Let Them Eat Cake

Yesterday I mentioned an expensive cake pan. Before I introduce the pan let me give you some background material. We live in a rural farming community surrounded by thousands of acres of corn and soybean fields. Major development is breathing down our necks and they've built a "lifestyle" mall in Geneva, Illinois which is about 15 miles from here. I contend that this is the only place in the world where there's a Coach store within 3 miles of a livestock feed and supply place.

It is for this reason and this reason alone that I own a $30 cake pan. I might be tempted by the sight of it in the Williams Sonoma catalog but when you're in the actual store impulse takes over and soon you find yourself with a heavy cake pan in the shape of a ring of evergreen trees. It's all a blur. How did I pay for this? I certainly don't remember walking to the register with this.



I immediately launched into justification mode and decided that I'd use the pan to bake spectacular cakes as Christmas gifts for all the farmer's business associates. That numbered about 18 and adding my boss and my own family in for good measure I came up with 20 cakes to be baked. Whew...I felt much better. Then reality set in as I started to tally up the pounds of butter, flour, sugar and buttermilk involved. Oh, and the time needed to bake the cakes one at a time.

I admitted defeat after baking one cake. I decided I'd shop for other gifts for the farmer's purposes and the single cake would be presented to my boss. It was a spectacular presentation. The cake ring of trees was lightly glazed and dusted with powdery sugar, looking all the world like a forest newly covered in snow. It was on a cake board encased in sparkling clear cellophane and tied with a golden ribbon and a fresh evergreen sprig. The cake was so spectacular that my boss ran up to the photographers office and begged for them to take photos.

It was at this point, with my boss's encouragement and the thought of armies of professional photographers shooting my cake, that the idea of a $30 cake pan didn't seem so far fetched.

The complete recipe is at the bottom of this post. Let's get started.

First we put the butter into a large mixing bowl and let it stand for about a half hour to soften up.



Cream the butter and sugar together. Sift the dry ingredients together.



Add eggs one at a time to the butter and sugar mixture. Beat well after each addition.



Next add the vanilla. I love this vanilla which is available at the Mexican markets. Very inexpensive, lovely aroma.



Continue to beat the mixture alternately adding flour and buttermilk. Did you know that like some fine wines, buttermilk has "legs"?



Continue beating on high speed for at least 10 minutes. You'll end up with a beautiful, satiny batter.



Spray your pan well with a non-stick spray. This pan is especially problematic due to its shape.



Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

BUTTERMILK POUND CAKE

3 cups sifted flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 lb. butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup buttermilk

Sift flour, soda, baking powder & salt together. Cream butter with sugar until light & fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk. Beat till smooth after eact addition. Pour into a greased & floured tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour & 10 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Top with powdered sugar.

NOTE: You can use other flavoring in place of the vanilla. I've used margarine in a pinch and it still makes a good cake. If you want to use this for loaves it makes two regular loaves or 1 extra long loaf. You can add a drop of yellow food coloring for a deeper color.

Come back tomorrow to see the cake as it came out of the oven. There is going to be a challenge and a prize connected with this unveiling. Bring your best problem solving skills to the table. That's all I'm going to say!!!

Fresh Eggs

Although we live on over 2 acres, there are difficulties that prevent me from raising chickens. First and foremost we're not zoned for livestock. But the beauty of living in a rural area is that there are plenty of people who raise livestock and run small entrepreneurial businesses. Not only are there quite a few egg farms, there are farmers who raise hormone free beef and hogs and produce milk from hormone free cows. If you don't have a freezer to store a side of beef you can split the purchase with a group of neighbors.

The farmer and I were both raised within spitting distance of the city of Chicago but always knew we belonged in the country. The farmer's grandparents were farming immigrants from Poland and my family (on both sides) had been farming in rural Tennesse and Florida for over 200 years. It makes me believe in a cultural memory gene.

The gene however, seems to have skipped a generation in my daughter's case. There are alot of eewwww's pronounced when I bring back fresh eggs from the egg farm. My daughter seems to believe that somehow the eggs from the grocery store have been imparted some special qualities between the producer and the refrigerated case in the store. I'm not quite sure what those qualities might be, but freshness is not among them. The eggs with expiration dates tatooed on them are especially precious to her.

Bad weather prevented me from my mission last week but when I approached on this sunny day I notice that they've probably had the driveway graded. Unlike many of the crumbling barns in the area their barn is very well maintained and it's a beauty. Unfortunately this small farm is directly in the path of the freight train known as development. Just across the highway a large housing development is being built.



This sign points you in the direction of her egg shop which is in reality a small enclosed side porch off her kitchen. When you walk in you'll find a refrigerated case containing the eggs.



Unfortunately there was someone getting into her car just as I was arriving and she had at least 6 dozen eggs in her possession! I was getting worried.

All the large eggs were gone but there were jumbo's, medium and cracked eggs available. The prices are as follows:
Jumbo - $2/dozen
Large - $1.75/dozen
Medium - $1.50/dozen
Cracked - $1.25/dozen

The jumbo eggs are huge. I purchase two dozen jumbo and 1 dozen medium. If a recipe calls for 2 large eggs I use one jumbo and one medium.

She leaves us notes:



We leave her notes on our purchase:



We put the money in the box. There's a separate small box that contains change in case you need it.

Here's the difference between the jumbo and the medium size.



Here are the results of our trip to the egg farm. Three dozen fresh eggs displayed in a fabric nest!



It's 10 degrees here this morning, without factoring in the wind chill. That's cold and perfect weather for baking buttermilk poundcake.


So.........tomorrow we'll do just that. We'll bake a buttermilk pound cake in a ridiculously expensive cake pan!

The Way-back Machine

Time: Easter, 1969
Place: San Antonio, Texas

PADDLING FAST

It's strange how a photograph can take you back, not only to rememberances of the physical place but also to your mental and emotional state at the time. I was shocked at the feelings this photograph triggered as I was flipping through an old album.

We were all very young in this photo and feeling like astronauts who'd been dropped off on the surface of Mars without a survival handbook. Everyone in the picture was more than a thousand miles from home. We were struggling financially and I for one didn't even have money for a telephone in my apartment.

On this Easter morning we were all dressed up and heading to the famed River Walk in downtown San Antonio for the annual Starving Artist Show.

On the left is Vincent and Pat Previtti from one of the boroughs of New York City. They were newlyweds living in a tiny studio apartment. It was heaven to them because the first month of their marriage they had lived with his mother. Isn't it funny that I remember Pat so well? Forty years later I can just picture her spunky personality and her laugh. Vinnie had joined the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army and was stationed at Lackland Field.

I'm standing in the center with my brother's high school friend Terry. He was doing some last minute training before being shipped out to Vietnam. This was the time before it was OK to say you were gay and Terry was living a difficult secret life.

The surprising fact about me is that when this photo was taken I had a top-secret government clearance! I was working for a publishing company that was producing maintenance manuals for the U.S. Air Force and since it was wartime those documents were considered classified.

On the right are George and Marge. I don't remember alot about them. I think they were from Ohio.

The common demoninator is that we were all far from home living in a place and a culture that made us feel like strangers. I remember feeling very lonely at times. But we pulled together as friends and paddled like mad to make a life for ourselves, hosting dinners, planning outings and talking incessantly about "home" and what we missed. One of our favorite outings was to drive down to Padre Island and camp right on the beach. Eventually we threw ourselves into the local lifestyle, driving out to Bandera for some Texas two-step at road houses.

Just the summer before the Beatles had released "Hey Jude" and the lyrics applied to us:

"....anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder."

Circumstances changed and we all moved on with our lives but for a brief moment we shared a raft and paddled really fast. And by the way, when I returned to Chicago....I really missed Texas!

For those of you who were looking forward to going to the egg farm - that will be tomorrow!

Lunch with the Ladies

Yesterday I said we'd go to lunch with the ladies. It was neighbor Donna's birthday and we were celebrating.

We didn't go for Chinese food.



We didn't eat at Alice's Place because she's closed for the season.



And we certainly did not eat chicken fricasee cooked over an open flame.



What we did do was go for barbecue at Hopper's Place, a new joint not far from here. But I can't show you the delicious sweet potato fries or barbecued brisket piled sky high on a toasted bun. Why? Because the camera's memory card was back at the house, resting in the card reader.

A great writer wouldn't need photos. They be able to create picture in the mind's eye, fashioned merely from words. But I'm not a great writer and so instead of describing the meal I'll tell you about what I took away from yesterday's lunch.

I thought briefly about driving back home to retrieve the memory card but that would have made me terribly late. And in the end the time with my friends was more important than some photographs. My lunch could have been ruined if I had agonized over the mistake but then I wouldn't have been in the moment.

This group of women run the spectrum of personality and experience but we all have one thing in common. We're all old enough to have learned the importance of being human, allowing ourselves to be imperfect. Perfectly imperfect would be a good way to describe it.

I worked with a young woman who tried so hard to achieve perfection in all things. Somehow she bought into the idea that she needed to be superwoman. I warned her of the dangers of such a philosophy but somehow she thought that achieving perfection would give her a feeling of accomplishment. She was only human and unable to achieve perfection consistentl. In the end only felt failure.

The ladies at lunch are an amazing group, and we've created for ourselves a common ground where we're able to celebrate our imperfections....our humanness. Is that a word??

Don't forget that tomorrow is our weekly trip in the Way Back Machine!

my dog ate my homework

That's my excuse! I know that you were looking forward to visiting the egg farm and picking up some fresh eggs. I was going to make a lovely buttermilk pound cake. But Mother Nature had other ideas. My posts are planned and photographed a day ahead so I would have driven out to the farm yesterday, but when I awoke this is what awaited me:



A mini-snowstorm. This was just a small annoyance in the midwest scheme of things but navigating the unpaved and rut filled drive up to the egg farm is dicey in good weather. It's best not to tempt fate, so we'll make plans to do it another time, OK?

Instead we're going to keep warm, stay inside and tour my studio. I love to see other people's work space, don't you? I'm set up in my daughter's bedroom while she's away earning her master's degree. I'll be carving out a different spot in May when she graduates, but until then I have squatters rights!

I've set up a 6 foot banquet table as my main work space.



Here's Beverly my vintage sewing machine. I really, really love Beverly.



I found this wooden box with 6 drawers at IKEA. It's perfect for storing buttons. LOTS of buttons!



I'm very messy when I work. Please don't tell me you're neat and organized.



There's a small alcove in the room that holds wire storage racks filled with fabric, yarn and other "stuff". It's very narrow though and impossible to photograph. Trust me, it's very neat and organized. Yeah, right.

There's yarn in trifle bowls.



I have a small drafting table that I use to draft new patterns. I love the lava lamp. The geisha doll is in a mirrored and glass case. My favorite uncle brought it to me from Japan in the 1960's. The tall glass jar is filled with crocheted trimmings and felted flowers. I make up a bunch and tuck them into the jar until I need them.



Since I'm just a squatter I can't paint the walls a lovely shade of geranium pink, but I was thinking of at least putting these Croscill swag valances on the windows. What do you think? (The valance is in the center, strung on my large t-square).



Here's where I sit and read. I call it my Mary Englebreit chair because it's oversized and overstuffed like her image "A Chair Full of Bowlies". The yellow canvas cover is a bit faded so I wrapped the chair in a soft green fabric.



Here's the apron that Beverly and I were working on. I'm going to submit it to Tie It On for February. It will be listed in my Etsy shop tomorrow if you're interested.



Note to self: Please, please invest in a dress form for display and photography purposes.

Thanks for visiting my studio. I figure if you're going to slave away it should be in a space that feels comfy.

Tomorrow we're going to lunch with the girls.

award

It's the Daily Dose! Thanks to A Haven for Vee (one of my daily doses) for nominating me.

I've been at the work of blogging for almost three years. I started to publish "At Home....." just recently as a spillover from my photoblog, The Farmer's Wife which is outdoors and focuses on the gradual disintegration of rural farms. This blog allows me to have some fun and be more colorful.

From the very beginning I've found blogging to be such an exciting concept. Got a computer and 30 minutes of time? You can be a publisher! Believe me, after years of working for publishers the thought of being in charge of my own publishing empire was BIG. But then comes the hard part, you've got to have something to say and find someone who wants to read it. That's why these awards are important. You can plug away day after day and not be sure that you're getting through or making an impact.

Very early on my photoblog won an award from Garfield Farm Museum. That was big for me simply because I greatly admire the work they're doing. To have them recognize me was unbelievable. My family reacted as best they could.

"Mom won an award? HUH?????"

"For her photography? HUH???"

Let's just not tell them about the Daily Dose because I don't think they can process that information.

And now I feel like the dad in "Christmas Story". Forgive me while I dance around the office pretending I have a telegram in my hand....."It's an award, it's a major award!" I don't think however that there's a box marked "Fragile" waiting for me at the train station. That's OK.

Since these type of tagging awards are not common on the photoblog side I'm going to guess that I get to now nominate three people, recognizing them as my Daily Dose.

MY LITTLE LIFE - I love checking in with Jerusalem every day. She's got a lovely home and is creative in so many ways. She is a very busy lady, maintaining an Etsy shop, an interior design business and a shop in North Little Rock. Her lovely photos take me away.

Speaking of taking me away......

TONGUE IN CHEEK - Oh be still my heart. I get to go to France, every day! Corey Amaro takes me there. One day we'll go to the French market. And then it's a tour of Paris for the New Year. There's romance and French antiques, a French husband and children who speak at least two languages. Seriously, Corey embodies elegance and grace. Think Audrey Hepburn.

Now the going gets tough. I read many blogs daily and it's almost impossible to choose. My really Daily Dose is probably the entire list on the lefthand column. But for my third choice I'm going to say -

BAREFOOT IN THE ORCHARD- Sabina has a good mix of subject matter. If you read the description on the right hand column of her blog you'll discover that she grew up walking barefoot in her family's apricot orchard. That orchard is gone, the land blanketed with McMansions. I can relate to that. Recently she generously shared a cute pattern for old fashioned strawberry pin cushions. Thanks Sabina.

I am continually amazed and the open and giving nature of the blogosphere. It's a concept that is pretty much missing from the corporate world and it's refreshing and fun. I invite you all to surf through my list of wonderful blogs. Those of you who I have nominated can feel free to pass the Daily Dose award on or not. That's the beauty of this experience, we can all make it what we want it to be.

Tomorrow we're going to the egg farm to buy some fresh eggs! Come along for the ride.

nest

My childhood habit of walking with my eyes down scanning the ground netted me plenty of skinned knees and various bumps and bruises. Looking down I often missed an eye level hazard. But the benefits of my habit were greater than the dangers.

Once I found a five dollar bill, a fortune for an eight-year-old in those days. There were odd earrings, coins, interesting gum wrappers and lots of useless cigarette butts. I clearly remember the first day I came upon a nest. It had been violently shaken out of a tree during a storm the night before. Luckily for me my mom had never been the type to make her children fearful of dirt or the possibility of bugs. I snatched up the nest and took it home.



Once inside my bedroom the nest was placed on my small dressing table which became my scientific laboratory. Turning it over I examined the underpinnings, an incredible structure that held it to a branch. Each layer was carefully laid down. The mud was first and the building blocks of twigs and grasses were patiently added. The weaving was free form and created a pleasing bed, molded perfectly to the birds underbelly with room for her eggs.

My mind struggled to image the work involved. How much mud could a tiny bird carry in their mouth? How many blades of dry grass....how many trips? Once I deconstructed a nest, attempting to count the individual twigs and bits of grass. I gave up. Being a lazy creature the thought of this effort made my head spin. Carefully and industriously this bird had created a nursery for her babies.

Since that day nests have always found a place in my home. They add a bit of nature to the man-made interior landscape. You'll find them tucked on a bookshelf or displayed on a side table. It seems like a welcome sight after yesterdays foray into the world of stainless steel.

Here's a zen like display on my nightstand.



I love to tuck surprises into the nests. Here's a Russian nesting doll temporarily occupying a nest!



I found a manmade nest at Pier One. This is fashioned from grapevines and hold three realistic looking plastic eggs.



The nests are all found on the ground, usually after a bad storm. They do an incubation period on the workbench in my garage, just in case there might be a tiny varmint hiding inside. After a period of time the begin to disintigrate slowly and eventually they're replaced by another.

Do you include natural elements in your home?

Tomorrow: An award!! I've won an award! I can't wait to tell you about it....tomorrow.