Monthly Archives: April 2007

As a change of pace this week, here is a recipe. It comes from my friend Maureen. As I generally do with recipes, however, I have added a few embellishments.

“Earthquake Cake” is a creation sure to add drama as well as good taste to your next social occasion. Here’s how you make one:

1. Mix up a chocolate cake according to your favorite recipe. (What, you expected me to give you ingredients and step-by-step instructions? Why do you think you have all those cookbooks in your cupboard? Go look it up.)

2. Bake cake according to recipe directions.

3. Remove cake from oven, using only one hand because you couldn’t find the second oven mitt.

4. Drop hot cake onto kitchen floor. If you use the correct wrist action as you perform this step, the cake will land right side up. Approximately half of it will bounce into the air, turn over, and land back in the pan upside down.

5. Say, with feeling, several words appropriate to the occasion.

6. Take the 15 seconds you should have spent in the first place to find the missing oven mitt, which is right in the drawer where it belongs. Pick cake up off the floor and place it on a cooling rack on the counter.

7. Notice dent in vinyl kitchen floor. Say several more appropriate words.

8. Study surface of the cake. The half that is still in its original position has developed an interesting pattern of earthquake-like cracks across its surface. The half that is upside down is uneven and bears a certain resemblance to the Badlands of South Dakota. Frosting might help, but only if you applied it at least an inch thick.

9. Take container of whipped topping out of the freezer.

10. Serve cake to friends that evening. Explain how it acquired its unique topographical surface. Assure them that only the pan, not the cake itself, actually touched the floor. Because they are your friends, because they trust you—and, above all, because they want cake—they will pretend to believe you.

11. Cover cake generously with whipped topping. Eat. Enjoy.

12. Join friends in thinking up creative names for this groundbreaking concoction: "Earthquake Cake," “Jumble Cake, “Almost Upside Down Cake,” “Bake and Shake Cake,” “Fallen Angel Cake.” Laugh. Enjoy.

Friends don’t let friends cry over spilled cake.

Ah, yes, spring. When the little kids dress appropriately for Easter egg hunts by bundling up in their parkas, mittens, and snow boots. When the optimistic lilacs that felt the 70-degree days in March and started budding turn into lilacicles. When the new green grass glistens with frost in the early morning sunshine.

Still, it’s spring. I know this, because there’s wildlife out and about. And there are a lot of animals wandering around, too.

My favorites are the yearling deer. Their mothers, getting ready for this year’s babies, have sent last year’s not-quite-grown children out into the world on their own. There’s a group of five in our neighborhood, keeping each other company as they try to figure out how to get along without moms to tell them to watch for cars and mountain lions. Scruffy with shedding winter coats, they look unkempt, as if they just got up and forgot to comb their hair. They hang out together like a group of young teenagers on a street corner, trying to look cool and hoping no one will notice they aren’t old enough to drive.

There is a fox in the neighborhood, too. We’ve seen it several times in the last couple of weeks, and two nights ago it ran across our driveway as we pulled up to the garage. That does perhaps explain why we haven’t seen many cottontails in the yard lately. There’s something appealing about a fox—maybe it’s the thick brush of a tail that’s almost as big as its body, or maybe it’s the delicate black feet, or the dainty quickness. I think this one is a female with a den close by, probably on the far side of a busy road. Twice I’ve seen the fox trotting back and forth at the roadside, waiting for a break in the traffic so she can cross. Once, coming home after dark, we caught her having a late dinner of squirrel a la Goodyear in the middle of the road. She dashed to the curb, then circled impatiently, waiting for the cars to go by so she could resume her meal. I hope she’s careful out there.

Actually, all of us probably should be careful out there. As if the ever-increasing population of mountain lions isn’t enough, an article in our weekly newspaper announced that we have verified sightings of black bears in the Black Hills. The assumption is that they are mostly young males, just passing through on their way to seek their fortunes. Sooner or later, though, one of them is going to bring his girlfriend along and settle in. It will give us hikers something to think about besides 150-pound cats.

I’ve only been close to one bear in the wild, and that was a half-grown black bear in Jackson Hole. It was a few feet away from the hiking trail, munching berries without regard to the handful of tourists watching and taking pictures. If you’re going to meet a bear in the woods, this one was probably the ideal size—not big enough to be threatening, but too old to have a protective mama hovering nearby. Still, being that close to it made me uncomfortable. Call me unreasonable, but I find it hard to relax when I’m within easy range of something that tends to think of me as lunch.

I much prefer the fox. I just hope she never finds out about the fox fur coat hanging in my closet.

Things one can learn from making an impulsive decision to move the washer and dryer into a semi-finished downstairs bathroom and convert the laundry room into a workshop:

1. According to the Law of Expanding Improvements, any small remodeling job such as this will grow beyond your initial estimate (in cost, time, and disruption) by a factor of four.

2. The day the workmen come to “look at the job” and unexpectedly decide they can do the work on the spot will be the day you overslept, you have three appointments and an urgent deadline on an important project, and you left underwear drying on the shower curtain rod.

3. When several guys are working on a project inside your house that requires them to make many trips back and forth to their truck, it will be raining.

4. When you have someone in the house working on the plumbing, he will always announce he has to shut off the water just after you’ve had a second cup of tea.

5. It isn’t the work that’s difficult, it’s the decisions. Such as the following:

Vinyl or tile flooring? Compare prices, compare durability, consider how this laundry-room-in-the-process-of-becoming-a-workshop will be used. Okay, vinyl.

Which type? There’s the cheap one, the middle-grade one, the really thick one with the 20-year warranty, or maybe the other really thick one with the imbedded stain protection. Compare prices, compare durability, consider as above. Okay, the stain-protection one.

Which pattern? It’s getting easier here, because there are only two in stock and I don’t want to wait for a special order. Okay, this one.

Which color? Finally, the answer is easy and obvious. Beige.

6. Getting the workspace you want? Worth every cent and all the disruption.

7. And having friends who are willing to advise, to help you make decisions—and even to delve boldly into the intricacies of 30-year-old plumbing? Priceless.