A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Sushi, Anyone?

Janelle at Talk of Tomatoes created an event called Centerpiece of the Month.  It's now one of my favorites because it spurs me to keep the dining room looking pretty instead of piled with mail and other assorted crap. 

This month, my theme was sushi, laying out so many of the nice things Aunt Miranda got me for Christmas and birthday (thanks Aunt Miranda!) so that I will be reminded of all the new pretties she gave me for the pantry so I can learn to make my own sushi.

Will you be my guinea pigs? The only things missing from this table are good friends and the actual sushi in the middle.  I'm determined this month to break out the rolling mats and get to work.  Expect to see the fruits of my labor this month with an updated photo. I also need to go back to Umi to figure out how to make the carrot butterflies.

After March 7, run by Janelle's Talk of Tomatoes to see all the other centerpieces lovingly put together this month.

Dr.'s Kitchen Monday: Heads Up--Vietnamese Cole Slaw

Dr's Kitchen today is going to be a heads up and a reprint of yesterday's recipe, reworked.  When I took my salad into work last night and showed it to my friend, Yung, who is actually Vietnamese, she said it was very similar to salad she's been making her whole life, with one exception. She crinkled her nose at the oil in the dressing. She said that she never uses any oil in the dressing, that the oil is "an American thing".  I think she's right. I don't think, in this, it would be missed at all.

So here is a reprint of the recipe, re-engineered a little for those of us on formal diets, and including the nutrition counts:

Lunch for Work: Nigella Lawson's Vietnamese Cole Slaw

Nigella's Red Seasonal Salad (her version of Vietnamese Cole Slaw) is packed up and ready to go with me when I leave for work at 2pm this afternoon.  I have to say the dressing smells so good I almost ate the dish for lunch instead of saving it for dinner. The dressing is so complex to the nose, while still being so light and fragrant that you want to dig in with a spoon.  The one huge thing I did change on this recipe, okay, two things, are that I had no red cabbage so I used green, and my stomach's been bothering me a bit lately so I traded down to a banana pepper instead of a chili. I just didn't think my stomach could handle any real heat.  Yum. Can't wait until dinner time to try this out.

My entry for Weekend Herb Blogging this  week, the salad is a traditional Asian mix of flavors including the herb cilantro, along with rice vinegar, lime, fish sauce, hot peppers, and garlic.  The event, created by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, is being hosted this week by Anna of Anna's Cool Finds.  Check out her blog later to see all of the herbalicious recipes from the week.

When Your Sandwich Needs to be Doctored Up a Bit...

A Piece of Cake: Famous Mouse Face

Now, I'm not advocating that you break any trademark laws when you bake cakes but the truth is sometimes most of the time the little ones like to have cartoon character cakes they can recognize.  Thankfully, Wilton makes a host of pans that, if you can wield a pastry bag and a star tip, you're set.  But sometimes, you, or say me, want something a little more interesting, for the love of the challenge.

I made this cake for Jordan or Sydney, can't remember which, several years ago.  Getting the face right in 3-D form from 2-D was the challenge but we liked this little cake. It's a simple sports ball pan chocolate cake on top of a 9-inch round, single layer.  Obviously, this is decorated with a star tip, just not using  a Wilton bas relief-type pan.  The ears were made from thick layers of fondant, dried out for days prior so they'd stand up without crumbling.

Please forgive the photo. It is difficult to see any of the details beyond the face. This photo was taken with a 35mm before digital.  Not only did I have no skill, I had no way of checking my pics before they were printed. This was the best photo I have to work with.

A friend of mine at work saw this and wanted it for her little girl. No one around here does this kind of 3-D work, let alone selling anything in the "famous" category due to trademark laws. I totally understand both their hesitancy to get sued and Kara's desire to have the cake for her child. 

I simply don't have the hands and back to be able to do this kind of work anymore but I can do a bit, enough to help. I'm not encouraging anyone, mind you, to make the famous mouse, I'm just posting some pics of how I have done it, and how I helped Kara out by creating the hardest part, the face, out of fondant so she could recreate the little guy for her little girl at home...

Hopefully, she'll email me pics of the finished product so we can see how it all turns out in the end.

Another Cake I should have said "No"

Let's take a little walk down memory lane. I liked this cake, although it didn't photograph as well as I would have liked. The middle looks flat but it's from the flash on the camera. In person, it looked like a small basket filled with pansies.

This is was an engagement cake, I believe. I don't remember the exact occasion, I just remember who it was for.  Our friend,  Corbin's, soon-to-be ex-wife.  They went to court Wednesday to have the judge sign the papers. You can read about that here.  I always dreaded making cakes for her because she always wanted a "deal" but the only deal she liked was "free".  She was (I like talking about her in the past tense, by the way, it makes me smile) one of those people who loved getting freebies and bragging about getting freebies but if anyone asked her or her daddy (not a great, in our opinion, commercial contractor) for any freebies she'd lambast them for being so uncouth as to ask a working man for a deal, after all, her daddy works hard and he can't afford to give away anything for free. 

It's not only nice on our part, but a privilege of knowing them that makes it a requirement in being "friends" with her and her family to provide all the services we can to them for free.

Geez, I never knew how cathartic spilling a little venom on these pages could be. :-)  Don't get me wrong. I don't hate her. Well, I do hate her for the hell of a marriage she put our friend through and I do despise her for the way she uses their kids as pawns, but as far as the cake stuff, I'm just thrilled that she's out of my life and I love all the memories of her because we all know she's going to appear in many of my stories in bits and pieces over the years.  That's how I view people who are a true pain in my kiester.  God gave them to me to be used as writing tools.  Isn't He nice?

Okay, back to the cake story.  She ordered the cake and I don't remember her exact design instructions, only that they were very loose. Something like "floral and pretty" and that she didn't want any writing on it so I had a free hand which usually means for prettier cakes if someone's not dictating to me.  At the time she ordered it, she hinted and cajoled and tried to poor mouth me into giving it to her for free.  For her, never.  I never comped her cakes because her attitude and whining and trying to make me feel like a mean person always made me mad.  I usually offered to let her go buy it from a bakery instead of feeling the need to support my business but that usually offended her, after all, at a bakery she'd have no chance at all of getting it for free.

Like I said before, I don't remember the occasion exactly but I know it was for a family member, like a cousin, and I think it was an engagement.  She picked up the cake, paid for the cake, took the cake to her family function, and I remember her saying they ate every bite and that the guests at the party, including the gal it was made for, really liked it.  But when she called and told me all that the next day, she also told me that she thought I should give her all her money back because SHE didn't like it.  She thought it tasted great and she told that everyone at the party thought it was pretty but SHE thought it was "busy and not balanced".  Her reasoning was that since she didn't think it was as pretty as everyone else did, she was sure that since I was her friend I would want to comp the whole thing to please her. 

I pretended I had no idea what she was talking about and openly asking for so I focussed on the other comments and kept saying "I'm so glad they liked it!" and completely ignored the "I want my money back" part. I'm pretty sure this was the last cake I baked for her.  If I remember right, after any time she needed a cake I was already booked up or not taking cake orders that day.

I've ranted about this before but I personally never do that to a friend who has a business. I support my friends and I pay full rate.  If it's appropriate, I tip their employees well. I would never ask for a free deal on the basis of my friendship with someone. My theory is that they are my friends and I want to be a friend to support their dream, not be a user and rip them off.  Now I did comp a lot of cakes. I did, until my hands got so messed up, frequently volunteer to decorate cakes for parties I was attending or whatever.  I think it was the gal's attitude that annoyed me so much. My genuine friends didn't try to force me into giving them freebies and when I did, they were always sweet and appreciative.  This gal's attitude was that if I was her friend (acquaintance is all I'll cop to) then I owed it to her to give her free cakes any time she wanted them and she was never interested in making it easy on me by letting me use supplies on hand.  On this cake she was laid back, but usually it was about her dictating some monster complicated design, getting it for free, and then her hardly even saying thank you to me.  It was like an unwritten price for knowing her that you were her slave to command, and woe unto you if you did not fulfill her needs, desires, and whims of the moment because then you were railed on that  you "abandoned" her and "weren't meeting" her needs.

Wouldn't you love to be married to that piece of work?  Yes, I am thrilled by the divorce and the fact that I haven't had to associate with her for almost two years now. I get on my knees every night and am grateful in my prayers for that.

So what do you think?  I don't mind if you don't like pansies or if the colors aren't your favorite, or whatever, but does anyone see what she meant by "too busy" and the design being "unbalanced"?  Or was I right in assuming she was grasping at straws to find something to complain about to try to guilt me into comping it for her?  (Yeah, I am sort of playing you for compliments but mostly I'm turning it around as a point--that she was working overtime to get something free from a friend and I find that repulsive.)

What about the friend thing?  Do you guys expect to always get freebies from friends in business?

Auntie Miranda's Family Famous Beef Vegetable Soup

Aunt Miranda thinks I paid all of you to leave comments wanting her veggie beef soup recipe. Ha!  Yeah, like I'm really going to mail all those quarters. Dream on.  :-)

But guess what?

She did it! She wrote it out and we have it now. Right here on these pages.  The secret ingredient is:

Vegetable Beef Soup Warms You Up on Cold Days

With temps in the 30's most days, my bones feel chilled most of the time even with the furnace running.  I think it's more pshychological than physical so I needed something to make my head feel warm.  The answer? Soup. Something hearty and beefy to "thicken the blood".  Beef vegetable soup fits that need.

On a side note, let's see if we can encourage (in the comment section) Aunt Miranda to divulge her Beef Vegetable Soup recipe and maybe even a photo.  She has a killer veggie soup that is not one of those "clean out your fridge" recipes and it has a somewhat secret ingredient.  It's one of those subtle things where you say "This is the best veggie soup I've ever had...but I can't quite pinpoint why..."  And then when she tells you, you're like "Ohhhhhhhhhh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeahhh....I can taste that now. Normally I hate those but they taste great in this."  If you guys can whine, weedle, and wade your way into her heart (or guilt), I'll post her soup as soon as she sends me the recipe and pic.  Deal?

Seasoned with bay leaf and fresh rosemary, the soup is my addition to Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's weekly herb blogging event.  Check in with Kalyn to view the round up all of the herby dishes being cooked this week.

The nieces rock!

Jordan and Sydney spent the night one night last week and it was 24 hours of fun, as usual. They're really good kids.  They both helped with dinenr so I promised I'd put pics of them on the blogs.  Happy to.

Here's Jordan showing her ribs (I know. Bad pun.)

Sydney seasoning the baked beans:

Jordan making all of us fabulous french toast Sunday morning:

And here are Sydney and Jordan eating the fruits, so to speak, of Jordan's labor:

Yes, that would be Jordan's typical teenager look, the one that says "I'm way to cool to look happy in these pics...but don't let that stop you from taking them or my feelings will be hurt." 

Valentine's Cake anyone?

Meeta at What's For Lunch, Honey?  hosts a monthly blogging event called "Monthly Mingle". This month the theme is "Sweet Love" in deference to Valentine's Day.   Most people love chocolate for Valentine's Day. As I've said before my family and I are a little freakish about chocolate, in that it's not our "go-to" sweet necessarily.  I know. I know. We know and accept our strangeness.  BUT, even without chocolate you can still make a killer dessert even for your sweetheart.  This cake is actually from last year but its memory lives on.  The cake itself was vanilla, made using scraped vanilla beans and vanilla scented sugar, and the frosting was white chocolate buttercream.

I like this cake design a lot. The top is just okay, to me as a designer. It's basic rosebuds and pink drop flowers with gold dragees, but the bottom border was my own design and it's one of my favorites. Someday, I'd love to do a multi-tiered wedding cake using that border. I think it would be eye-catching and dramatic if played up with simple top borders.

Stop by Meeta's place after Thursday to see the round-up of all the sweet treats being blogged about for Valentine's Day.