I took the cake out a few minutes before we needed it so that is would soften up and be ready to cut. But then this happened-

I don’t know if the freezer door hadn’t been closed all the way the last time I was in it or if I lost track of time time and had it out too long. I also think the ice cream was a brand that was particularly soft. But whatever the reason, it was melting and melting fast. So I snapped a few photos and we cut it up. It wasn’t until we had some on Monday, the true birthday, that we put candles on it. It looked a bit worse for wear.

But The Boy didn’t seem to mind.

It sure tasted good though.

No, I’m in a hurry.

She pulled up a chair to watch me anyway. You know, a little girl on a chair can sure impede the traffic flow but I held my tongue and tried to keep moving. She watched me take a bit of dough, put a bit of flour on the tortilla press, push down on the lever and peel off the tortilla before throwing it into a pan to cook. She asked if she could push down on it.

Oh, all right! I reluctantly said. But hurry!

She did that fine and we put the tortilla on the skillet. I rolled another ball and put it in the press then went off to tend something else. She pressed it.

Then peeled it off. I rolled the dough into the right sized balls for her and she took over. She put flour on the press, put in the ball of dough, pressed it and peeled it off.

I felt bad for being grumpy. Pixie ended up being a big help and was pleased that she was able to make the tortillas for dinner. They may not have been perfectly round, I wasn’t getting them that way either, but they tasted good.

We’ll have to make more sometime.

One day, we wandered around a Big City trying desperately to spend money and stimulate the economy but finding blockades at every turn; in desperation we turned to the home improvement box store knowing in our hearts that was the place to accomplish our mission. We emerged victorious! We were the proud owners of a new kitchen faucet.

The old:

The place to push to make it spray was falling apart plus it wouldn’t pull out anymore because the hose part was broken.

The new:

It’s lovely. It’s really tall, which causes a little bit of splashing but it’s nice for getting things under it. It has a button to stop the flow of water which is nice for filling things not directly in the sink. The end can pull out and spray. On the left is a soap dispenser. So far, I really like it.

It took a bit of effort but I thought it turned out pretty well.

(See the all important Chinese Chili Sauce in the background? It has permanent residency on the table but not on the cake.)

The important person liked the cake. And The Boy thought it was great. The Girls, on the other hand, didn’t like the “frosting”. Coconut and pecans swimming in sweetness doesn’t appeal to them. As with most of the dinners I fix, I have found that you can’t please everybody so I don’t even try anymore. In this case, there wasn’t much sadness about it- in fact there was some joy as it meant more for the ones of us who liked it.

That is, if one had a garden that wasn’t growing weeds.

But, we shan’t let that deter us, that’s what Farmer’s Markets and Farm Stands are for.

OK, where was I? Oh, yes, lots of tomatoes and peppers.

Actually, what I am going to tell you about doesn’t use a lot of tomatoes. So forget that part.

Do you have peppers,cilantro, onions and garlic in abundance?

Then I have the recipe for you!

Sofrito. I learned about Sofrito during one of my less energetic periods when I was watching afternoon cooking shows on PBS. We live in the dark ages with no cable or satellite- just an antennae up in the air catching random, but free, signals so I don’t have the “24 Hour Cooking Channel”. More the pity. What was I talking about again? I keep distracting myself. Oh yes, so I watched a show called “Daisy Cooks” (I will not link to that site because Google has a warning that the site could damage my computer- how odd.) and learned all about Sofrito. Daisy Martinez says it does “everything but make the bed”. I wish is did make beds but it does make adding fresh tasting zing to dishes easy.

So what is it exactly? “Exactly” might be hard to come by. But it is a chopped up mixture of mainly onions, garlic, peppers and cilantro that can be frozen and added to dishes like Spanish rice and beans.

Here is the link to Daisy Martinez’s recipe (this site is ok to go to). Now you will notice she uses things like “culantro” and “ajices dulces”. Yeah, I don’t know what those things are either and will not likely find them in the local stores. Do I let a lack of ingredients listed in a recipe stop me? Ha! Yeah, right. I just plow on ahead. Actually, I did look up some other recipes online and never found a consensus of what should be in there. So I make up my own mixture.

Can I tell you what is in my mixture? Umm, no because I forget from time to time. Actually, I follow Daisy’s basic instructions about onion, garlic and cilantro then I improvise. I use quite a bit of green pepper or red, if I have it. Then, I add what ever kicks my bucket- jalapeño (sans ribs and seeds), banana chili or fresh green chilies. I put it all in my little “food processor”- it fits onto my blender motor and is not very large. I have to do it in batches and then mix it up by hand. This last time I didn’t even have enough cilantro but the other things were trying to turn bad on me so I had to take the matter in hand and made up a batch anyway. I then put 1/2 cup portions into freezer bags, label it (important step!) and throw it in the freezer.

Do you notice how quickly cilantro will turn slimy on you? This is a good way to use up the extra you had to buy when you were making a recipe that called for three sprigs.

Then when I want to make Mexican rice, I grab out a bag- throw it in the skillet and as it thaws, it cooks. This way I can make great tasting Latino dishes without having to keep all sorts of fresh ingredients on hand plus saves money because I can buy the ingredients in season.

Now that you know all about Sofrito (or maybe not- I’m not being too clear here) go forth and make some. It’s great stuff.

But it doesn’t make the bed.

Hint: it was 80 degrees.

This winter when there was snow on the ground Little Miss Pixie decided to wear skirts… everyday. When she went outside she would bundle up in her jacket, scarf, hat and gloves and then fight me tooth and nail to put on thin leggings or tights.

Now, when it’s warm, she is wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts. She has other choices in her closet. I bought some cute skort (skirt with shorts sewn in) outfits when she was along with me. She helped me pick them out- now they are not pink but she said she’d wear them. There was not any tan to be seen. One set has not adorned her body and the other was worn once. We picked out some cute sandals for her, she tried them on, she said they were fine and now it’s a fight to get her to wear them. She would rather wear too small, dirty old ones. The sandals are even white and PINK for goodness sakes!

Do you sense a bit of frustration in my typing? Ah well, I’ve told her I am not buying anything more for her because she tells me she will wear it and then doesn’t. That will last until this winter when she’ll need jeans that aren’t expecting a flood.

And to think- she’s only 5. What will the teenage years be like?

Lord help us.

Anyway, a while back we went out for Chinese food. I love it- The Col. tolerates it and the kids eat grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries. Since The Col. was barely able to choke down that bland stuff, he asked the waitress if they had any Tabasco sauce. They didn’t but would he like to try some Garlic Chili Sauce? It was spicy!? So he decided to give it a try. And, hey Mikey!, he liked it!

I found it at the local “Out” house – which for once, was not out of it. Actually, what I found was without the garlic but he manages somehow. I have seen it since in other stores and will have to get that when this bottle is gone. Which won’t be too long the way it’s disappearing. At first he would put a few drops on but now he pours it all over the place- with a big grin!

So now the poor Tapatio bottle is sitting there neglected as the Chinese Hot Chili Sauce gets center stage. Don’t you feel sorry for it? If you come visit you’ll have to give it a special hug.

I didn’t get a good shot of just the cake. Since the focus was on a certain young lady’s birthday, I guess that isn’t a bad thing.

It looks like a regular chocolate cake, right? Little would you know that the frosting had one pound (16 ounces) of semi sweet chocolate in it. And butter. And 1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream. Do I hear your arteries clogging? Are you drooling on your key board? Eeeewww!

It was yummy. The cake itself, made from scratch with my own two hands (and the electric mixer) was also very good. It had butter in it too, of course, and two kinds of chocolate. It’s an America’s Test Kitchen recipe and, oh is it good. You have to have a bit of patience making it though, as with most of their recipes. I made it without a standing mixer and thought it turned out fine; just be patient and make sure things get mixed well.

I had one part that didn’t go totally smoothly. The recipe for the frosting says to melt the chocolate and (separately) heat the butter and sugar, etc. then combine these two with the cream. It’s too warm for it to whip up at this point and so to cool it down you place the bowl into a larger bowl filled with cold water and ice. The tricky part is to get it to the desired temperature of 70 degrees. If it’s too cold, it will seize up, if too hot then it will not whip up all light and fluffy. I cooled it in the water bath for a bit then did the scientific thing of testing it with my finger. It was clean! (and then I got to lick it too!) I don’t have a thermometer that reads that low. I thought it felt pretty cool, and not wanting it to get too cool went ahead and started to whip it with my hand mixer. It wasn’t getting lighter in color nor was it whipping up all “fluffy” like. I mixed, and mixed, and mixed. I finally decided, after referring to the recipe again (and again, and again) that the mixture was too warm still. So I plopped it back into the water bath and continued to beat it. And then the miracle happened. It got lighter in color and fluffy in texture. It looked lovely and was great to work with when putting it on the cake.

It was worth the effort.

Fast forward to the next day when I was making a Three Bean Salad to take to pot luck. I tried a new recipe and I liked it but will have to fiddle with it because it had a lot of sugar in it. There I go again- fiddling with a recipe! Anyway, because I have such an interesting life, I stopped to read the label on the dark red kidney beans (Great Value- because I am cheap thrifty.) First ingredient: prepared kidney beans. No surprise there.

#2- water

#3- cane syrup- what? why?

#4- salt- I knew there is lots of salt in canned beans.

#5- high fructose corn syrup!! Why?

There were more things added that help promote color retention- I probably really don’t want to know about them.

But why the sugary stuff added? I mean, kidney beans? Sweet?

I rinse them before adding them to things in hopes of reducing the salt content and so I hope it helps with the sugar too but how much have they absorbed sitting in the can?

Sigh. So, I’ll have to read more labels in the store and suck it up and buy more expensive brands.

Or go all homestead like and boil up my own.

Last week, we had company coming for dinner but I really wanted to go to the Mom’s meeting. It’s in the afternoons and we don’t get home until 4:30 or so. It was great incentive to get the house all clean on Thursday and make up the Enchilada casserole and bean salad (and clean up) on Friday morning. I made Spanish Rice and a lettuce salad after I got home. It turned out well and I was pretty puffed up.

I had also invited Master Bill and his lovely wife over for a meal after Church on Sunday. Just feeling that hospitality spirit, I guess. I was having troubles figuring out what to fix. It needed to be fast, as we all would be hungry. Also, since we hadn’t made it to the store in ages, it had to be made from stuff on hand. Hmmm. Well, there was lots of Enchilada casserole and Spanish Rice left over… it would be quick to heat up. So it was settled, I fed my Pastor and his wife leftovers. It does not in any way reflect how much esteem I have for them. Except for the copious snowfall it worked out pretty well. As he ate our leftovers Master Bill kept saying how good it was. I didn’t take it to heart because I knew that I could feed that man slop with a side of swill and he would compliment me on it.

This Friday we didn’t have company coming but I did plan ahead and loaded up one of The Col.’s favorite meals into the Crockpot. When we got home we had tender pork chops and potatoes ready for us.

I have been so pleased with myself that my shoulder hurts from patting myself on the back.