No Helpers

The grandkids (and us grownups) polished off yesterday’s epic-fail cake before bedtime. 

Rainbow carrots fresh from the garden of my pal Debbie

I was curious to see if I could duplicate whatever the problem was - plus we had another basket of strawberries in the fridge- so I made another angel food cake today. Can I just say it’s a lot more fun to talk Leo through the process than to do it myself? Separating 12 eggs is a cold, messy job. 

Once it was out of the oven, I surrounded the inverted cake pan with enough pots to guarantee it couldn’t fall over again. And… victory! 

Tall, tasty, non-fail cake. (I still like the taste of fail-cake better…)

Angel food cakes use just egg whites, so I again had 12 yolks left over. Throwing them away bugged me so a quick internet search later, this 12 Yolk Pound Cake (here) was ready to bake. 

The tube pan being already in use was my excuse for trying out the new springform pan (it’s powder blue. So pretty.) I was curious if it would leak (it did not!) or if the shape would affect the bake time/texture (it did not!) As a bonus, there was a crusty, crunchy lip around the cake that was very delicious. 

And no, we aren’t going to eat both cakes ourselves. Mary’s favorite cakes are angel food and pound cake, so half of each went home with them. I’m going to slice and freeze the rest of the pound cake and keep it for snacking after the angel food is gone. Sure has been a yummy couple of days!

Are We Done Yet?

Donovan and Jac kept me company while I did today’s sorting (and by ‘company’ I mean we were in the same room while they played Minecraft and tried to talk me into going downstairs to get them cake 😜).

Today’s stats: 1 big bag of trash, 2 boxes for donation and a home found for some of my EPP projects. 

I know I’m never going to work on them again (or at least the chances are very slim given hand, shoulder and eye issues) but I was having a really hard time letting go. Knowing they’ll have a good home helps. 

Funny for the day: apparently I had (have?) a problem with scrap management (we are not going to call it scrap hoarding…) 

All 4 of these bags/boxes have fabric pieces ranging from teeny tiny to quarter yards, going back to when I started quilting. Most of it went in the trash, a few fat quarter-sized pieces are in the donation box and that small black bin in front holds all I’m keeping. (I still think I might do a string quilt someday.) The funniest part? In 13-ish years I’ve been quilting, I’ve never made a scrap quilt. But some day I might… right??

Duck, Duck, Goose

Today was bake, slime, sort - kinda like duck, duck, goose for grandkids.

It’s Strawberry Season! and we live adjacent to the strawberry growing capital of the world (we saw strawberries from Oxnard when we were in Paris and London) so Leo and I decided to make angel food cake - her first time - while Pop made a run for berries. (And Jac sulked because she had to be off her phone for an hour. Grandma is so mean…)

Everything went well until we took the cake from the oven, inverted it so it could cool for 3 hours…. and within a couple of minutes it fell right out of the pan. 

I’ve never had that happen before and I’m not sure why it did this time (maybe it wasn’t cooked all the way thru and was too heavy? Any other ideas? Same recipe, same pan I’ve used for years…)

A deliciously epic fail. It didn’t stop the littles (and the grownups) from nibbling away at the edges before it was even cool. (Turns out I prefer the heavier, collapsed version to the original, so as Teena said, ‘hey, new recipe’!)

Then Leo helped Jac make squishy shaving cream slime, which Pop may not appreciate come shaving time tomorrow… Jac almost lost it again when I didn’t have the right colors of food coloring but Leo saved the day by mixing in some acrylic paint. Not something I would have thought of but it worked! 

Happy Jac (cake + strawberries + slime = happiness for 8 year old’s) helped me sort another row of fabric bins. 

Two more stuffed boxes are ready to donate and 5-ish more bins are empty. Making progress!

Fun Day

Leia was in charge of Big D today (Matt and Mary were in Del Mar for a reptile show… I see more snakes in their future) so to help entertain him, we offered to take them to the Moorpark teaching zoo’s spring extravaganza. 

 Who’s cuter? Teenager or Gila monster?

Back when hubby and I attended college classes there it was called EATEM, Exotic Animal Training, Entertainment and Management. Now it’s the classier, but less colorful, Teaching Zoo (here).

Donovan announced his boredom before we even got in the gates - and every few minutes afterward - but the rest of us had fun. 

(His attitude changed once he ate lunch. Note to self: protein for grumpy boys before going out the door.)

It’s a very small zoo but they have 2 new tigers, 

a lion, a Gila monster,

multiple apes/monkeys, 

and lots of enthusiastic students and volunteers willing to share fun facts. 

 Blue-tongued skink in the reptile house

The reptile house was the biggest hit - Donovan even forgot to be grumpy while we were there. And it’s amazing how much he knows about lizards and snakes. 

The show put on by first year students 

was silly (deliberately),

but we got great close up views of some cute critters. 

We also saw an in-progress training session 

with what one volunteer called “the smartest animal we have” (the baboon, not the student 😜) Super cool to watch. 

Leia picked our lunch spot, 

Yep, still wearing the fashion-statement glasses 🙄

a very busy, and slow, crepe restaurant which gave us plenty of time to take selfies.

(It was fun and the food was good but I doubt we’d go back - definitely overpriced with very slow service.)

Finished off the day with Leia making her first chocolate chip cake, a big family favorite, 

and hanging out with me while I worked on a new sewing project. 

 Endangered butterfly habitat

All in all, a very fine day. 

And yes, M&M came home with 3 more snakes… a big boa - D wants to name it Banana 😂 - and 2 small hog nose. See the black belly on one of the small snakes? That one’s Donovan’s and he named it Emerald.

Destash Redux

My quilt guild is having another fabric sale at the end of April, so when I finished the January craft room declutter, my plan was to go through the overflow room* (aka OMG how much fabric do you have?!?j and trash or donate a bunch - fabric to the guild and “stuff” to wherever.

“Before” pictures

Then we went to CO for Rachel’s birthday… and came back to 4 solid weeks of (probably) Influenza A… and the ongoing eye drama and… yeah, not much has gotten done. But hubby wants to move forward on installing a Murphy bed in the upstairs guest room, so today I started on the first wall of shelves.

Top shelf will be for oversized Christmas decorations 

Two+ bags of trash and a hallway full of donations later, that part is close to being done. (I cheated and also emptied several center section shelves near the back window since they were easy).

Red to Goodwill, blue to Guild, green to trash.

Then comes the center section where most of my yardage lives - the donation pile should be huge when it’s done; some of that fabric has been around since I started quilting 13+ years ago.

I’d worked on the front section before we went to CO. It was mostly photo albums and supplies from my (long gone) scrapbooking days and most went to a buddy who still scraps. The shelves on the right are almost completely empty, as are the middle shelves on the left. Making progress! And hoping to get some sewing done too…

* its not just fabric, honest! Suitcases, unwieldy vacuums, former craft hobbies and stuff that magically accumulates are all well represented here. 

Little Chickie

Spotted this yesterday at Home Goods, our current favorite store, but left without it because “do I really need that?”

Cookie jar chick

Went back today and brought it home. It makes me happy and in today’s world, that’s $ well spent.

* Right eye is still not fixed, it keeps dragging on and on. So depressing. 

Chef JayJay

Jac made most of our dinner tonight. She didn’t eat it, except for the jasmine rice which is one of her favorite food groups. 

I thought she’d give up after her first touch of shrimp but Jac removed the tails - and a couple pieces of “intestine” - from about half a pound. And enjoyed it. She usually doesn’t like touching cold or slimy things, or getting her hands dirty, but none of it bothered her tonight.

I also showed her how to “snap” asparagus and she did the whole pound before putting them in the skillet and stir, stir, stirring. 

She told Pop and Donovan that she plans to have 3 jobs when she grows up - geologist, teacher and chef. And her reaction when D told her she couldn’t have that many was basically Watch Me -“I can be whatever I want.” That’s my girl!

Plates and Plants

Way back, like 45 years ago, we bought a set of dishes using stamp books (remember those??) from our local Alpha Beta grocery.

The cups and bowls fell (literally) away over the years but we still use the plates as our everyday dishes. A few weeks ago I fell in love with a random flowered plate on FB, which made me think we needed more COLOR and PRETTY in the house. Three stores and a bunch of websites later, we found these at Home Goods…

Not flowers, not super colorful, but they make me laugh. And 4 plates for $9.99 is a deal. (Even if they are melamine and neither dishwasher nor microwave safe. So not practical…)

Bowls were 4 for $10 too

I didn’t realize how much of a deal until I checked the manufacturer’s website (looking for bigger plates.) The ones I bought are apparently last year’s model, but still for sale at 4 for $48. 

The new design? Available now for pre-order? 

$20 per plate. I feel like I won the jackpot. 😂 

 My favorite color. So pretty.

Hubby made some contributions to COLOR too. We now have a couple of orange trees in the backyard, visible from the kitchen windows, that light up at night…

and what I thought was a hollyhock 

- correct name is Sea Mallow - for the front. 

He’ll be heading back to Home Depot soon to get a few more. Love them!