No title. My mind is a blank.

I may notice spelling/grammar/pronunciation mistakes, but I don't often point them out to the offender. Mainly because the one person I know who does it all the time is rude and irritating and nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is. Sometimes, though, I don't point it out because the mistake is just too entertaining to correct.

For instance, in pre-natal classes, the teacher kept talking about how men need to develop bondage skills. One night she actually said this: "dads-to-be might even think about going into the woods for a male bondage experience. You'd be surprised at what you might learn". Yes indeed, I bet they might! We were the only ones to find this funny, everyone else was so young and so earnest at the whole becoming parents adventure that they just nodded as though their lives depended on doing every thing she said. Or maybe they thought it was the correct use of the word, who's to say?

Today I decided not to correct the woman in the coffee room who was telling one and all (as if we wanted to know) about the surgery she is getting done to get help with her "vicarious veins" problem.

Wow. Absolutely you should get help if your veins are vicarious.

Coconut Mark II

Once again I am at work and all I really want to do is eat cake. I am still working on creating a coconut cake to add to the brochure. Fortunately, there is an office birthday today, so I was able to experiment and have some guinea pigs available to eat the thing. They're pretty good about testing, even on a birthday. I think that they're happy that there is cake, regardless of whether or not it works out.

I am anxious not because I'm hungry, or because I want cake*, but because a lot of this cake is new. I used one of my new cake rings, so I finally got to try the filling-the-same-depth-as-cake-layers plan and the filling...well, I may have a hit.

I have been working on the various parts of the cake since last week. Reduced coconut milk for the cake part, simmered with vanilla bean pod. Did that last Friday and put it in the fridge.

Ganache, made with white chocolate and coconut cream instead of the usual whipping cream. Did that yesterday afternoon.

Cake layers, made with reduced milk. They baked whilst we ate supper.

Filling. Oh, the filling. Here's where I went out on a limb. But I think it worked, if the boy's response to it was anything to go by. He doesn't often swoon over sweet things, but he swooned last night. I gave him some of the filling with three fresh raspberries folded in. He said it was the best thing I've ever done. So I said thanks. He looked at me and said "no, seriously mom I'm not being polite this is like, great".

Given that I made the cheese for the filling on the weekend -something I'd never done before - and then made the filling last night by beating the cheese with various things that occurred to me as I watched the kitchen aid do its thing, having a hit seemed unlikely. When I mentioned to the boy that perhaps, as he liked it, I should write down what I put in and how I made it before I forgot what I had done he said "go write it down. Right now. And try not to forget between here and the kitchen". Hmph. Am I that forgetful? Oh yes, that's right, I am.

*Of course I want to eat cake. Duh. It's just not the driving force here.

Long fuse

You know what is interesting about rarely getting mad with one's children? When you do actually get mad, they're astounded. And they TOTALLY listen and straighten things out.

I phoned the school yesterday and asked them to have the boy given a message in his last class. He was to come to the office when the class was over and that his mother would be waiting for him. And that he should meet her and return to class with her.

Oooh, I wish I could have heard what he was saying in his head. Because the look on his face when he got to the office was "s**t, oh S**t, I am so f*****g busted. Oh S**t". It was great. Not that I smiled, or anything because that would ruin in all. Dead silent the whole walk back to class.

Microsecond memory

I ordered something online today. A couple of things, actually. I wanted more vanilla and I decided to check the sale section. And found the most awesome thing to help with creating the wedding cake for Mayb. (that originally came out weeding cake, which I'm pretty sure is NOT what they're looking for).

I was so very excited but then, of course, the big question was do I tell her or not? I had to go and see her at lunch today, so I contemplated the question on the drive over. On the one hand, I really like surprises. On the other, I suck at keeping things secret, if the secret is my own. Tell me your secret and I can keep it locked up forever if you want. My secret? Every minute not telling is hard. Waiting for Christmas kills me, as I always want to tell people what I got for them before the 25th. Somtimes even before the snow flies.

I decided as I pulled up in front of her house that I'd tell her. And then rendered the whole debate useless by forgetting it altogether. Between the sidewalk and the front door, people. I forgot the entire thing in that brief partial moment in time. So either I'm losing my mind, or she has some weird cloud of forgetfulness floating over the front walkway.

No magic at all

So we finally got to try a bit of the cake. And it was....cake-ish. Not so terrible I'd throw it at passing strangers, but not good enough to spend one day baking let alone the marathon that it was*. So this week will be a new coconut cake attempt. A totally different angle of approach. No recipe, just improv on the spot. I suppose it could be worse than the multi-day cake, but only if I burn it or use salt instead of sugar.

*Big puppy liked it. But then I'm pretty sure even a bad cake is better than gimp and lightbulbs, yes?

And so they should

I was at a party last weekend, and there was a teenage girl there. Two, actually, counting my girl. The other girl was wearing a t-shirt that said "Vampires prefer brunettes". She was blonde.

So...was she clever enough to be ironic -which sees unlikely givern her age - or was she just being blonde, or just being a teenager? I mean, even my girl at fourteen thought it was hilarious (she didn't say anything until we'd left, and I hadn't said anything to her about it). So which do you think it is?

Belly Dancing the night away

I was going to have a mother daughter night on Mother’s day eve (the night when kids play tricks on…no wait, that’s a different night), but the girl was away on a choir trip. The boy – because he is the bestest kid ever – stepped up to the plate and went to a dance recital with me.

He was quite gracious about it too, and during the intermission met some kids from his school, so that was quite good.

The show itself was very interesting. The most interesting bit to me was the size of most of the people. Well, not their size but their ok-ness with it. I mean, I would fit in with the majority of the women their, and NO ONE sees me that undressed. Not even me. I rarely look in a mirror and the few times that I do it is because for some reason I’ve decided to wear make-up and want to make sure I’m putting everything in the right place. But look at myself anywhere else? No way.

But here are these women of all different shapes and sizes who are TOTALLY comfortable with their bodies. How can this be? Is it that dancing is not about how perfect you look, and that it idealizes womanhood, not magazine style woman-shape? There was one dancer whom I was certain was a friend’s dad, except I know for a fact he is in the Ukraine at the moment. And there she was, happy and dancing and proud. I was 98 percent impressed with all of them, and 2 percent freaked out by the masses of jiggling flesh.

You know what else was impressive? There was one group that had a girl (yes girl, maybe 16 years old) who was really very good. I pointed her out to my son – not that he needed me to point out the partially clad sixteen year old, it was because she was a good example of what an accomplished dancer could do (most of the women were amateurs). His response? “Yeah, she’s good but creepily anorexic. Freaks me out to look at her. The one on this end is easier to watch”.

So…he doesn’t believe that all women should be a size zero? Glory be.

But I want to eat it NOW

The problem with making a cake that will take four days from to finish is that...you don't get to eat said cake for days on end. And it won't be ready on a work day, which means I'll have to find somewhere else to take it to save my little family from eating it all ourselves.

Why, you wonder, would I make a cake that I was worried I'd have to eat? There is a totally logical reason: I am working on a new cake to add to the menu. This may take any number of tries - although the flavour for the wedding cake layer three was ahit on the first out of four ideas I had, so one never knows.

Anyway...there are three of us in the family. There may be any number of large cakes made until I'm happy. Three people + six cakes= two whole cakes each. And whislt one of us is as thin as a rake, the other two are shrinking, albeit slowly. Throw some cakes into that and the shrinking would turn to expanding in a hurry.

Read what you just wrote, idiot.

I've signed up for various cooking webzines and so forth. So I quite often get emails about new recipes, or cooking articles and usually the Subject line is pretty clear as to what the recipes are for: New Dishes for Spring, 15 Top Uses for Asparagus (I could come up with 20, none of which would involve actually eating it) or perhaps "Early Spring Salad Recipes".

Clearly, however, not everyone reads over their subject line (let alone the actual articals or recipes which are frequently poorly written). I arrived at work this morning to 67 emails, and mid-way through I was somewhat surprised to see an email whose subject was "New Ideas for Breasts".

And here I thought the old ideas were good enough.