While trying to get a birthday pulled together and trying to help a friend move and a family member go on a trip and trying to–well, I had a cool little post simmering away in my brain just waiting for when I actually had a moment to sit down and write it.

I can remember none of it.

But the others approved of the homemade angel food cake just the same.  Richard got to make use of one of his favorite earlier-year presents, one of those squirting thingummies that you pour your cream into with maybe a little sugar mixed in, (I assure you we paid nowhere remotely near that price, but on the other hand, ours, an older model, is not dishwasher safe) and poof! You’ve got that fancy-shaped canned whipped cream splurting out, only it tastes good!  Throw in some crushed Heath bars, and you have the only kind of cake he considers acceptable for birthdays, the cake of his childhood and our kids’.

I’m a rebel.  I like my cake different.  Anything, please, after all these years and all these birthdays, as long as it’s not angel food cake with whipped cream and crushed Heath bars, and does it even have to be cake?  A little variety is a good thing.

(That post is coming back to me…)

I saved, for a long time, a cartoon where the mom couldn’t find the birthday candles so she just stuck a lit flashlight in the center of an angel food cake. That is SO us.  Which is why Richard now has a hidden stash of birthday candles, and today he had to tell us where to find them.

He always buys three boxes just to make sure.

That was the last box.

Y’know, we really should know where the flashlights are.

Oh, and: when it was Michelle’s birthday, for once, I couldn’t remember the recipe off the top of my head and actually had to go look it up.  The bells didn’t clang when I did, either. Huh.

We all had the same reaction at the first bite–wait. Something’s different.

It took awhile to figure it out: I had long ago reversed the amounts of vanilla vs almond flavoring without realizing it, and had been doing it that way for lo these many years, very heavy on the almond.  That’s our cake.  We like it that way. So when it came out tasting of vanilla, even tinted slightly by it, with only barely enough almond essence to nag at one…

So yeah. We needed a do-over. Richard got his cake, it got done right this time, and having another angel food cake in one month was definitely the right thing to do. We celebrated him right.

And it even had candles.  The tens figure on this side, the ones figure on that side, we can stretch those 36 as far as they need to go, over the hill and on beyond, his smile lighting up the place.

You know who’s on your side when the chips are down…

“You want *WHAT*?!”

“If you could make just one of your pumpkin muffins without any chocolate in it…”

She stared. I used to read her that “Are You My Mother?” book with the little bird in it when she was little.

“Heathen,” she declared, turning abruptly back into the kitchen.

(She was right. They’re better with.)

Twelve rows x 398 stitches so far this evening.

1. So…if you browse through some yarns at some of your favorite dyers on your PC for a few minutes, idling the needles to give your hands a needed break, is it then Windows shopping?

2. Michelle took a whiff at the lemons in the bowl to see if they’d gone off yet, and asked me about their ages?  I’d picked them Sunday? Well then!

Which is how we found ourselves eating the first lemon bars out of the oven before they’d even set yet, necessitating forks.  Setting the bar high, temperature-wise.

3. The towhees didn’t fly off in a fright like they used to when the brash bully of the yard swooped in: I guess they’d gotten jay-ded by now.  The bluejay ate a few sunflowers and then chased them just enough to show them who still thinks he’s boss, but clearly, they’re on to him: even if he presents a big bill at this fancy restaurant, he’s into fast food.  Eat and run.

4. Those towhees got downy to business right after being left alone again, courting by quivering their wings and bopping around with their tails held high, and then the one that had to have been the male emphasizing his studliness by, Look at me!  I’m a poofball!

She was all, eh.   Don’t bother me.

So he gathered some tiny twigs in his beak for helping with the nest building.

Hey! Now you’re talking!

Last I saw them, they were bouncing together across the yard towards the trees.

An hors-d’ouvre.  An amuse-bouche. Perhaps not so much for a main course, truth be told.

(Everything sounds more impressive if you throw French words at it, right?)

There’s a lace pattern I’d never knit because it just… hmm…  Some of those rows put together were, to my eye, like the time my daughter, working at a small makes-their-own shop one summer, handed me a sample of the locally famous Gilroy Festival-inspired garlic ice cream and said, Here: you have to try this at least once.

I did row 1. I did row 3.  None of any of the rest I did bore any relation whatsoever to what was printed on the page, and I had the delight of watching a whole new lace pattern coming to be.   Cool.  (Many rows were unfortunately harmed in this scientific lace testing, making sure it’s safe for the cone-sumed knitter, but I can assure you they were put out of my misery gently.)

It came out kind of the equivalent of Computer Chip ice cream at that Silicon Valley shop, chocolate oddball shapes in orange. Good–but it’s sure not basic vanilla to which you can add all kinds of toppings.  But ooh, does it go well with chocolate sauce.

It has enough character to stand alone. I’m scarfing it down.

A trip to Whole Foods for the Earth Balance pseudo-butter for Michelle’s baking, and a quick glance over the fresh breads.  She was reading ingredient labels and I went Oh! as I picked up a loaf in its paper bag and it was still warm from the oven–but: “sourdough starter” is not allergen specific enough. Some have milk in them.

So I went over to the baker standing nearby and asked.

And boy did we hit the jackpot. We found ourselves talking to a delightful man around her age who not only knew the products, he was clearly someone who loved what he did and did it well. Cakewrecks would only be able to use his offerings for their Sunday Sweets best-of-the-best pages.  And:  he was someone who was likewise allergic to milk. He showed us his favorite breads and told us which desserts in the display case were safe for her; they were all of the ‘how do you eat this when this is so gorgeous’ variety.

He went and proudly got us samples of his vegan brownies.  In return, I gave him this site addy and told him about how successful we had been at substituting coconut cream for the manufacturing cream in my tortes.

He said something about coconut milk, and I corrected, no, coconut cream. There was a moment of confusion on his part, and I said something…to which Michelle, later, as we got in the car, went, “Mom. I bought the coconut cream at Milk Pail, not here; they don’t carry it here. You kind of put him on the spot.”

I did? You did?

I bet his store will carry it now! (You know, maybe I could parlay this into an excuse for making another pair of tortes, and I wouldn’t even have to make a half-gallon of manufacturing cream’s worth.  Right?)

Oh, and, the ganache on the torte? The man knits. Crochets, mostly, but, the whole yarn thing. He’s into it.

Yeah, I kinda am too.

A quick p.s.  Round thirty-leven in Squirrel Wars: the tin foil wrinkled when I went to refill the feeder and  Michelle says don’t try to make a living at making funky hats.  But I definitely won this round.  Briefly contemplated buying a kiddie wading pool for the squirrels to high-dive into, complete with a safe way for them to climb back out. Squirrelympics!

How to free a fridge of that last half a chocolate torte: slice it into tiny pieces, splay them out artfully on two paper plates like the finest hors d’ouvres (that’s Horse Doovres to those in the know–family joke), and take them to a Linger Longer potluck held after church.

How to get the kids to eat their veggies: line up the tables end-to-end before the kids are set free, with the tops beautifully arranged but in only veggies and dip so that when the kids get out of their Primary classes hungry, that’s all they see there is to eat.  After a suitable interval of snackage, bring out the rolls, the ham and the cheese, and, note to self that corned beef is a good idea on many occasions anyway; a thank you to those whose traditions dictate it be eaten in March. Good thinking.

I looked over and there was suddenly a scrum of small bodies going on at a particular point in the setup.  I knew instantly what was up, especially when adults were gathering in, too: someone had decided enough healthy food had been consumed by that point that it was safe to bring out the heretofore-hidden desserts from the kitchen. (And I had been in that kitchen earlier, looking for mine; I mean it when I say dessert had been hidden. Those moms did a good job!)

By the time I got over to the table, curious, there was an only barely large enough crumb left for forensic certainty that that had indeed been one of my plates.

I had one last tiny piece sneaked away in my fridge at home. It was very, very good.

Warning: calories ahead.

When my husband and I were young newlyweds, his mother’s mother sat me down one long, boring day with her recipe file, and with her great enthusiasm and my attempting to look enthused, she had me copy down (by hand, kids, this was in the Olden Days) all her decades-long favorites.  She wanted to pass down the wisdom of her kitchen.  I chaffed in silence; I wasn’t about to tell her how much all of this represented to me what I so much didn’t want to be.  I had no intention of being a stay-at-home mom. Roasted Potatoes was just not what I aspired to.

Yeah well.  Live and learn.  One of the hardest things I ever did was decide to stay home with my children after all.  For the first few months of motherhood, I was able to work where I could take my baby with me; she wasn’t mobile yet, she slept a lot, nobody minded.  But then two things happened: she started exploring the world on her hands and knees–and we moved 2000 miles and that job was over.  I found, though it would have surprised me just a couple of years earlier, that I utterly could not bear to leave her, even if it meant living on my husband’s grad-student fellowship.  He very much supported my decision either way, but confessed later he was relieved I’d chosen to make motherhood a do-it-yourself project. He didn’t think anyone else could do as good a job as me.

And over all these years now, one of the things I’ve learned is how much memories attach themselves, over time, to–you guessed it–various foods.  Write down those recipes, give’em to your college kids so they can re-create home.

And yet.  GrandmaM would totally get where I’d been coming from back in the day.  She was the first woman in her small (and I do mean small) town to have a college degree.  She was a teacher who married a dairy farmer who was also the town’s high school principal, and the moment she was married she was of course out of a job; the idea of a married teacher back then was unthinkable, and a teacher married to the principal! Well now!

My older daughter, who is finishing up her PhD, asked for these, and I thought, as long as I’m typing them up, might as well put them up here.

From our family to yours.

There was a recipe making the rounds years ago with a story disclaimed by Snopes, supposedly stolen from Mrs Fields by a disgruntled ex-employee; whatever, someone did a good job of reverse engineering.  These make five pounds of dough–and I once had a batch at the top of the freezer, reached down later for something in the bottom of the freezer, and… Clonk.

Not-Mrs. Field’s Cookies (Clonk Cookies, perhaps?)

Cream: 2 c butter, 2c sugar, 2c brown sugar.

Add 4 eggs, 2tsp vanilla.

Mix: 5c oats that have been measured and then ground into flour, 4c flour, 1 tsp salt, 2tsp each baking powder and baking soda.  (I have been known to skip the baking soda.)

Mix all together and then fold in 24 oz chocolate chips and 3 c chopped nuts.

350 degrees, 8-10 minutes for medium-sized cookies. Note that the ground oats in the dough, being a little coarser than actual oat flour, help make it easy to pry off a little frozen cookie dough with a fork and bake just one or two at a time so that you can limit your caloric exposure at any one time if you want.

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Recipe the second: this one originated from, of all things, a 1992 Mazola no-stick-spray ad. (Why, yes, I write notes with dates in my cookbooks; do you?)

Cranberry Bars

Cookie crust: set oven at 350. Grease 15×10 pan. Cut 1 c of cold butter–do not substitute, and needs to be cold–into 2 1/2 c flour.  Add 1/2 c sugar and 1/2 tsp salt, by hand, not by machine. It’s more work that way, but the difference in crunch in the crust is huge. Press firmly in pan, bake 20-23 minutes or till golden. Top with filling quickly and bake again.

Filling:  Beat 4 eggs, 1c corn syrup, 1 c sugar, and 3 tbl melted butter (do not substitute!) Stir in 2 c coarsely chopped fresh cranberries and 1 c coarsely chopped pecans.  Pour quickly over hot crust, spreading it out.

Bake 25-30 minutes or until set. Cool completely. Refrigerate it for it to cut cleanly, if you can wait that long.

Pecan Pie variation: for filling, use 4 eggs, 1 1/2 c corn syrup, 1 1/2 c sugar, 3 tbl butter, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 2 1/2 c pecans.  I find it curious that it uses so much more sweetener when it doesn’t have the tartness of the cranberries in this version, but if you want a pecan pie as a cookie finger food, this is definitely the way to get it.

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I brought the cranberry bars to a get-together once and watched my friend Jim take his first bite, close his eyes in appreciation, and pronounce how if you want dessert done right you ask Alison to bring it.

I’ll share the recipe with GrandmaM when I get up there.  She will laugh.

Looking down, Monday.

Looking across, today.

Looking up, after that; what a difference a rinsing and blocking make. (It’s just a bit greener than this in real life.)

I like it. Hey Mikey. Weekend, here we come!

Meantime, in family news, Michelle arrived home this afternoon after a week gallivanting in England. I, unfortunately, did not fit in her suitcase on the way out, but that’s okay, I had this project to get done.  She came home going, Mom! Green and Black’s chocolate! They had it, like, everywhere, like Hershey’s here! (As in, how would it be?!)

(Ed. to add picture of newly-glazed torte. The shine dulls once they’ve been refrigerated.)

Happy birthday, John!!! Our youngest is now identical-twin terrible-twos, the big 22.

Around here, when it’s a family member’s birthday and they are not in town, we bake a cake in their honor anyway.

And it’s also a tradition that when I bake a chocolate torte, I always bake two.

Okay, so, one went to Sam yesterday, the second one,  someone else has dibs on, meaning a little bit of baking, a lot of chocolate smells, but then no torte for me–but there is more cream, so, hey, we can fix that.

On a side note, the specialty place where I’ve always bought the manufacturing cream stopped selling it in small quantities, rumor being that they got told that pouring it off into quarts and pints in-store was not kosher.  But who would want an entire half-gallon of the stuff? So they discontinued it entirely.

When you have been making your signature dessert for 20 years and an essential ingredient suddenly disappears from the market, you have to do something.  I sent off an email to the owner of the Milk Pail Market; I had to at least try to talk them into reconsidering.

I gather I’m not the only one who spoke up.  I imagine the fact that I actually gave the man one of my chocolate tortes once didn’t hurt, and nudging his attention to the extinction of that cake, likewise. (I know, breaking my arm patting myself on the back and all that.)

Because:  around Christmas there was a small handwritten sign on one of their refrigerator doors saying that due to popular demand, manufacturing cream was now back.  Woohooo!

And so.  I bought a half gallon (again) a few days ago.  Heavy whipping cream is 32% butterfat, manufacturing cream, depending on the cow and the season, 40-42%.

‘Scuse me, the oven’s beeping…  The third torte might go to the church dinner Tuesday night (renegade that I am–they said they wanted cupcakes) but that fourth one stays right here.  John, we will eat a torte in your honor.  Maybe not all at once.   Happy Birthday!!

For those who missed it the first time, here’s the recipe with a few extra notes thrown in.  If you have to use ordinary heavy cream, avoid the ones with any kind of preservatives, additives, or sugar in them.

If you have any cream left over after all this, melt more chocolate into it and, warm, it’s the best chocolate sauce, refrigerated, a ganache.

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Alison Hyde’s chocolate torte–makes two

(NOTE added 12/13/10: I have two wire whisk attachments for my Kitchenaid; if you only have one set of beaters, beat the egg whites first before the other mixture or the whites won’t fluff up.)

Snap out the bottoms of two 8″ springform pans (flat bottomed preferred). Cover bottoms with foil, snap them back in, butter the sides and the foil-covered bottoms.

CAKE:

Melt 1 lb. butter, beat with 3 c. sugar, 1/4 tsp salt and 2 tsp bourbon vanilla
Add in 1/2 c. manufacturing cream, 6 egg yolks, beat till fairly light.

Add in: 1 1/3 c. cocoa that has been mixed with 1 c. flour till any lumps are smoothed out. Dutch process cocoa will give you a different flavor from that of Hershey cocoa; my favorite is Bergenfield’s Colonial Rosewood cocoa. The non-dutched cocoas are healthier and I think taste better; dutching is usually done on lower-quality cacao beans.

Beat separately till stiff: 6 egg whites and 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar. Underbeating is better than overbeating.

Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture. Put in the two pans and bake at 350 for 42-45 minutes. Center will not be solid and cracking should appear. Run a knife carefully around outer edges; cake will fall, and the top will be more even if  it falls in one piece. (On the other hand, since it will become the bottom of the torte, this step is not exactly essential.)

Cool at least an hour. Loosen springform sides and remove. Put a plate on bottom of each cake and flip over. Peel off pan bottoms, then the foil. Glaze when cool.

GLAZE for two cakes:

Chop one Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Belgian bittersweet chocolate bar (500 g) and melt with 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 c. manufacturing cream. The tradeoff in the amount of cream is whether you want to sculpt it to hold deeper J-strokes (use lesser amount) or thinner, with a slightly lighter texture (use greater amount, and is as is shown in the picture.)  Use a double boiler or microwave. Try not to incorporate extra air in as you stir. Also, it is important that every edge of every piece of chocolate be fully dunked down in the cream before heating or that piece of chocolate could possibly seize into a hardened, unmeltable lump with the combination of liquid and heat. You heard it here first: chocolate is very wool-like–it can, in effect, felt from that same combination of factors as wool. Unless you dunk it first.

When glazing a cake, first, I pour it into the center of the two.  I quickly first scoot it towards the edges to make some of it fall down the sides in waves.  Then, I make a backwards J from the center, turn the cake slightly, repeat all the way around.

Enjoy!

(Ed. to add 10/26/10: for those who have one nearby, Smart and Final stores currently carry manufacturing cream too.)

(Ed. to add 1/22/11: I put a thermometer in my oven today, and with the thing set at 350, it was actually reading 325 both at the beginning and end of the 42 minutes.)

You know why it’s so hard to keep those holiday pounds off?

It’s those see stars. One arm breaks off, they just grow another one, appearing time after time.  Whaddyagonnado.

(Michelle volunteers one-on-one as a tutor and the middle schooler brought her holiday cookies as a thank you.  Michelle wasn’t about to tell her she didn’t dare risk eating them; it was a sweet thing for her to have done.  I was glad to help out a little, and besides, I could use nudging the scale up a tad.)

Meantime, this morning, our piano doctor who makes house calls, an old friend after all these years, came by.  The house was, shall we say, unfinished–and I was discouraged at how fast my energy had given out on me.

He smiled a warm smile; “Doesn’t look messy to me.”

And at that suddenly everything was much better.

He glanced out at the birds on the feeder, taking them in for a moment; he has done recordings of the wildlife in his own area.  I’ve heard his frogs.  (If you ever need some theme music while ripping out your knitting…)  I wondered if he could hear my finches through the window.

I’ve heard them I think twice now. Yesterday the feeder swung around so one couldn’t see me coming as I opened the slider as quietly as I could and slipped outside.  The feeder swung back around, and I was close enough to stroke the little bird’s stripey-brown feathers had I moved.  I didn’t dare move.  Or breathe.  It chirped and dove into the seed, again and again, keeping an eye on me–and when I did finally breathe, it was a Mr. Tumnus moment: Oh my goodness! You’re a human, and I’m–I’m a bird!  Fright and flight!

I picked up my needles while Neil tuned my piano.

I don’t usually knit in the mornings; I’m not sure how to describe the weirdness that is the body responding in slow motion before about noon–you tell it to move and it dithers like a 13-year-old told to do the dishes and arguing about it. Knitting at that hour, and particularly on tiny needles?  Slow as doing taxes.

And yet. He played a few snatches of song here and there as he tuned, reminding me why my concert-pianist grandmother had chosen that Kimball in the first place ages ago.  Such a gorgeous depth of sound to it.   Some notes had slipped, but he was pulling them back into where they belonged.

The needles picked up a bit.

He got to the highest notes on the piano.  So many times in the last twenty years I’ve heard only the slight thud thud of the hammers hitting against the strings up there, but with my ears turned up now–thank you John Miles–I caught a few of those actual notes, thin and high and as unstable as a hummingbird’s flight, but briefly actually mystically somehow there.  So that’s what those sound like.  I had long forgotten.  Wow.

That stopped my hands altogether across the room as I felt, Do it again!  Make it play like that again! And he did. I didn’t hear each note every time, but just enough to feel like I was in the presence of a small, rare gift from Life itself.

Don’t forget to breathe! And don’t stop in the middle of a row of laceweight silk or you’ll drop a thousand stitches and he was almost done there. Hurry!

I didn’t finish the row. I didn’t drop the stitches. I did, however, find myself hugely cheered on a morning when I had been needing cheering.

So many grace notes appear when we are in the presence of good people who are our friends.

The kids are coming home soon.  Let the music begin.

Got merry olde England and cheery New Mexico mailed today. Colorado, Qatar (how on earth long does it take a box to get to Qatar?), Utah, Maryland–nope.

Bought a thirty-six ounce can of truffle almonds at Costco the other day, and then realized, wait–that’s not…*chocolate*… truffles…

I’d tasted truffle oil once. It instantly brought me back to being ten years old at Moose Mountain Provincial Park, where we were camping for a lot longer than we had intended to; our pop-up trailer had a broken part that required delivery from the manufacturer.  And so we hiked, we had a volleyball land in the campfire and sizzzzzzzzle slowwwwly flat.  Oops.  Um, let’s go hiking some more!

Deep woods, musty (okay, rotting) leaves… It was all right there in that olive and truffle oil sample that the purveyor was standing there beaming at me over, waiting for my rapturous response.

Jumping in a pile of autumn leaves, okay, throwing them at my siblings when they’re not looking, just watch me, I might still.

But eating them?

So you know what we had to do.  Open that can and sample the things.

They have butter. That leaves Richard and me. We tried them.  Make that me. Rather garlic-ish, hold the essence of bark of maple or worse, it ain’t there.  Huh.

Richard thinks he’ll leaf it all to me.

Break out the Cuisinart.  Bring on the Yuletide guests.  Truffle pate’, anyone? C’mon, you know you want some!

(Don’t even SAY “nuts to the squirrels” yet, okay?)

The spiced pecans (hey, wait, I made more than that you guys!) and two batches of cranberry sauce filled the house with Thanksgivingness and good smells yesterday after I posted, telling us, don’t quit your dye job.

The chocolate torte’s about to be taken out of the freezer.

The silk is staying blue.

Yes, Carol, the stole is finally finished. (Quick, grab some new yarn! I can’t go without a project!)

Over the river and through the redwoods, to auntie’s house we go.  Have a blessed, wonderful Thanksgiving day, everyone.

I like to bake, but frankly, Trader Joe’s makes a better pecan pie than I do.  A quick trip to the store…

I like to grin and tell my friends that I’m going to be a terror to my kids when I’m 90.

My kids tell me I don’t have to wait that long.

But it was a complete innocent today who was horrified.   Some large and tall hunter-gatherer, oblivious as he focused on his prey, collided with me on his way by. I don’t weigh much. He never noticed.

My sense of balance is visual and tactile only, and if you throw one of those off, you get to see me do my rendition of Olympic figure skating.

Kinda like the time I fell down the carpeted steps at my aunt-in-law’s house during her daughter’s wedding reception. There was a young couple coming up behind me, gasping in horror. I managed to stop finally about 2/3 of the way down while thinking, great, I hope nobody saw THAT little act of gracefulness, turned back, saw them, and got this big cheesy grin on my face as I threw my hands up from where I sat and proclaimed, TaaDAAAH!

They cracked up, mostly out of relief.  Phew!

So this guy goes past me and it all went past him.  But a woman standing on the other side thought somehow she’d done that to me, and was not reassured by my attempt to brush her fears off. It bothered her enough that she got behind us in the check-out line so that she could apologize again.

I’d had no idea, or I’d have been more particular in what I’d said–to me, going flying occasionally is simply how things are, and I do use that cane.  I guess sometimes a person needs to be told more of the story.  Not just, no, you didn’t do that, not even just no, that other guy bumped into me, but also that, really, the only person who needs to apologize is the guy who creamed my car nine years ago.

But it was the strength and warmth of the smile on my face towards her as I said that, not so much the words, that finally made her feel better about the whole thing.

It’s okay. This is my normal now.  Burns extra calories. Keeps me thin. (Hey, look–it works!)

…I solemnly promise my family not to fall down those stairs again come Thursday. Here, you hold the pie.

“Oh, Mom, I haven’t had caramel sauce in six years!”

Not since her serious dairy allergy had surfaced. About time, then!  Okay, so this is what I did: for normal caramel sauce you mix one cup sugar with a half cup water. Stir on stove till it starts to boil; immediately stop stirring or you risk granules in your sauce.  Some will probably form on the sides of your pan; ignore them.  Watch carefully on medium or lower for, oh, five, maybe ten minutes-ish, depending on your temp and pot thickness, till the syrup starts to change color from clear to beginning to be golden.  If your stove is like mine, it’ll turn slightly on one side first, in which case, pick the pot just slightly up and swish it gently around. (No spoons in there yet!)

It will turn darker fairly quickly, again depending on the temperature, and how dark you let it get determines how intense a flavor you’ll get.  Do *not* let yourself be distracted at all during the turning, or I will have to tell you of a notable burning-pot episode that–well, maybe I won’t.

So then you turn off the stove and–wait, read this whole paragraph first!–pour in 8 oz of heavy cream, and if you use nonfat milk instead I promise not to tell but I guarantee nothing; stir fast with a long wooden spoon while angling your hand away so it’s not right above the hot steam erupting in there. Trust me on that one.

Thickens when cooled. Unless you go all non-fat on us like that.

I did two batches. One with the last of the manufacturing cream. The second, I poured in a 6-and-something-oz container of coconut cream from Whole Foods to find out if both that ingredient and the size it came in would work.

We had our friends Nina of Ann Arbor Shawl fame and her family over for dinner Friday night.   I have to tell you: more of that caramel coconut got devoured on that ice cream than the regular sauce.  It was good stuff.

The best part of it was seeing something much enjoyed but long denied now given back to my daughter. At last.  And it was so easy to do.

(Note re the picture: the sauce isn’t separated, just eaten.)

I kept it short. I wanted enough yarn left to make a matching pair of socks of the merino Jasmin spun up for me: after I started with one pattern, I realized that at the size it was coming out to, I could switch and do it a la Water Turtles, a very open, stretchy lace, and not have to use up lots of yardage. I think my final stitch count was something like 241/row in the main body, only seven Water Turtle repeats long, and it’s plenty big enough for me. (Pardon me while I go run in those loose ends…)

This is the yarn Karin just surprised me with to replace the shawl I surprised her with to replace the yarn she surprised me with.

This is the baby squirrel near a towhee, to give a sense of scale.  It has already learned it is not to climb the awning support pole so temptingly close to the birdfeeder, not from me but from the other squirrels–and it was highly amusing to watch it and a gray squirrel this morning. They were staring at it longingly, twitching towards it and away and towards it and away in fierce repetitive tiny motions, not daring to but oh it’s fall!and you have to squirrel away food!!andandand!!!

All I did was unlatch the door and the two careened into each other while trying to run for the hills.   Guilty!

The baby squirrel tried to climb the fence yesterday and found itself sliiiiiiiiiiding back down the wood. Oops. Made it on the second try, though; it’s getting better at this quickly.  Yesterday the fence, tomorrow that pole, bwahaahaa. (If that big feederfiller isn’t looking…)

We’ve all had days like that–being new at something, trying again, and the sense of satisfaction at getting it right.

And one more thing.  My usual daily dose of hot cocoa?  Mom, this is for you: today I broke just a small piece off the end of a Valrhona 85% bar and grated it into the mug (and got tired of grating and just broke up the rest of it and threw it in).  Add the milk, nuke the milk (you don’t put solid chocolate into hot milk, they have to warm up together to keep the chocolate from seizing), and then I added the cocoa and sugar.  Skipped the usual dollop of cream.

Wow.  Things will never be the same.