75th Birthday Party Cake

and more. If the last post was What a Week for Wisconsin, then this one is what a week – or more like week and a half – or me.

I’m always tempted to quit writing, because by now who cares and isn’t it all the same and a thousand other reasons (well a few anyways) … but I keep on, and realize it’s for me. Like journalling, aide-mémoire. It’s creative expression and makes me feel good, and it helps me remember stuff. And funnily, looks like my brother, who, as far as I know, does keep a handwritten journal, feels the same way. I think because the blog is searchable and the handwritten journal, not so much.

So, anyways, this past Sunday, not to be confused with the Sunday before when I got out my bike for the first time this spring and rode over to the Barrymore to retrieve my water bottle, I made a 75th birthday cake for a friend. Or decorated it, anyways, I had made the layers on Saturday. The birthday girl loves vanilla, so I decided to make a white cake with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream and white chocolate dipped strawberries on top. I wanted to make sheet cakes and there were going to be 25 people so after mulling it over, I made four thin layers, two in 1/4 sheet pans and two in 13 x 9 x 2 pans. And stacked them with the filling. I did the thing that you see on Instagram all the time, that I had never done before, where you pipe a thick border of the frosting all around the edge of the bottom layer and then put the filling inside the border. I have to say it works great. I also frosted the bottoms of the top layers before inverting them over the filling – that seemed easier to me than trying to pipe more frosting on top of the gooey strawberry filling. Whatever I did, it worked. There was something just so satisfying about that cake, I want to make it again. I have more strawberry filling, which was made from strawberries I picked out at my CSA farm last summer, and froze. I think I might make a version with whipped cream frosting so it’s more strawberry-shortcake-like, for a 50th birthday next week.

And of course this post was all supposed to be done Tuesday (and now it’s Thursday) because Tuesday was my first day in a long time with any free time. But just as I was trying to add images, I got a word press critical error message. These should be followed by an email telling you what the problem is, that I never got. So I went into my control panel at my hosting service and still couldn’t fix it but found that my credit card with the hosting service was expired. I updated that and the problem still did not fix immediately, but in the morning it was all OK. And the washer went unbalanced and the chicken thighs I was braising were an ugly cut more like backs than thighs no where near as pretty as Ainsley Durose’s recipe, and, and, and … so here we are.

Last Wednesday was the UW Libraries Friends book sale. I worked at the set up on Tuesday and the opening night, Wednesday, and then went to help close and put everything away on Saturday. It was a low inventory sale, just sort of the ebb and flow of donations that we have no control over, but it went OK in the end. Only about $500 less then we made last spring so all OK. Our administrator is retiring so this was her last sale, and I really didn’t want it to be the worst grossing years, and it wasn’t. Whew.

And I never told you about the sandwiches from Alimentari before our the film fest opening night movie two Thursdays ago. I told you about the movie, we didn’t like it very much, but the sandwiches were good. Mark had the turkey and I had the mortadella. And we brought home a tin of Fishwife spice salmon, that we ate on avocado toast Sunday.

On Monday April 7 and on Monday April 14, I had OT appointments for my wrist and I am now done. I am on my own to finish up healing, though of course I have people to call, and I think I’m doing OK. Almost normal although not quite 100% as yet.

It was really windy biking home of the 14th, and after, I had apple and raisins and peanuts for snack.

A week ago Thursday, I finished up all my film fest volunteering. Kids matinee from 8:30-1:00. then I was supposed to work from 1:00 to 6:30, but they needed more people in the evening, so I went home for a bit and then went back to work from 4:30 to about 8:30. That’s it for this year. The popular movies were Two Women and Middletown. This is all at Flix Brewhouse, the multiplex theater in the wasteland that is the back side of the East Towne shopping mall, that is largely deserted. 

Jasper came on Friday.

Saturday was Passover, so I made the batter for matzoh balls on Friday because I thought it might be fun for me & Jasper to make then together, but we never did. Monday night we had matzoh ball soup and sandwiches on not-kosher-for-Passover focaccia. And I made a really tiny batch of charoset.

Jasper came again his regular day, this past Wednesday, when we had a bagel picnic at the picnic table by the bagel store parking lot, and then we went to the park.

Now it’s Thursday again. I went to volunteer at the food pantry, then to the gym with Susan, then treated myself to breakfast out.

Tonight we went to a benefit dinner for Marbleseed, with WI foodie star chef Luke Zahm. Marbleseed is an organization that supports organic farmers. They used to be called MOSES, and they elected my farmers, Tipi Produce, as organic farmers of the year way back in 2016. Anyways it was fun, quite a good meal, Luke Zahm was very impassioned about local food, and reminded us about how lucky we are to live so close to our food supply in Wisconsin. We live in paradise. Although under attack at the moment. Which is a good place to stop talking but a few more pics, like the cheese plate at the dinner.

And the other news of the week, to take our minds off the other shit, was Mattel’s release of the LeBron James Ken doll. First athlete to be a Ken. He’s taller than the other Kens.