Cupcakes for Katrina

Not the hurricane. The muse of this blog is not of the old fashioned offering-baked-goods-to-placate-the-weather-gods persuasion - though if she knew of some way to ease the tension building in the Hayward fault by lubricating the tectonic plates with buttercream frosting, I'm sure she would give it a try. The pictured cupcakes were for our friend Katrina, who took them to a baby shower. What I was not aware of until informed by Lisa was that she drove from South SF to the nickel-dime to pick them up, then took them to Millbrae for the shower. I'm pretty sure she did this because, in addition to liking cupcakes, she really, really loathes the environment.

Katrina is very cool, despite her eco-hating ways (and not just because she praised Lisa's cupcakes effusively). This can be deduced from the fact that (i) she has a baby who can barf on cue (see attached photo - not taken after cupcake consumption, as far as I'm aware, anyway), (ii) she has an encyclopedic knowledge of early 90's hip hop, and can rap large parts of "Mind's playin' tricks on me" by the Geto Boys, and (iii) she attended the recent NKOTB reunion concert and enjoyed it in a non-ironic manner. Good things all.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

Better, even, than a headfirst fall onto a Berkeley driveway. Upon the insistence of the readership, I bring to you Lisa's concussion cupcakes. Try making some of those yourself. Easy, you say? Ok, now throw down a couple drinks and headbutt the pavement so hard it makes your eyes cross for two days straight and causes what appears to be a gushing leak in the heretofore undiscovered forehead artery. OK, now try making them again. Not so easy now, smart guy, is it?

The law does not concern itself with trifles

It does, however, concern itself with pastries. However, in order to make ends meet, it also concerns itself with global financial meltdowns. Not that I have any specific excuse as to why I've not put up an entry for over a month, but really, with an excuse like that, do I need anything more specific? Global financial meltdowns can really cover for pecadillos far more troubling than my not stringing together a couple of sentences for an audience of one. Or, at least, so I would have thought. However, said audience of one has been giving me the hassle that about the paucity of my posting, and demanding more incredibly nichey chatter, and so I type.

Really, it came to me over the weekend that I need to post more. When my reader/muse managed to suffer a concussion and minor head wound (though major enough to require stitches) on a Friday night, yet nonetheless rallied to whip up 4 dozen cupcakes on Saturday despite a hangover and a bruised brain, I really have no excuse not to at least post a photo. But I can't. The photos are still on the camera, and Lisa's baking of the cakes was akin to John Henry finishing the tunnel - she's still breathing, but has been pretty wiped out since and hasn't moved them on to the computer. Way to pass the buck to the concussed lady, but that's how I roll.

Instead, I'll post a photo of my neighbor, who is a respected white collar defense attorney, the hands down winner of the annual "fastest guy on the street award", a probable contender in any Anderson Cooper look-alike competition that Anderson Cooper hasn't entered anonymously because he likes the attention (note: same sentence applies to his wife if you switch out "Tina Fey as Sarah Palin" for "Anderson Cooper"), and a huge red sox fan. He also still has his glasses from high school. I post without further comment.

Lots of cake, and it's all mine

Because it's my birthday, that's why. Lot of cakes recently, though photographic evidence will have to come later. I turned 34 on Sunday, and we had a big front yard barbecue. It seems like most of the street showed up, slurped down beer and ate cupcakes, courtesy of Lisa. Half were vanilla with white frosting, the other strawberry with strawberry frosting, and I believe that some of the vanilla were gluten free, as we had some celiac attendees. The night before, we'd also been to a friend's house for dinner and had a cake there too - a lovely little polka dotted lemon cake which went down rather nicely with the several glasses of port we were served with dessert. Rather civilized, really. I've not heard what kind of cake Mary (my twin sister) had, but I'm hoping it was a Fudgie the Whale ice-cream cake.

But frankly, my birthday was not even close to the most exciting thing happening in the past week. The big deal would be Conor's first day of kindergarten. He was absolutely great at dropoff, though seemed less than impressed after the first day, when he declared that all he learned was "Rules. Lots of rules." When asked if there was anything else he learned, he said "I learned recess is too short." As exciting as the first day was, it seems the bloom is off the rose a little - he's been less than enthusiastic upon realizing that (i) you actually have to go to kidnergarten every day, and (ii) Daddy doesn't stay home from work every day you go to kindergarten, and doesn't always take you out for ice cream afterwards to celebrate. Life can be unfair, sometimes.

Nevertheless, I'm sure he'll do well. And, in keeping with the baking theme, he's desperate to make zucchini bread with the garguantuan squash given to us by our neighbor. I can only hope that he aspires to provide me with the same delicious pastries that Lisa does.

Olympic Fever/Barnyard Animals

Here in the household of she who bakes cakes, we're quite into the Olympics. Given our focus on pastry, we're particularly interested in what people are eating there. So far, the two biggest stories seem to be (i) Michael Phelps consumes about 12,500 calories per day, and still has trouble keeping on weight, and (ii) one of the belgian women's beach volleyball players is 6'4 and 195 pounds. My thoughts on story (i) - that's tremendous. It also reminded me that in college my friends and I used to order a large dominoes pizza each for dinner, but we didn't swim 30+ hours a week (or perform similarly caloric intensive work). Needless to say, none of us entered the workforce in fields which require tight clothes and/or shirtlessness. On story (ii), not much to say really, other than it seemed a bit ungentlemanly to mention those stats roughly every two minutes during the beach volleyball matches. Churlish, really.

That aside, I'd bet that Michael Phelps could eat about 4 dozen of the cupcakes that Lisa made for a friend's baby's birthday. They look like farm animals. I wish I could link this somehow to the Beijing olympics, but it seems a stretch. Anyway, here they are.

She knows the time, with the fresh gucci watch...

But I make no comments as to her age, vis a vis Ed Koch. Points to the the reader who can identify the song, album and artist. These cupcakes were made for a friend of a friend's baby shower. The theme was "round the clock", which seems like a rather grim reminder of the fact that once one spawns, one never has a minute to oneself. I believe that my reader found the theme to be cute and practical, as it allowed for people to buy presents according to times of day. She's obviouly more in tune with these things than me, so I'll leave it at that.

Speaking of time and its passage, we took one wheel of Conor's bike today so he could try riding on three wheels. He took full advantage, and leaned heavily on his remaining training wheel, but it was a big step. Kindergarten starts in two weeks, and he's down to a prime number of wheels on his bike. Big stuff.

Ou sont les gateaux d'antan?

In the continued absence of pastry production by the lone readership of this blog, I'm forced down the cliched and narcissistic path of rambling on about my progeny. Dear reader, if you wish to have your ego flattered with stunning visuals of your cakes accompanied by florid praise, then you'd better get baking. And taking photos. You're rather better at that than I am too. Otherwise, it's rehashes of stuff that you already know about children with whom you are intimately familiar.

Anyhoo, a couple mornings ago, my older son sat at the breakfast table, looked at me pensively and declared "I wish we were dwarves. Then we could mine minerals and we could be really rich (pause) and get really dirty (longer pause) and live underground" I'm rather proud, and twenty years from now when his definitive ethnography of dwarven subcultures is released, I'll be the first to buy a copy. Or more likely, given the living situation of most ethnographers of dwarves and their ilk, I'll receive a number autographed hardcovers as payment in kind for room and board.

My younger son's obsessions are currently more mechanical in nature, with a particular focus on garbage trucks. He's learned from one of his books that (i) garbage trucks eat trash, and (ii) the grosser the garbage, the better it tastes. This could prove to be somewhat of a wrinkle in our attempts to stop him from reaching into the organic recycling bin to eat surplus frosting from one of Lisa's baking projects (phew - managed to stay marginally on topic with blog title). However, it is very amusing when I floss his teeth, as he demands inspection rights on any substance that has been lodged in there, and then, after identifying it appropriately ('dirty diapers', 'yucky yams', etc.), insists on scarfing it down. Lovely.

Now, dear reader, please bake more pastries or I shall be forced to share my opinions on the weather.