Bear Parfait

The day before Christopher was to come home, Kathleen decided to bake her famous "Bear Cake". The last time she made it for Christopher, they took it to the picnic after VBS that year, and all the kids LOVED it. She gets everything set up. Then, with her Karaoke songs blaring off her i-pod and microphone in hand, she sang her songs and put together her cake. I walked through the kitchen a little later and look over to see her scooping liquid out of the cake mix. There sat the new bottle of oil she just purchased and it was half empty. With microphone still in hand, and not missing any notes, she retrieves what excess oil she could and continues on with her singing and baking.

Much later, I was outside and opened the door to come in and the house is filled with the smell of smoke. I yell for Kathleen that she must have forgot her cake. No one is answering. I run to the oven and am surprised that the timer still has 14 minutes on it. I open the door to see what is going on. The cake mold was sitting on a cookie sheet and the cake was baking, but out of the top of the mold cake mix was erupting and falling onto the cookie sheet AND the bottom of the oven. The mix that spilled on the oven floor was black and smoldering, accounting for the smoke. When the timer finally went off, Kat took out the cake and after it cooled the appropriate amount of time, she started to take off the molds. She had forgotten to grease the molds! So there was the cutest bear cake...stuck in the pan. Kat ended up scooping it out and putting it into a cassarole dish. We will have it as a parfait, with whipped cream and strawberries.

Yesterday afternoon, I called Mom and gave her an hour and a half to get ready, she was going North with me. She had been after me to take her up, so here was the opportunity. I was going to take Ginger's car back to her, pick up my pick-up and get back home before the snow came. An hour and a half, of course, was ample time for her to put together cookie packages for everyone up there. So we stopped at each house and managed to catch everyone, so they could have "Grandma's cookies".

Then she wanted to see Jayce, her greatgrandson. It was an hour til his bedtime, so we hurried over so she could get a chance to hold him. He came to the door with his mother, Kace, and took one look at Mom and started crying, burying his head in his Kace's shoulder. Then I walked in behind Mom and he took one look at me and started wailing again. We came in the house so that we could shut the door. Then things got worse for the little tyke as Mom went on one side of Kace, and I on the other, and we started making little faces and odd noises for the baby. He was really terrorized now. His Dad came in and got him, and tried to get him to be social with us, but to no avail. Finally he took one of the nilla wafers that Grandma brought him, and he ate it, but wasn't going to be bought off by it. We still had to keep our distance! With a snow storm closing in on us, we couldn't stay to make peace, so we had a short visit with the family and left.

Off to Ginger and Pete's. I thought it was Ginger's birthday, so I brought up the cassarole dish along with some whipped cream and strawberries. Ginger - the "Martha Stewart" of the family, took the lid off the cassarole dish. Although, I think I had started to tell her the story, I hadn't quite warned her about what was inside, so you can imagine her surprise when the dish was full of cake crumbs!! I thought it was quite good, even though a little extra moist from all the oil.

We made it back home before the snow came. This morning the wind was howling and the snow was here. After the cats and dogs were fed, they hunkered down and are waiting for sunshine. So am I!