Booooo Siiiiiick

Blech. Nothing like catching a cold on a Monday. On the up side: it doesn't ruin the weekend. On the down side: a whole week of working while feeling horrible. But I'm getting this baby back off the ground. I've been on a relatively steady self-improvement kick this year. Suffered some setbacks, but also made more progress in 2 months than I have in a long time. So here it goes.

My favorite kind of corn

I can't believe autumn is almost over (maybe not calendar-wise, but tradition-wise) and I haven't posted about my favorite autumn snack: candy corn and peanuts.

Now I love candy corn and all mellow-creme candies (pumpkins, etc) on their own, but my mom always mixes candy corn with cocktail peanuts. The sweet creaminess of the candy corn is perfectly complemented by the salty crunch of peanuts, and to me the perfect mouthful is one candy corn and one-and-a-half peanuts. Ack! I'm going crazy just thinking of the tastiness!

I can't say candy corn and peanuts is a mixture exclusive to fall, but I will always associate it with autumn for what I think are obvious reasons, and even more so with my mom, since she is the one who introduced this simple pleasure to me. I miss my mom living so far away from her. I know it's not nearly as far as many mothers and daughters, but 450 miles is still plenty of distance. I really treasure the simple little things that make me feel close to her in a small way.

Plus: Mom-Lady's favorite season is fall, what with the pumpkin decor and orange leaves, so see? Full circle back to fall. Totally the ultimate autumn snack.

So quick! Scarf this unhealthy-but-so-delicious snack one more time before Thanksgiving! Because then, no matter what season the calendar tells us it is, autumn is over and it's time for winter snacks and Christmas candy.

Don't scare me like that, Martha!

Matt brought in the mail and placed my share--bills, offers, a magazine--beside me on the couch. Hooray! A magazine! Ooh, the spine tells me it's the November issue of Martha Stewart Living. I've been waiting for this! Yipp--AURGH WHATTHEHELL?!



A freaking chow! *shiver* I know their owners love them and they love their owners, but I have spent enough time with chow chows to know we do not get along. At least not as friends or roommates. I've had my feet, ankles, and trousers bitten more than I like. I love dogs, but chows are little bastards.

Of course I'm quite thick, so I really thought this was her cover choice for November. It took me much longer than I'm willing to admit to realize that oh, maybe pets wouldn't be the focal point of the November issue of a home magazine--there might be more, let's say "seasonal" subjects to address. Yeah, duh, it's just one of those fancy upside-down back covers, to make the special pet section even more special. As if it has its very own devoted issue of Martha Stewart Living instead of a few pages. Martha knows her chows will be impossible to live with if she doesn't kiss up to them in print once in a while. Fortunately, dogs are not geniuses, and they are easily fooled by the upside-down back cover trick. For much longer than I am, so just shutup okay?

Fortunately my giant human brain figured out the cover illusion (eventually). So now I'm super excited to dig into the issue dedicated (mostly) to my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. Thanks, Martha! Chow Chow crisis: overcome.

Let me eat cake

Last night we had our dear friends Matthew and Lynnea over for dinner. We ate cabbage and cauliflower manicotti, which was cheesy and tasty, and we had a lovely time, as we usually do when we have friends over. If it were likely to be an unpleasant evening I assure you, we wouldn't invite people to dine with us. So blahblahblah dinner.

But last night is significant for me because it's the first time I've ever baked a cake. 

"Gasp!" you say? Well it's true. Not that I haven't beaten together a box mix from time to time as a kid, but my general view of cooking until I was 30 was "if you learn someone might expect you to do it from time to time." Once I discovered that I might be willing to cook for myself or others, there was a lot of catching up to do.

Fortunately Martha Stewart entered my life a few months ago in the form of her Living magazine, and in the October/Halloween issue she included the recipe for Spiced Lemon Cake.

While I don't usually like lemon baked goods, this cake is a dream. Light, moist, lemony-but-not-too-lemony, with just a hint of cardamom. The glaze adds sweetness without being cloying or overpowering. And apart from zesting the lemons, it was easy-peasy to make. I guess I need to get one of those fancy microplane zester thingies? We have one kind of similar to this, but it didn't work at all. I ended up using the smaller side of our cheese grater, and ended up with closer to a teaspoon of zest than a tablespoon, but I don't think the cake was any worse for it.

I didn't think of taking a picture at the time, and this is all that was left this morning, when I unwrapped it, yes, for breakfast. I know I'm supposed to be trying to lose weight, but I've basically given that up until the new year. 

Spiced Lemon Cake

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living

For the cake:

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan (if you choose Martha's way)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for pan (my way)

1 tsp lemon zest 

3/4 tsp ground cardamom

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sour cream

For the glaze/frosting:

6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 375F. 

Martha says to butter and flour an 8-inch round cake pan, but my grandmother taught us to sugar the cake pan instead. It keeps the cake from sticking, and also makes the subtlest crumbly sweetness on the outside of the cake. I think it works better, and you never get a floury edge, which I hate. I also only have a 9-inch cake pan, so that's what I used. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter, granulated sugar, zest, and cardamom with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in 3 tablespoons lemon juice. It curdled here, which freaked me out as a novice, but Lynnea later assured me that cake batter always separates and looks curdly, and that it's completely normal. Reduce speed to medium-low, and beat in flour in 3 scoops, alternating with sourcream, ending with flour. So a total of 5 additions. Pour batter into cake pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean--about 25 minutes in my 9-inch pan. 
Turn out onto wire rack. Let cool, top side up. Whisk powdered sugar with remaining lemon juice until smooth, then pour over the cooled cake. I put the rack on a cookie sheet to catch the glaze run-off, because I didn't want it pooled around the cake. Later I may or may not have eaten the extra glaze right off the baking sheet with a spoon.

While we all agreed that I didn't need to cool the cake as much as I had, it was delicious at room temperature with coffee. 

And again the same way for breakfast this morning.

Palm Springs Holiday

We spent a long weekend (5 days!) in Palm Springs with my brother and his wife. Fun! And a much-needed break. I know I don't have children and working from home is a pretty enviable gig, but work has NOT been great lately. We're overloaded and under-led and the frustration just builds and builds and... The downside of working from home is the feeling that you never really leave work. While a separate home office helps, it isn't quite enough sometimes. But that's what mini-vacations are for!

We arrived Thursday afternoon at the Westin Mission Hills Villas (Matt's parents gave us Starwood points as an anniversary present). They were pretty typical of the Westin time share experience--large suites with kitchens and large furniture. We actually had adjoining suites, each with a kitchen and dining area. We stocked up on snacks, breakfast, and one dinner--and wine and beer--at Trader Joe's, because it was inexpensive and our main priority was to just hang out and catch up with each other.

The receptionist and concierge both recommended we attend the Villagefest our first night. They made it sound like a special thing, but it's basically their weekly farmers market. Still, I'm glad we went, or we might have missed this:


The first participant we encountered at Villagefest was a magical warrior from possibly the future, waging new age-y musical battle on behalf of wealthy retirees and tourists with his electric cello-ish instrument and billowing cloak. Yes, billowing, thanks to the industrial floor fan he had aimed at his knees. And no, I wasn't hallucinating--he really was wearing armor. Oh it killed me. It wasn't easy getting a shot around his little blue-haired groupies (okay, southern California old ladies aren't usually blue-hairs, but you get the idea)--he must get a lot of action from the grannies. I couldn't have been happier.

But that wasn't the end. At dusk we walked by a charming little stage with a hand-written sign announcing It's Magic! to passersby. My sister-in-law and I agreed that it was so cute that whatever was performed there had to be awesome. We weren't wrong. After eating and buying some fruit we headed back the way we came and there was a crowd around the stage.


It was an old man doing card tricks! I have a soft spot for card tricks and old people, so I was pretty much in heaven here. And he was a hustler, let me tell you. Shuffling around, playing on our touristy goodwill and trust of grandpas to sell his trick decks. Of course I am a total sucker, so I couldn't resist buying his "magic cards" (special end of summer deal! Half price! 2 decks for $5!) I got a Svengali deck and a tapered deck. It's Magic!

The rest of the weekend was pretty mellow. We played cards with the tapered deck and talked about family and life and whatnot. It has been years since I've spent more than a few hours at a time with my brother and sis-in-law, and it's been a year since I've taken a vacation, and the combination was truly rejuvenating.

The siblings left Sunday evening, so Matt and I got to do the romantic dinner thing at Copley's--in Cary Grant's house! I didn't see him though. :( Just kidding, I don't expect Cary Grant's ghost to wait tables. The service was still awesome and the food was fantastic. Loved it!

I miss it already. Work is still sucky, but I've regained some perspective. I think I'll survive this quarter, and be nicer to my husband again. Plus hello? I have card tricks to learn.