Remember my list?  Well, Penny wanted a post about 2 tsp. vanilla.  Here ya go!

Just before I left for Boston I baked myself a birthday cake because, well, it was my birthday.  I baked a Whiskey Cake since that is the traditional birthday cake – for at least four generations – in my family.  I ate one piece and left the rest for my hubby who was disciplined enough to leave me half the cake, cut into individual slices, in the freezer.  Remember, he left the day before I got home.  So I got to eat a piece every day – there were a couple pieces left when he came home too.

So how does that relate to my list?  I wrote the recipe down from memory and 2 tsp. vanilla and 2 1/2 sticks butter ended up on the list page of my little note pad.

A Whiskey Cake is this moist, tender white cake (you know me, I’m a chocolate girl but I love this cake), leavened with 4 beaten egg whites– so you don’t want to Zumba around the kitchen while the cake is baking.

The frosting is simple – powdered sugar, corn syrup, butter, 4 egg yolks (wouldn’t want to waste the yolks!) and well, yes, whiskey.  A minimum of 4 TBS.  My mom usually tosses in a shot or two or three.  She’d let me taste the frosting when I was a kid, just to make sure she’d added enough whiskey.  Sometimes she used Kentucky Bourbon or Mash, sometimes Scotch, sometimes Jim Beam… depended upon what we had on hand.  I usually grab the Scotch or the Bourbon.

Anyway, after the cake is baked and cooled, you frost it and here’s the best part, drizzle on 2 melted squares of bitter and I do mean, unsweetened, chocolate.  That’s one of the many contrasts that makes this cake a favorite of every single person in our family.

I’d give you the recipe, but that would mean betraying a closely guarded family secret.  Or as my dad says whenever I ask him about his days with the CIC… “If I tell you I’ll have to kill you.”

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Fresh mango, sliced, sprinkled with hot chili flakes.  Oh.  Yeah.

What else did I want to say?  I actually attempted to organize my thoughts this week and I made a list of blog topics.  Of course I am well-known for making lists and never, ever looking at them.  The same way I carry an appointment book, write down my appointments and then never, ever look at my appointment book and thus miss many appointments.  I’m much better off relying upon my memory engrams.

Found my list, which says:

2 tsp. vanilla

2 1/2 sticks butter

ear worms – check

cats – check

clown doll –  Oh My God No!

Parenthood

Post poem

Experience as a… what?  Can’t read my own writing.

Small world

Ah, I choose Small World!  Not the Disney version.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.  As you know, my husband and I only recently reunited.  Like two ships passing in the night, first I was away for 8 days and then the day before I arrived home, he left town for 10 days.  We barely spoke the entire time– my cell phone wouldn’t work in the wilds of Maine while he spent most of his trip attending lectures.  But we did text back and forth and I was reminded just how small this world really is.

Case in point – I come from a rural community in Iowa.  My high school class was pretty dysfunctional (you can include me in that category) and whenever anyone asks me why I don’t attend high school reunions I answer, “Because everyone is either in prison or dead.”  I wish I could say that’s a flat out lie, but it isn’t.  Oh, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, there are a few of us survivors, battered and bloody, and none of us keep in touch.  Apparently my husband does, keep in touch with my old classmates, that is.

While he was up in Minnesota, he helped his brother – a veterinarian – at a free rabies vaccination clinic.  Assisting with vaccinations was the sister-in-law of my second best high school friend (my very best friend having died young, as you will recall).  So my husband texted me about a million times, catching me up on my friend’s life since I last saw her, which was when we each had a three-year old and a newborn.

I told my husband to give her sister-in-law my email address just in case, but my friend hasn’t contacted me.  I didn’t expect her to.  But it is interesting, this six degrees of separation.  What’s even more interesting is that her name had popped into my head just the week before.

Yup, small world… check!

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We’ve been apart for 18 days, which is the longest we’ve been separated since the kids were little.

Here’s what he’ll come home to….

The aroma of his favorite fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.

Homemade egg pasta with a pesto I made from wild leeks, spinach, roasted garlic, toasted pine nuts and Parmesan cheese.

A salad of our own just-picked garden greens and my own pickled asparagus.

A batch of salmon candy (it’s marinating as we speak).

I’ve trimmed the yard, planted the flowers, herbs and potatoes, pulled every tick from the dog, swept the basketball court free of debris after our wind storm, filled the house with roses (stolen from the neighbor’s yard but they’ll never miss them as they live in Europe and the house, although maintained, is empty 99.99% of the time), washed the sheets– again– shaved my legs, and treated myself to a spa day for a pedicure and a waxing of parts heretofore unmentionable.

(I first took a picture of my right foot but then I realized you would see my hideously deformed broken little toe… I mean, it’s bad enough that my toes are so long I can pick things up, monkey-style.)

I’m ready.

I’m such a feminist and a little wifey all at the same time.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  One is based on highfalutin principles, the other is based on love.

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I hate referring to myself in the third person almost as much as I hate ticks, however…

So, now that my jet-lag is resolving – albeit slowly – I admit I’m in love with the state of Maine, especially Red’s Eats.  I call this the Lobster Roll of Heaven… Lobster meat, I mean, like, two whole lobsters per roll, including the claws, grilled bread – one slice, and melted butter.  No shells.  Oh.  God.  In this case God is a woman.

Loved the hiking, the weird weather – experienced my first Nor’easter.  Despite missed flights and late nights, I got to spend quality time with a couple of my children.

I met author buds and book bloggers and got to walk the campus at Wellesley with Penny Watson.  All in all pretty cool.  Oh, and Penny stuck me in a haunted hotel with a ‘child’ ghost.  I swear she did.  I hate dealing with ‘child’ ghosts.  They are freaky which is why the Japanese stick ‘child’ ghosts in their horror movies.  Oh!  I also got to see the House of Seven Gables – of Nathaniel Hawthorne fame.

You must know this about me.  Every single time I fly there is a medical emergency on my plane.  Usually in my row.  The flight attendants are always very grateful for my help.  We have yet to make an emergency landing.  Knock wood.  I’m waiting for the day I have to deliver a baby.

Tomorrow I plan to focus.  Yeah… Right…

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1.  Still away from California (or almost out of the country!)… In Boston with author, Penny Watson.

2.  The drive to and from northern Maine was outstanding.  The hike was nirvana.  As Tom Stronach knows, I lost a show while hiking in a peat bog – sucked the shoe right off my foot – but miracle of miracles, the peat bog spit it out and I was able to complete the hike with two, albeit, one, soggy shoe.  Experienced my first noreaster which I thought might wash away the entire town of Machias.  Saw bald eagles but no moose and no bear.

3.  Ate quite possibly the best, most decadent, fast food of my life, a real true lobster roll from Red’s Eats, right off the highway in Wisscasset.  My daughter and I drove from there to Penny’s house swimming in a major out of body food high and yet we still had room for a visit to Chef Ming Tsai’s Blue Ginger, where thanks to our friend Chef John Malik, author of Doughnuts for Amy, we met Chef Tsai and took photos with him!  All I can remember is that the food was to die for… just like when I ate at the French Laundry, it’s going to take some time to remember exactly what I ate.  And no, that’s not cleavage.  Stop staring down my shirt.  I don’t have cleavage – the magic of a push up bra!

4.  So my daughter flew home this morning.  My son is fine in Machias – had to see for myself – many thanks, Stephen King, and I miss my dog and my hubby and he knows it’s in that order.  Tomorrow Penny and I get to head off to the New England Writer’s Conference.  Fun!

5.  Oh yeah… TSA lost part of my computer charger so I am using Penny’s computer.  She’s a love.  See you!  Julia

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