Let Them Eat Cake (and Some Appetizers)

This year Audrey has begun to group like things: pointing out the blue objects in a room, mastering Where's Waldo, and just this morning comparing my eyes to the browning trees outside. So, it should come to no surprise that after attending a few birthday parties this year she began to associate all such gatherings with the presence of cake. To hear her tell it, the most important aspect of any birthday party is the presence of cake. I was careful to not disappoint.

Last year, with a 50% off coupon, I ran across and purchased this Giant Cupcake Pan by Wilton. Then, like most of my random kitchen purchases, it sat in a cabinet for a year waiting for the perfect occasion to unveil itself. That occasion came last weekend when I decided that a huge cupcake looks an awful lot like the shape of a tent.

Armed with a box mix (I decided to take a little help this year) and this recipe from Anne Bryn, aka the Cake Mix Doctor, I got to work. I didn't use a German chocolate cake mix since I had a chocolate fudge one on hand. I opted out of using pecans as well (having other plans for decorating my cake in mind). I didn't have cinnamon chips at home (and my box mix had small chips in it) so I used 1/4 c. of 60% cacao bittersweet chips, although next time I think I would throw in the entire 1/2 c., simply because I can't think of a good reason not to. I also used a different recipe for the frosting. During high school and summers off from college, I worked at a little tea room called Almost Home. They make an incredible carrot-pineapple cake with cream cheese frosting. I used the cream cheese frosting recipe from their cookbook for Audrey's cake.

I liked the flavor of the cake, but I think I over baked it a touch because I was hoping for something just a hair more moist. (And due to my inexperience with the odd-shaped pan, I didn't know how long to keep it in the oven). Once out of the oven and iced, I used Pull-n-Peel Twizzlers to make red tent stripes (I was looking for a quick-fix to decorating). A few M & Ms on top (my husband's brilliant suggestion) to hide a mishap that occurred when I discovered our cake container was a tad bit too short for the cake and one blue flag made using, card stock, a toothpick, tape, and a "3" stamp, and the cake was finished. The fake grass is some that I reuse every year for our Easter baskets. As for the little elephant candle in front, that was the candle on my ninth birthday cake (that my mother saved and gave me when I was pregnant with Audrey). The cupcakes were made using another box mix and some store-bought icing, topped with more homemade blue flags. Easy-peesy.


Of course, as much as my toddler would love to try, one doesn't live on cake alone. So we added a few little snacks in the mix. Our veggie tray included some carrot "shavings" made using the vegetable peeler, because while Audrey rarely eats carrot sticks, carrot shavings are a different story. Then the Noah's ark cookie cutter set made a reappearance. I used them to make animal-shaped Jell-o jigglers and then again for some animal-shaped cheese slices.

It may look as if I went a little overboard with our party and theme. But most of these ideas are inexpensive, easy to do ahead of time, or just plain easy. Because while I was into a small party that celebrated big, big stress was not on the agenda. And now to go find out what this whole third year is about...

Today

We took to the yard in light-weight jackets.

Nate napped outside, nestled in his car seat on the patio.

I took down the, ahem, Christmas lights still clinging to our fence posts that between the baby, the surgeries, the sicknesses, and all things everyday, I had forgotten were still up (and our neighbors, too sweet to mention it, had let go without the faintest hint of a "you realize it's almost EASTER, don't you?).

Audrey played a game of tag with the neighbor's dog, neither one the least bit deterred by the fence posts in between.

We came in and invited the outdoors to come with us, closing only the screen door.

I did the dishes while watching two grown children swing in perfect unison.

As the sounds wafted in, we tossed together a pinch of this and cup of that. (Did you know they made measuring spoons for dashes and smidgens? Sometimes, even the smallest amounts count. Of course, these spoons were a gift from my mother, because mothers tend to know that the smallest things count.)

We made this bread that eats like cake. We broke into it before it had properly cooled and didn't bother to sit at the table.

Some days are bread that eats like cake: warm to the touch, sweet to the nose. They contain hints of forgotten magic (even if that magic is best stored away until December) that make you laugh at yourself. They remind us that barriers only exist where we see them, playgrounds need only be outgrown if we desire them to be, and sometimes, all you need is a smidgen.

For those of you interested in the bread, here are a few of our baking notes:

The recipe says to preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. We preheated ours to 350 degrees F. We baked our bread for around 40 minutes, our oven tends to bake on the fast side.

The recipes calls for 4 bananas. We used 3, because that's what we had on-hand, minus one bite - apparently, they didn't look overripe to Audrey.

The recipe uses 250 g of flour. We used 1 1/4 c.

It also calls for 125 g of dark or milk chocolate. I found a king-sized Hershey bar in the pantry and chopped 3/4 of it into tiny pieces, since the 2 bags of dark chocolate chips I had bought for just this recipe, ahem, disappeared a chip at a time with no final food product to show for themselves (I guess they eat like cake, too).

A Focus on Gratitude Day 4

The woman you see in the photograph is my grandmother. The man beside her is Clif. I could have easily lived out my life without ever meeting him, but as happenstance (or World War II, which ever you prefer to call it) would have it, we did meet. Clif enlisted in the Army at the same time as my grandfather. They became good friends. Clif was a cook and often snuck my grandfather more (or better) food at the end of the day. Both men survived the war, got married, and started families. They would occasionally meet up with their wives after the war.

Years later, Clif nursed his wife through rheumatoid arthritis before losing her much sooner than he would have liked. Meanwhile, my grandmother was busy caring for my grandfather, ravaged by and quickly lost to lung cancer. Occasionally, my grandmother and Clif would see each other at the Army reunions. Living about 35 miles apart, sometimes they would carpool.

Both were lonely. Both knew the heartache of caring for a sick spouse. By this time, they each knew that the other was not in prime health and neither wanted to put the other through the hardship of being that sort of caretaker again. But after some debate, and courtship, they married.

Clif was my grandmother's husband the last seven years of her life. Together they traveled the three hours (one-way) to attend my big sporting events and high school graduation. Clif became the constant at her side, through vacations, holidays, and her battle with melanoma. And while I can't imagine the switch of celebrating life's moments cozily with a sole daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter to the additional, ahem, circus of three lively step-daughters and their spouses, a step-son, and seven more grandkids, Clif handled it all in stride (also, perhaps, with the assistance of turning off his hearing aids from time to time).

As a high-schooler, you warrant your grandmother certain privacies. You don't ask about her love life. You don't make her talk about loneliness. But even a self-absorbed teenager picks up on the life lived between the lines. She notices when the spark returns to her grandma's voice; the frequent relaxed laughter; how someone sitting by your side, never leaving the room, is a stronger painkiller than any medicine.

By the time Jason and I married, Clif was revisiting his role as a full-fledged caretaker. My wedding was the one big event my grandmother wrote on her calendar that year, and with Clif escorting her the three hours each way, and every step down the aisle, she made it. And for one year more. As happenstance (or an irrefusable job offer from a Fortune 500 company, which ever you prefer to call it) would have it, we moved two hours from them. Many Saturdays were spent in their family room, me hand-in-hand with grandma on the couch while Clif waited on her. And just as he fed my grandfather decades before, Clif fed her, cooking whatever he could get her to eat, keeping her warm - nourishing her. Jason and I would often marvel at the two of them on our drive home. Occasionally, one of us would have to repeat ourselves so that Clif could hear us. But somehow, he always heard my grandmother, whose voice by then was only a whisper. He always heard her voice. He always knew what she needed. He never left the room.

My grandmother died that summer, but I continued to send cards to Clif, who wrote back. When Jason and I would visit (visits becoming a little harder as we moved farther away) Clif would tell us stories about serving with my grandfather or trips he had taken with my grandmother. After a particularly good story, he would slap his knee and scrunch his face into one of the best heartfelt laughs I've had the pleasure to witness. He let Audrey rearrange the framed pictures on his coffee tables and crawl all over him. He greeted us at the door with homemade ice cream or cake. He could talk to you about sports, or factory life, or historical events (past and present). He could tell you how to grow tomatoes or bake a ham, which was great because my grandfather once blew up a ham, not realizing that in order to bake a canned ham, one must first take the ham out of the can before placing it in the hot oven. (I feel privileged to have had them both: the seasoned chef and the ham grenadier).

On Saturday, Clif passed away. He was 86. His life was full. His heart was virtuous. He spoke the truth as only a man in his eighties can. And as I think back on the parts of his life I knew, the phrase "well done" surfaces repeatedly in my head. Much of the last eight months have centered on me preparing once again for motherhood - this time to mother a boy. A handful of men come to mind when I think of examples of the man I would like to teach my son to become. Clif is one of those men. And I am so grateful for the man he was: a man I could have easily never met, yet can't imagine having lived without.


*Tomorrow, I will spend most of my day in the car to go say goodbye to my friend. I doubt I find the time to log on here. But I will see you soon. Until then, be well.