thickened.  I folded in the cherries and set the pan aside.  I placed my bottom crust in a 9-inch glass pie plate and then added the cherry filling.  This was were I did something stupid.  There wasn't enough filling, so I added a jar of maraschino cherries that we had in the fridge.  I thought that they would be fine, and be like the cherries in the cherry pie filling. Boy, was I wrong. 

 Anyway, I topped it with the crust, but I ripped it a little bit on one side as I was pulling the parchment paper off.  I added some scraps of pie crust over it in an eight-pointed star shape and some leftover strusel topping that I had in the freezer.  I baked it in a 375 degree oven for twenty minutes with foil covering the edges.  I removed the foil and baked it for another 15 minutes.  I took it out of the oven, and then we descended on it like starving wolves (hehe).  It was pretty good, until my sister ran across a maraschino cherry.  It was kinda hard, and a little discolored...Ew.  But other than that horrible lapse of good judgement, it came out pretty good.