Bread, Wine, Salt

I made birthday cake for two little boys who insist on growing up and turning 5. One little boy loves all things chocolate, and one little boy will have no cake at all if chocolate is the only choice. Given the opposing preferences and the size of the joint party I made two cakes. Chocolate boy got the same chocolate cake I made for him two years ago. It was a hit then and it was just as popular this time around. I won't reproduce the recipe because I baked without adaptation from the Chocolate Layer Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting on Epicurious. People rave about it and ask me how I got the frosting so creamy. The answer is butter, silly, lots and lots of butter. (And then a bit more butter.) Yes, it is off kilter.  You know who cares?  Nobody cares. Not-chocolate boy requested a strawberry cake. I don't know why strawberry occurred to him, since normally he asks for vanilla cake . I found a promising recipe for strawberry cupcakes at Annie's Eat...

Chocolate Pie Not that unproductive is always a bad thing, mind you. I was out of town for the weekend, and without phone, internet or television. I didn't even have a chance to work in a kitchen. (I would have been baking communion bread, but there was a communication breakdown and I didn't know my services were needed. We used leftover dinner rolls instead.) I was going to bring my laptop and work on a buff and polish of an old essay from my personal archives to share with you, but I brought my sewing machine with me instead. I am more fluent with words than with thread, and my time might have been better spent at the keyboard, but I had a project that needed to be finished. (It's not finished. I keep running into problems. I'm tempted to blame the machine, but it's probably me.) So instead of something new and thought provoking I offer this, my most viewed picture on Flickr. If you Google "chocolate pie recipe" and look at images it...