It's not easy being...

Go ahead and say it:

GREEN.

I love green in the spring, I love it in the summer, but come on, I need some variety! See, here's my problem--everything is green!

My garden has lots of good things growing in it, but everything is green.

It seems a little late to me, to have no color blooming in the place.

No blush on the tomatoes, no shiny red on the peppers.

My little grape tomatoes are supposed to turn white; but nothin'.

I suppose I'll accept that the green beans are green.

Ooh, some yellow! Right, this little pumpkin plant hasn't even made it to the green stage yet!

Man, that's an ugly flower. Hey, at least it's not green!

Birthday Cake: A Short Chapter in the Saga

I make a birthday cake for my husband every year.

It started as a pretty regular cake, but quickly became a one- to two-day event. I was making all kinds of crazy cakes, with names I can't pronounce (but would be able to, if I were French, or were a real chef/baker.) This year I wimped out, using the kids as an excuse, but really the cause was laziness, and I made a pretty basic good old fashioned cake, which turned out just fine.

I managed to burn out the hand mixer (I mean come on, it was only what, forty years old? I thought it had a few good years left!) so I got quite the workout during my baking experience. Which was okay, as I pretty much bailed on my pre-vacation plan to run every morning and swim every afternoon. Oh, hey, did I mention that every year my husband's birthday is during our vacation? So these are vacation days by the sea that I am spending trying to bake things.

Simple as it was, the cake had multiple ingredients on my husband's favorite's list, so I think it was a relative success. I myself, not liking cake much at all, (except coffee cake, and blueberry buckle,) am not much of a judge.

This is the cake: The blueberry and orange layer cake with cream cheese frosting from
Bon Appétit June 2001 :

and here is the recipe:

Cake

2 1/2 cups cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

1 1/2 teaspoons grated orange peel

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

Filling

2 1/2-pint baskets blueberries

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Frosting

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

3 1/4 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

1 teaspoon grated orange peel

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/2-pint baskets blueberries

Preparation

For cake:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 1 1/2-inch-high sides; line bottoms with rounds of parchment paper. Sift first 3 ingredients into medium bowl. Beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually add sugar, beating until blended. Beat in concentrate, peel, and vanilla. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in flour mixture in 4 additions alternately with milk in 3 additions. Divide batter between prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool in pans on rack.

For filling:

Combine berries, sugar, and lemon juice in heavy small saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Boil until mixture is reduced to 3/4 cup, stirring occasionally and mashing berries coarsely with fork, about 8 minutes. Chill filling uncovered until cold, about 30 minutes.

For frosting:

Beat cream cheese and butter in bowl to blend. Beat in powdered sugar in 4 additions, then orange concentrate, peel, and vanilla. Chill until firm but spreadable, about 30 minutes.

Cut around cakes to loosen. Turn cakes out. Peel off parchment.

Place 1 layer, flat side up, on platter. Spread filling to within 1/2 inch of edges. Chill 5 minutes. Top with second layer, flat side down.

Spread 1/2 cup frosting thinly all over cake to seal. Spread remaining frosting over cake.

Mound remaining blueberries on top. (Can be made 1 day ahead; chill. Serve at room temperature.)

On Vacation

Do you have a place in your memory, a place exemplifying the best of your childhood summers? So that when you think of that place, you see it in sepia or technicolor, depending on the memory or your mood? A place so entrenched as a part of you that a warm salty breeze or rain pounding on the roof or crickets in the cool night conjure a brief flash of the place?





We've been spending time at that place of mine--which isn't my place in real life, it's my parents' place, and my grandparents' before that; where my mother grew up with her sister and brother and best friend, and I grew up with my sisters and cousins, and now my kids and my nieces and cousins are doing the same. Where the grownups hang out on the porch long after dark and the usual bedtime hours, chatting and laughing; and the kids hang out in bed laughing and scheming. Where the neighbors are the same families as four generations ago, and the few new families are a good source of gossip and a good object of spying (depending on your age, of course.)



Here's where the kids get a real taste of freedom and self-responsibility. It's where you'll see your first shooting star, and where the milky way looks like a milky way. This is where you're brave enough to put your feet down even though that kid just pulled up a gigantic pinchy crab, and where you're brave enough to swim over to a jelly fish and capture it in a bucket. It's where you get your swim endurance and finally swim to the buoy; and where you get your land endurance and make it to the mile store for breakfast or candy or ice cream, depending on the time of day. On your way there, you'll screech when you see the bridge, and on the way home, you'll cry with your heart broken.



I love this place, with the rambling old cottage and the log at the end of the street at the beach, and that's where I've been spending my free time.





No blogging, nothing all that modern. So I'm back. I guess I'm back.


But there's still some summer left. I imagine that there always will be.