Still not the Ace of Cakes

BUT I graduated my second cake decorating course tonight! I had to make a flower basket cake and about 100 flowers. Okay, not 100. It just felt like 100. After the first 50 who the heck cares if it's actually 100 or not?

I've decided that cake decorating is a lot of fun, but it's not nearly as much fun as people make it look on TV. I can tell you why it's not that fun. Duff, The Ace of Cakes, has "people". Duff's "people" even have "people". Therefore, they can all sit at their clean, roomy, work spaces while someone else scrubs bowls, spatulas, tips, couplers, pans and mixer attachments and takes out their trash. Heck, they even have their own baking guy that does all the oven watching for them.

I, on the other hand, have people that leave half eaten pizzas, empty milk jugs (the trash can is less than three feet away), dirty paper plates, etc. ON my workstation. Thus, not only do I have to toss my own trash and seal my own icing leftovers, but I have to throw away other people's trash and bag up other people's leftovers.

Roomy my workspace is not. Somehow all of my projects seem to require every tool, tip, book and ingredient I have. I have to keep moist towels, baggies, decorating bags, couplers, 60 plus decorating tips (and whatever project I'm working on is guaranteed to need tip 104 for use with at least 4 different colors), 4 spatulas, 2 boxes of gel color, paint brushes, fondant iron, parchment paper, waxed paper, plastic containers, plastic wrap, the stand mixer, 2 flower nails, and my tool box leave me with about 1 square foot of free space to actually decorate a cake or make decorations. The counter tops in back of me are filled with freshly washed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers. The sink is filled with unwashed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers.

One day I'd like to walk unannounced into Charm City Cakes and see if there are at least smears of daffodil yellow icing in anyone's hair.

Not Quite the Ace of Cakes... yet.

When my husband's appetite was lost due to his lymphoma, we started watching The Food Network. We hoped that seeing delectable delights might perk up his digestive system. We have watched little else since October. In that time I became addicted to watching Ace of Cakes. That addiction quickly expanded to the various cake decorating "challenge" shows that the network airs weekly. By January I was surfing cake decorating websites and at the beginning of February I found that a local craft store offered decorating classes. I signed up. There were about 12 people the first night, but we were down to 8 by the third night. Many of those had other obligations this week and our final class boasted 3 warm bodies other than that of the instructor.

In those 4 weeks I have learned that the beautiful piping designs we see done so effortlessly on TV, are not effortless. I'm not sure when I sprouted so many thumbs. My kitchen smells like sugar and vanilla. I smell like icing. Pink, purple, yellow and white smears of hardened icing can be found on nearly every surface of the kitchen. The dogs police up any cake droppings, so thankfully we don't have pink, purple, green, yellow and white footprints throughout the house. Half the "dust" in the air, is probably not real dust, but rather confectioner's sugar. Can one get white lung disease from sugar?



At any rate, the last class of the beginner's course was last night. I'd fought pink icing roses for 4 days trying to get them to look smooth and uniform like the photographs in the manual. While my flowers looked like roses, they looked like roses that had been attacked by hordes of aphids. Rather than smooth, rounded petals, my roses had the lacy look of carnations. I tried stiffer icing. I tried thinner icing. I tried firmer pressure on the piping bag. I finally gave up in absolute frustration.



When I got to class last night, I explained my problem to the instructor. I told her I was failing miserably in getting the icing consistencies correct because my petals all looked chewed. "NO NO! It's not you! It's the Crisco! I'm sorry. I should have warned you!" Apparently, when Crisco removed the trans fats from their shortening the change sent ripples out through the pastry decorating world. One of those tsunami sized ripples wiped out butter cream icing roses.



Thankfully, next session we will be moving into Royal Icing flowers and leave the Crisco cream decorations behind. Also thankfully, the only cake we have to bake is for the final class. For the past month I've had to produce at least one cake per week. I sure don't need to eat this much cake, William's appetite isn't recovered enough to eat cake and the only one here willing to eat a couple of pieces a day is John. Even as I type I have a practice cake in the refrigerator that is only half eaten and an entire cake full of lacy pink roses that I decorated for our final class sitting on the dining table. Having a month off from eating and storing cakes is going to be FABulous. Although... I'm willing to bet I'll just HAVE to bake one just for "practice" at some point during that time.



My best friend, Daphne, went through this course a few years ago. She sent me much of her decorating equipment when I told her I was going to try my hand at the craft. I didn't want her to send all these things because she was so brilliant at the art of decorating, I didn't want to have all her stuff if she suddenly decided she wanted to start making cakes again. She told me that no one wanted her to ever do cakes again. She was making cakes all the time. Daph's cakes became like my zucchini. People would shutter their windows, lock their doors and not answer the phone if they saw her car. She was even taking gigantic decorated sheet cakes to her fitness center every week!



I can see how this could happen. I have already told everyone I know to sit down and write a list of at least 10 people they know that they can hand off cakes to when they get sick of them. I don't visit a fitness center, but there are a lot of people who work at William's Oncology clinic. If nothing else, I have 11 hooved family members who would LOVE a sugar coated carrot cake from time to time.



Here is a photo of the final cake in my beginner's class.

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!

Bourbon Street at about 12:30pm Mardi Gras day. I have been in that crush of humanity before. In order to break free of the throng you have to be arm in arm with several friends and burst through at the doorway of whatever club you wish to enter.

Earlier I watched a Nola.com video cast of the Rex Parade on St. Charles. Been there, done that too. At 10:00am and already fairly well lit my friend Zelda and I found ourselves walking along side by side with Pete Fountain and his Half-Fast Marching Club. He shared a Popeyes Chicken leg with me when I asked him to throw me something. Being fairly well lit, I accepted. Shortly thereafter we were asked to leave the Marine Corps Marching Band by sabre point.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Glendale Invitational

First off, I do hope y'all noticed the two bulls whose hometown was listed as Wittmann, AZ., ULURU and Snake Farm. I've mentioned going to the local bullriding event two blocks from my house on occasion. Both times they've bucked some truly (I mean truly) NICE bulls. Last time we were there for a benefit bull ride and they bucked both ULURU and Snake Farm causing us to catch flies in our gaping jaws because these were two bad assed bulls.



At the event we saw "Snake Farm" come up on the big screen and sat there like two dummies trying to figure out where we'd heard that name before (DUH! I blame our collective Chemo Brain). Snake Farm didn't have as good an out as we've seen here in the "hood", but it was enough to unseat Cody Campbell.



When ULURU was announced, the name is so unusual and he was such a memorable bull at the local event that we sat there wondering aloud "Is that the same...?" "It must be!! How many bulls are gonna be named 'ULURU'??!" "OH COOL!!" and then "HOLY SHIT! LOOKIT him GO!" ULURU did not make Austin Meier's life easy for that 8 seconds either. Austin was working for every second of that ride.



I know Luke Kraut and his Dad were proud of their bull. We were too! He is a fine, fine animal. I kept telling everyone we were seeing some damned good bulls buck on our street. We got nationwide proof last night. You go boys!



Note to Justin McKee: The bull's name is ULURU, pronounced OO-LUH-ROO, not "yewlaroo". Not your fault, but just so's you know next time. I want our hometown boys names known.



We were sorry to see Clayton Williams having a tough time. He won here last year. Year before last it was Robson Palermo who won Glendale and it was, I think, his first BFTS event win. Perhaps the Glendale event is good luck for first time winners?



William's latest side effects had abated and he was feeling good. We were so happy about that one fact that we were predisposed to enjoying the hell out of this event so we did. All the habitual comments we have adopted in our home viewing became all the more amusing because of our elevated moods. Our customery call of "Hey Dustin!? It's only 8 seconds! How hard can it be?!" and when Luke Snyder was announced "It's the Schnoz!" (the young man has the largest nostrils I've ever seen on a human and the camera people always seem to shoot him from beneath that nose. Note to Luke: Better keep that nose hair trimmed buddy or the nation will know.)



Bryan "PeeWee" Hermann made a GREAT ride and we were terribly sorry it ended so badly for him. We like ol' PeeWee, now the eldest of the riders. Cool toss though dude. You should have at least gotten a complimentary highball on that first class flight.



Chris Shivers and Guilherme Marchi rode with seasoned determination and were absolutely thrilling to watch in both rounds. I'd so much rather see the end of the year finish in a tight battle between these two young men, than the two cocky little pishers in the lead at the moment.



Note about White Magic: The bull had an excellent out, but if he doesn't take off about 300 lbs he's going to need his name changed to White Whale. When we saw him bucking a couple of years ago in a PRCA event his kick was almost perpendicular to the ground. If his butt makes it past 45 degrees now it's a lucky shot. He can't lift his forequarters more than 8 to 10 inches off the ground anymore.

When White Magic burst onto the BFTS scene early last year he had so much drop before that all mighty high kick that it reminded me of Bodacious because the bull was hauling riders forward and down into his horns. He'd already started flinging his head up to meet them, just like Bo. Then he was either injured or became ill, I can't remember which, and when he came back he was a blimp. His fat rolls jiggle like jello when he bucks for crying out loud. He was a bull to fear early last year. A bull that should have made a rider's stomach flip when drawn. Now he's just another good bull among many good bucking bulls. I don't look for that to continue. If he continues to get blubbery, he'll be a round 1 bull by the end of the year and out of the picture next year.



We missed Cord McCoy. We thought about attending the infamous "After-Party" again, but figured without Cord hauling every pretty girl to the dance floor for a twirl, it wouldn't have been as entertaining as last year's party. Since, watching Cord was really the only entertainment at the party last year and since we were so appalled by our own blithering in the presence of Marchi and since we really didn't want to push our luck with the chemo side effects, we decided to just call the evening good and go home in time to watch the event on TV.

Caution: Desi At Play

PBR Baltimore

I'm blogging live during the NBC presentation of rounds 2 and 3 of the PBR Baltimore event because I got ticked off before the first commercial break. Of course, with William so sick, my patience for idiot buttheads is non-existent.

Basically, I'm noticing that although it's a new year, it's still the same old bullshit. The Point Fairy already struck, but at least her arrival was announced. "OH by the way, Travis Briscoe's score was upped from 90 points to 90.50." I suppose I should be hopeful that since they've decided to let us know when they jack up a score after the fact that one fine day they might deign to give us an explanation for that jack up rather than implying that they can change scores on a whim and we can just go jack off. I don't want a generic explanation either. I want to know what led them to add to or take off points each time they do it.

God's gift to psycho, blood lust, tiny pricked assholes, aka Kody Lohstroh, received an 86.something for a ride in which he spent probably 2 seconds in correct position on a crummy bull and finished the ride on the bull's butt whereas Guilherme (Who?) received an 85 for being in perfect position on a relatively decent bull matching that bull move for move in a beautiful "How to" visual aid.

As William predicted last year, one of the new fan attractions this year is Fantasy Bull Riding. I have a fantasy, but I doubt it's what the PBR is looking for. After hearing about Kody Lohstroh and his other small penised, psychotic, blood lust buddies that think slowly killing an ancient lion in a canned hunt was funny, my fantasy is that Lohstroh will draw Blueberry Buckle. In that fantasy, Blueberry buckle will break both Lohstroh's legs so that he can't crawl away. Then for 5 minutes Buckle will roll and toss that sleazy bastard all over the arena so that he knows how that old, sick, crippled miserable lion felt. I don't want Lohstroh dead or even permanently crippled. No. I want worse. I want him to feel the pain and fear of that lion. I want him to literally piss and crap himself. I don't want him let off the hook by death. If Blueberry Buckle and all the other bulls in the pen can laugh like Kody and his buddies in the video did, all the better.

I would also like to complain about the spelling of bull names. I didn't mention it last year. I just rolled my eyes a lot. "Optimist Prime" sent me over the edge though. IT'S OPTIMUS PRIME for god's sake. He's a Transformers character. Perhaps y'all should GOOGLE a cool name before you use it? Ya think?

In retrospect, I may have to wait until the chemo really starts to heal my husband's cancer before I can watch PBR with any sort of patience for human bullshit.

The Tales of Beedle The Bard Collector's Edition

IT'S HERE! My collector's edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard arrived via USPS today and it was not only worth the price, but also worth the wait and two aggravating phone calls to amazon.com. The packaging, the prints and the gorgeous collector's edition book are spectacular. These photos really do not do them justice.