The Cake that Almost didn't Make It

If there is one thing I love in this world, it's making beautiful and delicious food. But who can eat a cake every day? Or even every week? Wait. Let me rephrase that. I know that cake is a sometimes food, so I don't make it every week. Plus, I am all about making from scratch and using best quality ingredients. Full fat. Full flavour.
One of my friends is celebrating her birthday today, and I had told her husband a while ago that I was planning on making a cake for her. Because, see above reason. Food. Love. Eat. Love.
But that was a few weeks ago. And I kinda forgot about it until, ohhhhh, yesterday. I know she loves peanut butter buttercream and dark chocolate cake. But I made that last year. And for Sashimi's birthday. And I gave her the leftover cake from his birthday.
So I wanted to tackle a new recipe.
Today. Without pre-reading or whatever. Just OOOOOH! I wanna make that awesome Sweetapolita cake with the peanuts on the side!
I get home from work at 12:30. Quickly look up that nutty recipe on my absolute drooltastic favourite blog Sweetapolita. Look at a bunch of other fantastic looking tasties. Get back to the peanut throwing cake. Figure out what ingredients I need, which fortunately is not much. Eat lunch, get iBean dressed (that's right...she was still hanging out in her birthday suit at 1:00 pm) and head to the store.
She's excited, I'm excited. There will be butter and sugar being creamed together. Whipping cream. Cream cheese. PEANUT BUTTER.
Ooooooooh baby.
Pulling into the parking lot of the store, guess who falls asleep.  And NO, it wasn't me. I figure she just fell asleep, I'll take her out of her carseat and she'll be good to go.
You know what? My arms are the best bed EVER. I hauled iBean in the crook of my left arm, and did all my shopping with my right arm, while also holding my phone, which had a shopping list in it. Open the cooler door with right arm, prop open with right hip, grab dairy products while trying not to bang iBean's head with the door as it slams shut. What else do I need? Oh yeah. FLOUR. That's not at ALL hard to grab with one hand and put into a cart without dropping your snoring 2 year old sleeping in your armpit. Because as strong as I am, my muscles may just give out and my arm may spontaneously fall off.
Oh. But guess what? There's no whipping cream in the entire dairy cooler. The entire rest of the cooler is full. I wonder if they are just putting it out. I go see Tony at the pharmacy and ask him to tell me where I can go to get more whipping cream. He calls someone. Immediately afterward I hear a page for someone, then that person responds with a page for someone else. Snore snore drool drool.
Aaaaaaaaannnnnd 10 minutes later they call back: no whipping cream.
For the love of freaking throwing peanuts. I have to go to ANOTHER store??
I go to the checkout, hear some poor employee get totally ripped into by his "superior". "Where's your handheld" she asks him. He says he doesn't know. She pulls it out from behind her back: "Mmmmmhmmm.  I KNOW you don't know. Because I have it. You are never allowed to blah blah blah humiliate belittle tears and crying into a pillow at night."
iBean is still asleep.
I finally pay, get everything into my cart, wheel out to the car, put the groceries in the back, put iBean in  her carseat.
And THEN she decides to wake up. All smiley and silly.
So we hit another store just for whipping cream and to look at pumpkins -  "Those are BIG ones! And it's a petit one!"
We get home and it's time to get at 'er!
I have to separate some eggs. The first egg I crack has something red in it.  But not just a red dot. I look closer. It was probably 2-3 mm in diameter. It's a freaking embryo. I can tell. It was fleshy, pink chicken-like.
Shudder shudder shriek. Garbage. And then I meticulously inspect each egg afterward to make sure there is no surprise protein. Ughhhhhhhhh.
The rest of the cake is easy. iBean adds ingredients, she tosses the chocolate chips with a pinch of flour when needed, and voilà.
Then we made the peanut butter mousse filling. Cream cheese, icing sugar, peanut butter, vanilla and whipped cream. iBean's words: This TASTEEEE! between mouthfuls of licking the spatula.
I start getting ready to assemble the cake. I grab a serated knife to do some trimming, and there is goo on it. From the cake. Holy. Poo. On. Melba. Toast. The middle is not baked. How the hell did that happen? I toothpick tested it and it came out clean!! Can you actually put a cooled cake back in the oven to finish baking? I dunno, but I'm gonna find out.
Turns out, you can. Sort of. The middle bakes, but the edges get quite, um, crunchy. But there is nothing I hate more than undercooked gooey cake.
This setback totally delays my estimated time of cake.  By a good hour, because now I have to let the thing cool all over again. In the meantime, my friend's hubby texts me: We are patiently waiting.........

By the time I put it together, the cake is not totally cool, but it is well past cake time and it needs to get in people's bellies. So I do my best to get it to stay upright and look pretty.
And thanks to my turn table and expert peanut-throwing skills, it turned out pretty darn good.

Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was also tasty. Pretty. Tasty.


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And there are a bunch of platters on sale this week at Walmart. I think I'm gonna go grab a bunch. Beacuse seriously? That platter cost me under $5. And it's awesome.

Happen' Hummus...what?

Today was one of those days where I got home from work, picked up iBean, went home for a few hours, worked out, prepped supper and loaded it into the crock pot and put the baked macaroni and cheese in the oven on auto-timer, piled iBean back into the car, picked up the boys from school, drove to Tony's work to grab Sashimi's piano books out of his car, and had a few minutes to spare before taking Sashimi to his piano lesson. And then I realized I was HUNGRY. The kids were also hungry, as I normally have some sort of snack ready for them when they get home OR supper is ready to serve. iBean had passed out in the car, so going into a store was not happening. So I drove to a McDonald's drive-thru.

For the record, I rarely eat there. I love their lattés (which I also have not had since June), but the food: no thanks.  The kids like their fries. Which, to be honest, are scarily tasty with all that crispiness and salt. But I can never handle eating more than a few before I feel like I am on day 59 of a trek through the Sahara and the mirages of Culligan water trucks are singing to me. So I ordered the kids each a small fries. But I was SO HUNGRY. Then, like a sign from the angels, I saw a sign that said Happen' Hummus. What? McD's has chick pea spread? Then I saw that the meditteranean wrap, which contained said Happenin' Hummus, was vegetarian.  No "meat". Veggies, cheese, whole wheat wrap (aka enriched-white-flour-dyed-brown, probably with some sort of corn byproduct). I ordered one thinking it would calm my ravenous hunger and get me through until our actual supper.

I bit into it. First taste: salt. Then a bit of sodium, tomato, red onion, then salt, crisp green leaves, white saucy goo, more sodium. And crispy things.  What? Brown flaky crisps? Were they croutons? No. Bacon bits? No. Was it bits of coating from the fryer? Possibly. They tasted like onions. Are they mediterranean? I've never had mediterranean batter crisps before. I kept eating. There was some sort of white sauce in there, too. Was it tzatziki? Only if tzatziki tastes like ranch. But it wasn't quite ranch either.  Like ranch with extra vinegar. WAIT! Miracle Whip left out in the sun! Winner winner chicken dinner!

And HOLD THE BUS. Where was the Happenin' Hummus? I specifically ordered a Happenin' Hummus Wrap! The guy even laughed when I ordered. Where was the hummus? Was it the crispy things? Did McDonald's somehow find a way to deep fry hummus? They must have, because it was the only thing in that wrap that could possibly have been even close to the same colour as hummus.
Unless...the hummus was invisible. Oh you crafty buggers. You disguised the hummus so all those fast food junkies wouldn't know what they were eating!

Well, joke's up. THERE WAS NO HUMMUS IN MY HAPPENIN' HUMMUS WRAP, YO!

And then? I looked up the nutritional information on that wrap? I was right. Sodium 900 mg. 38% of your recommended daily intake. Well shit. Between that and my occasionally relapsing hypertension, I am figuring I need to drink a LOT of water to keep myself from having a stroke.
And also, that Non-Happenin' Invisible Hummus wrap has more calories than a bacon cheeseburger.

Maybe the bacon cheeseburger got my Invisible Happenin' Hummus.  If I'm gonna have a cardiac episode, may as well be bacon related.

Hello, I am back in Jr High.

If there was one thing that I dreaded every year of my adolescent life, it was this:
School picture day.
I had cool clothes, I had killer dangly earrings, my hair was on point. Well, other than that year that my bangs were cut just a wee bit too short.  Like one inch long. On purpose. Somehow I thought that would be a good idea. Until I saw the picture come back in the plastic envelope and I said: WHAT THE HECK?? THAT'S what I look like?
I had terrible acne. Not the white bulbous sores all over the face. Not the blackheads that occasionally are visible or maybe a bit read. PIMPLES. Horribly infected, sometimes green, sometimes pus-yellow, but always visible. On my chin, on my forehead, on my cheekbones. Big. Green. Nasty. UN COVERABLE.
So for my entire teen existence, I really did not like school pictures. This was in those pre-digital pre-photoshopping days. A pimple was a pimple period end of sentence.  Sometimes it was actually my period. But that is a totally different yet painfully related story.
Then, my high school grad photos came. And the photographer used airbrushing! Well, I am sure he did.  Those were the most beautiful pictures of myself I had ever seen. Not a pimple in sight. Smooth skin! I looked like a fairy goddess who had just bathed in milk and honey.
Those photos were the cherry on top of a pretty abysmal cake of years of teeny prints of pimples to share with the boys whom I was most wanting to keep away from. Hey creepshow, you want to get down my pants? Here! Have a school picture.

Now, I am an adult. I have kids. I would love to say I USED to have acne. But that would be a mother trucking lie because I still DO have acne. All those people who told me you outgrow acne are liars and they make baby Jesus cry. Although if I had been told as a teen that I would still have moon craters on my face at age 31, I probably would have drank myself to oblivion. Wait.  I did do that a lot. But not because of acne. Mostly because of the failproof combo of tequila and boys. Who cares about acne when you have booze and a nice rack to put it on?

But I am now a responsible adult and mother, and I cannot deal with my horrible green and yellow pus pimples by drinking or pretending to like wrestling. I wear concealer so the neigbourhood kids don't think the Man in the Moon has actually come down to grant their three wishes, and my husband loves me regardless. But I still get pretty bad outbreaks once in a while and they always come at the most convenient of times.

Like two days before SCHOOL PICTURES at my school. Where I work. And have to get a picture taken. To be posted. On a wall. For people to see.
And yes, I am an adult and I tell my students: you look great! Be yourself! Love the skin you're in! Blah freaking blah. My skin sucks. I inherited my dad's oily skin and his incurable need to pop every pimple in sight. Even on someone else's face.
So yeah.  I had school pics taken. I wore about half an inch of coverup, turned my face at an angle to avoid the BIGGEST unconcealable volcanic eruption on my face, and smiled.
My proofs came back. They were not terrible. My dress is cute. Well, what you can see of it from the rack up. I could live with that picture.
Then it's like I AM 31 YEARS OLD! Who am I going to give my pimply school pictures to? 
Oh right. Kids I want to punish.
Don't do your homework? I post my picple on your desk.
Forget your books at home? I sneak a picple into your backpack.
You use your iPhone or iPod touch in class? I text you my picple. You can't unsee that, foo.

And that is why you should not allow pimply adults to take school photos. Because then they obsess over it to the point of forcing you to read about their pimples.

Oh well. At least this isn't a post about tonsil stones.

Now you're gonna google tonsil stones. And you'll watch a video. And then you can NEVER unsee that...

Lunch Time

Keesadilla is in a new world.  The world of KINDERGARTEN. Playdough, building things, morning calendar, daily gym time, the works.  He came home and spouted I WAS AWESOME! WE WERE ALL AWESOME! And showed me the green happy face on his calendar, which according to him: "Green means you are AWESOME. If it's red...well...that's just not good..."

This morning, in all the excitement and untamed bedhead, he asked to see what I had packed for his first school lunch ever. So I opened it up. He peered inside, sniffed a few times, then recoiled like a shark who DOESN'T want to eat that tin can, and said: well, mommy, it's just that this lunch is no good.
Why was it not good? It had delicious red grapes, carrot sticks (from our GARDEN, yo), mini red pepper strips, yogurt and three mini-wraps filled with homemade grape jelly (from our garden AGAIN, yo).  If I had that lunch, which I didn't, I would be yahooing all over the place. Ok, wait. Jelly didn't grow in our garden. I mean, it would be awesome if it did, but then we'd have all these jelly swipers to deal with, and all the security jelly-garden would be pricey, and frankly, take up too much space. So we just grow grapes instead. With seeds in them. Who wants to wipe grapes with seeds?! Fools, that's who. Ohhhhhhh snap.

Instead, he said: Well, it's just...I don't really like red peppers that much for school. And grapes too. And these wraps don't look like wraps I would like. The yogurt is ok. But the carrots, well, I only like them with BBQ sauce. So, maybe, how about, I take all this food out and you put in some pain with jam and an apple.

Incredulous, I adamantly said: No. This is the lunch I made.  If you really want BBQ sauce, I can give you a little bit in your lunch to dip your carrots.

He agreed to those terms, but then asked me to take out all of the grapes and replace them with an apple. Peeled. And sliced. Oh. And take out the peppers, too. Wouldn't you like to dip the peppers in the BBQ sauce? I asked. Then it would taste like pepper steak stirfry, I prodded. I was grasping at straws but SERIOUSLY?? He eats peppers all. The. Time. Same with grapes.

Then, he said: I just think I would want a pizza lunch instead.
 Facepalm.
Me: Dude, there is no pizza lunch at school. When they start hot lunches, I will order pizza on pizza day.  But today is not pizza day. It is wraps and peppers and carrots and apples day.
K: OH C'MON! REALLY! I'M SERIOUSLY! I just don't think it's gonna be a good lunch!
Me: Well, if it's not, then you can switch with Sashimi.
K: ALRIGHT Fine. I'll take it.

But HAHAHAHA jokes on him, because Sashimi had the same lunch.


And since he was self-admittedly AWESOME on his first day, I am guessing he didn't feel the need to swap anything.

So I wonder if I should just keep a bottle of all-purpose BBQ sauce at the school for all his dipping needs...

Pet Shop Rules

While putting the boys to bed, Sashimi suddenly cried out and complained that it felt like something was biting his toe. I knew the cat was outside, so it was not her. My next thought was some sort of spider, which would be so gross. So I jumped off of the top bunk to check out his toe. Nothing.
That was not good enough for Sashimi, so I turned on the light, inspected his toe with really close eyes, rubbed it, poked it. Still nothing. Whatever made him feel like he was being nibbled on was clearly gone.
Keesadilla, always the president of the peanut gallery, quickly ponted out: I hope it's not a slug that can climb up bunk beds.
Me: Keesadilla, it is not a slug.  Slugs can't get into the house.
Keesadilla: Well, yeah, but like that would be so. Gross. And I don't want them biting me.
Me: They don't bite people. They don't even leave gardens.
Sashimi: Keesadilla, it wasn't a slug that bit me. It was probably nothing and just a weird feeling in my toe.
Keesadilla: Yeah, Sashimi, but still.  I do NOT want to be attacked by snails or slugs.
Me: That's not going to happen.
Keesadilla: If I owned a pet shop, the rules would be No slugs climbing up beds, or on the ceiling, or on cat's faces, or ATTACKING PEOPLE.
Me: Good rules. But slugs don't attack people.
Keesadilla: Yeah. Because they have to follow my pet shop rules.
(pause)
Now can you come and change my blanket? It's HOT...