Past Blogs

I can only bake one cake. Fortunately, it is a very luscious cake. It is definitely not a layer cake.

How anyone can put a layer cake together is a mystery to me. I am in awe of my son-in-law and all the French bakeries that can turn out gorgeous, multi-layered masterpieces.

A myriad of things can go wrong when making a layer cake. For example, the layers should be the same height. When I’m not looking, a little extra batter seems to creep into one of my cake pans. Or I take my pans out of the oven to discover that the baking powder has gone ballistic. One side of a layer is three inches high, the other a mere inch and a half. There is only so much frosting you can add to fix that situation.

If by some miracle the cake layers come out of the oven level and equal, you can be assured they won’t come out of the pan. A big, ragged chunk of cake will remain firmly stuck on the bottom.

And the final disaster, crumbs in the frosting. How do those master cake bakers keep jillions of cake crumbs from merging into the frosting?

For all of you out there who share my layer cake trauma, click here for my grandmother’s totally easy, foolproof and guest pleasing apple cake recipe.

If you ever need to sell your house, bake this cake an hour before the showing.

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When I was three, our neighbor’s dog knocked me down and stole my graham cracker. I was traumatized and immediately developed a fear that all dogs were graham cracker grabbing monsters.

This phobia continued well into my middle age. “Cross the street, even in mid block, but don’t walk past a dog,” was my rule.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that this behavior needed serious modification. I started making friends with dogs. Dog guests are welcome visitors at our house now. The first dog visitor came alone. Late one afternoon, I heard a persistent scratching at the front door. Going to see who was there, I saw a large, white dog with a big doggy smile enthusiastically pawing the glass.

I went outside on the porch and asked him to sit. He did. Then he shook paws and gave me some dog kisses. Had the pet goddess sent me the perfect dog?

Our local radio station and constable helped us find the dog’s owners. This lovely dog, a Samoyed, had been stolen from his yard, fourteen miles from our house. How he ended up on our front porch will remain a mystery.

Quill is our favorite dog visitor. After flunking out of guide dog class for chasing a porcupine, Quill was adopted by a good friend of ours. Quill loves coming to our country house and even tries to help her lady with the 70 mile drive. “Back seat” and “Stay” are difficult concepts, but Quill is learning.

The Tooley cats have let us know quite emphatically that they are not in favor of us acquiring a Tooley dog. However, our son and his family in San Diego have a great Tooley dog. Her name is Della, and she choose to live at our son’s house. She started out to be the neighbor’s dog who came over to visit. But one day, she just forgot to ever go home again.

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If you are squeamish about insects, stop reading right now.

You’ve probably heard that only insects would survive a nuclear war. I’m personally convinced this is true.

I never understood insect power until we moved to the country next to a big lake. We arrived during early summer. We left lots of lights on that first night and weren’t quick coming in and out of the front door.

Voila! Our nice white living room walls (2 stories tall) were instantly covered with gnats. It looked like an explosion in a pepper factory. A shop vac, tall ladder and two hours of wall vacuuming were required to turn our house back into a home. Apparently living close to nature wasn’t going to be all fluffy bunnies and monarchs.

All summer long various bugs rule, and we’ve learned to cope. Legions of ladybugs usher in spring. Black undulating clouds of gnat hatches announce summer. Millions of weird beetles cover the beach for several days in July. Flies are a terror the third week of August.

On late summer and fall nights, our yard fills with noisy bugs. As the days grow shorter, the insect voices grow louder and louder. Their cacophony is definitely a last hurrah before the frost comes, silencing most of them forever.

Our California granddaughter visited last week. One of the first topics we had to address was the arthropod situation. “Don’t,” we said, “don’t ever leave any door open a second longer than necessary.” But the message didn’t really make an impression until I was washing the dishes the first evening of her visit. The window screen over my sink was completely black and writhing with bugs.

“Disgusting!” she said.

“Even worse if they are on the inside,” I replied.

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This is the blog the neighbors are waiting for me to write. It’s a known fact in our neighborhood that my husband and I cannot grow grass.

We bought our beautiful meadow on Lake Michigan over 30 years ago. The acre and one-half of waist-high native grasses, flowers, milkweed and goldenrod had been untouched and beautiful for decades. We vowed to keep it natural forever.

But then we got selfish enough to want to be surrounded by this beauty all the time. To build a modest sized house and dig a well, holes would have to be dug in the ground. We implored the builder to make as small a “footprint” as possible.

After moving in, we naively assumed the havoc caused around the building site would be magically healed by nature and seamlessly blend in with the mostly intact meadow. Nature had other plans. She gave us a 10 foot tall crop of white clover the first year, definitely not a match.

Subsequent years saw other landscapes come and go but none that faintly resembled the untouched part. It became apparent that we would have to intervene and help out Mother Nature.

The neighbors loaned us a rototiller and my husband diligently tilled, planted and watered prairie grasses. Sometimes they grew; sometimes they didn’t. Even when they did grow, they totally betrayed us by not returning the next year. We probably should have just bought that rototiller.

Not too surprisingly, this spring we had to start over again on the blighted part of the homestead. We know that idiocy is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Something had to change. So we got a different blend of seeds, the Native Wisconsin mix.

At this moment, we’ve got a gorgeous, waving field of grass interspersed with glorious cosmos. (If you’ve got to dig up your front yard every year, you might as well throw some lovely annual flower seeds in the mix!)

We are praying to all the garden goddesses that this grass feels at home. But, we’ll be holding our breaths until the snow melts and the sun warms next spring. If we see green, there will be one big lawn party.

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I have a lifetime goal of learning to appreciate opera. The quest got off to a rocky start.

My mother listened to opera on the radio, and, as a child, I asked her, “Who is Carmen?”

“She’s a bad girl who works in a cigarette factory and breaks men’s hearts,” was her reply. I didn’t believe a word she said. My mom was prone to exaggeration. Surely, no adult could compose an opera about a cigarette girl.

Well, it turns out they did. I’ve learned since that the storyline is not the main event in opera. The singing and spectacle carry the show.

My scheme to become opera educated is beautiful in its simplicity. Go to New Mexico every August. Buy tickets for the Santa Fe Opera which is performed outdoors on a mountaintop. Listen and look. If the opera proves inscrutable, the scenery and sunset are worth the trip.

This summer will mark our 28^th consecutive summer in attendance. I’m making some progress. I know the The Magic Flute is, indeed, utterly magical. Papageno and Papagena, the birdman and woman, are completely delightful with deliciously human failings. My all time favorite character is The Queen of the Night. Talk about a screwed up mother-daughter relationship. But the Queen’s big aria is totally thrilling.

I’ve also figured out three things that should never happen at the opera. First, Madame Butterfly should not have the heft of a Valkyrie. Second, The Queen of the Night must never, never wear a white costume. (Was that a PC gesture on Santa Fe’s part?) Third, Carmen should not be sung by a blond. Actually, I’ll amend that. If a blond sings the role, she needs a dark wig and a stint at a tanning salon.

Give me another 20 years at Santa Fe, and I might be ready to tackle The Ring Cycle.

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