this is a great rhubarb cake

made this a couple of weeks ago (we've got rhubarb coming out of our ears after acquiring a second plant from our neighbor) and have been meaning to post it for your eating pleasure.

rhubarb cake

1/2 C butter

1-1/2 C sugar (would advise 2C if you're using organic sugar)

2 eggs

1 C buttermilk* 

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2-1/2 C flour

3 C rhubarb, diced

mix together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Add baking powder & salt to the flour, mix in, alternating with buttermilk. pour into a cake pan (9x13 is good).

here's where it get really good:

TOPPING: 

1 C brown sugar

1/2 C chopped walnuts or pecans

i left the nuts out of the topping b/c sabin doesn't like them--which mean we put just brown sugar on--it sinks into the dough a little ways and comes out fabulous!

go, make this cake NOW, NOW, NOW!

*i actually used sour buttermilk because that's the kind of thing i find lurking in my refrigerator--it was great!

what's for dinner

far's away and so we're eating things for dinner that far might not like all that much. things like carpaccio and a soft boiled egg with steamed asparagus spears dipped in it. and a little salad on the side, made of zucchini made into thin strips with a peeler and then stirred together with a bit of garlic golden rapeseed oil and a dash of balsamic and some garlic pepper, with just a few shavings of parmesan to match the parmesan on the carpaccio. it was the perfect light early summer meal.

i guess i've only got pictures of the asparagus and egg part. yummy.

Unfinished Projects, I Will Defeat You!

Disgusted with my inability to complete tasks that require multiple steps, I recently embarked on a quest to finish some projects. Shortly after turning my attention to these things, I got distracted by some phone calls I needed to make, a few meal preparations, several baseball games and some music that I needed to download. Then, I finally picked up this project I started late last year. Now keep in mind, I'm only half finished. This is going to be the inside and unexposed layer of a double-layer hat. And though I should be some sort of knitting expert by now, the hat looks like it was dragged to another continent in the bottom of a suitcase and wound up and tangled hopelessly in its own ball of yarn. Oh wait, it was.


I feel a sense of victory on this one, because it's the first time I've used two colors. The black yarn is a lucious undyed baby alpaca, almost too soft to work with. And this method of decreasing (or making the round part of the hat that closes up the top) is one I've never done before. I found it quite confusing, but am confident that the other side of this hat will look better. I'm going to knit in the same pattern, with the colors inversed. Now, if I need to figure out how to pick up the live stitches from my provisional cast-on.

When I'm finished, the edge won't curl up like a women's hat. And it'll be too big for Owen.

our latest riding lesson

where sabin canters all by herself, with just a little encouragement (for milton) from her new pink riding crop. she's really making progress! it won't be long 'til she's moved up to the hour-long lessons.

today's lesson

i wasn't so keen on milton. i don't like how he carries his tail. it's probably the half-arab thing. and he was a bit more of a spoiled lesson horse, at least on the saddling (pawing in a rather menacing way when the saddle came near) and mounting (he tried to bite me while she got on), but he was a bit zippier and more fun for sabin to actually ride and that's what matters.

so that was lesson 7.

our half-chaps were brilliant.