Why I Write

… because I have things to say.

… because people told me that I have a story to tell.

… because I like to think about and discuss things.

… because I can tell other’s stories in new and different ways.

… because I want to.

… because I have so many things swimming around in my head.

… because it helps me gather my thoughts.

… because I feel compelled to.

… because I have stories in my head.

… because it calms me to share my thoughts.

…because I believe people want to hear what I have to say.

…because I can think better on paper.

…because I want to share my imagination and creativity.

…because kids like my silly stories.

…because adults like my stories too!

…because I want to share the beauty I see in the every day.

…because I am fascinated by EVERYONE and EVERYTHING.

…because I like to look at everyday things in a new way.

…because it’s my passion.

…BECAUSE I CAN!

 

 

Update: Caramel Sauce

Just wanted to share with you (and grandma) that I tried it again and succeeded! It’s a lovely golden color and tastes heavenly.

The original attempt at caramel was here: Pinterest Made Me Do It: Maple Caramel Carrot Cake.

cooked caramel

Pinterest Made Me Do It: Maple Caramel Carrot Cake

So, I have a Pinterest,  and I keep track of my popular pins. One of my popular pins seemingly every week is this Maple Caramel Carrot Cake. There is someone almost every week that is repinning this onto one of their boards. After seeing this month after month, I decided that it was high time that I actually tried making the cake to see how it would turn out. That’s what this post is about.

Here is the recipe from the pin:

INGREDIENTS

Carrot Cake:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• pinch ground cloves
• 1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups grated carrots lightly packed, approx. 4 large carrots

Maple Caramel:

• 1 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 2/3 cup unsalted butter room temperature
• 4 oz cream cheese full fat, room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla

Assembly:

• 4 Tbsp pure maple syrup
• 1/4 cup pecans chopped, toasted

I went to the store and picked up the ingredients (well, almost all of them — we’ll get to that)

I started by assembling the dry ingredients:

 

Flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, pumpkin pie spice

Dry ingredients for Maple Caramel Carrot Cake

As you can see instead of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, I only have one bottle — pumpkin pie spice. Surprisingly, those are the ingredients for pumpkin pie spice. So, one bottle will do! I did need to worry about how much to put in though. I was thinking of calling my sister because she is good at all that figuring. Me? Not so much. I decided to just wing it. Instead of putting all figures into some calculation, I put in 2 T of pumpkin pie spice.

The picture above right is all the dry ingredients in the mixing bowls getting ready to be whisked together.

Now onto the wet ingredients.

Eggs, vanilla, white sugar, brown sugar, vegetable oil

Here are all the wet ingredients assembled together. I kind of cheated in this picture because I have the “good – picture ready” brown sugar instead of the gnarly hard as a rock little bag of dark brown sugar that I used. I put the brown sugar in a microwave safe container and placed a damp paper towel on it, then zapped it in the microwave for 20 seconds to re-soften it. It had lumps, so I put the hard-ish lumps in with some of the oil and white sugar into a Magic Bullet® mixer, tossed in the eggs, and whipped the lumps out.

Wet ingredients in the bowl

Here are the wet ingredients assembled in another bowl. (This was before the lumps were scooped out and Bulleted away.) I tried to mix this by hand, but the lumps were getting on my nerves. They needed to go. At this point, I had not actually preheated the oven yet, so I did. I wasn’t sure how long all my assembly was going to take and it’s hot here, so I was going to turn the oven on as late as possible.

Now comes assembly time! I purchased already shredded carrots to make sure there were no shredded fingers in the cake with the shredded carrots. See how nice the wet ingredients look? Magic Bullet®.

wet ingredients, dry ingredients, shredded carrots

I ended up buying too many carrots. I am not good at eyeballing how much I need. I used one bag for this cake.

carrot cake batter poured into pans

Here is the carrot cake batter poured into pans. What pans did I use?  I used foil throw away pans that were under $2 for 3 at the store. I greased and floured the pans and used a cookie sheet under it because I wasn’t sure if it was going to cook over, or if the pans would get weird because they were foil. They were fine: I didn’t actually need the cookie sheet. In the oven they go. Now onto the caramel.

Okay, I’m a dork and I used to go to the Geauga County Maple Festival in Chardon, BUT I wasn’t interested in buying REAL maple syrup because it’s expensive, and I have no use for it after this recipe. I picked up some cheap not so maple pancake syrup from the store. Then began to fret because it wouldn’t get thick and sit right on the cake. So, I looked up a caramel recipe instead and made that.

 

sugar and water on stove

sugar bubbling away

This is a cup of sugar and 1/3 c of water in a saucepan. The idea is to NOT STIR this and put it on medium heat until the sugar melts and it gets all bubbly good. To stop the sauce from cooking, you pour in 2/3 cup heavy cream.

 

heavy cream

issues opening heavy cream

chip clip to close heavy cream

As the old cartoons would say, “Fricka Fraka Bricka Bracka” Why can’t I open this damn thing normally. It reminded me of the nightmare at lunch trying to get the little carton of milk open without spilling it all over the place. I gave up after trying the one side and just ripped the whole top open. Think you’re going to show me up Mr. Heavy Cream! Oh, and I didn’t need the whole amount for this recipe. What’s a girl to do?   Well, a handy dandy chip clip will close that right up for ya! I ended up pouring that into a cup of coffee I made.

 

sugar and water on stove

cooked caramel

At this juncture, I can hear my grandmother sighing. “Girl, you have no patience! You needed to heat that longer so it would actually brown. It’s too light. It doesn’t look like the picture.”

Oh well.

I finished that with the heavy cream and 2 T of butter then called it done. Oh, and for good measure, I threw in some pancake syrup in case there was even a hint of some kind of maple in there.

So, it’s light. It’s still tasty. Now it is frosting time!

powdered sugar, butter, cream cheese

The frosting is simply powdered sugar, butter, and cream cheese. Yum! Apparently, I didn’t think it was important to take a picture of the frosting. Just picture a small round bowl with white delicious cream cheese frosting in it. Time to take the cake out!

sun photo

 

The carrot cake looks lovely (better than that seasoned cookie sheet), and I let these sit in the pan for 10 minutes before I put them on plates to finish cooling. This had to happen in the fridge because, as stated earlier, it’s hot here.

cooked carrot cake

carrot cake cooling on plates

As you can see, the foil baking rounds created a lovely edge for the cake. Now to level the layers, so the cake sits evenly.

 

leveling the carrot cake

close up of carrot cake texture

After leveling the cake, I took a close-up photo to show the texture of the cake. Also, with the leveling, I got to sample everything before it was assembled into the finished cake. Bonus!

finished carrot cake

sliced finished carrot cake

I frosted the bottom layer and drizzled some caramel on it, then put on the top layer repeating the process, and finished it off by sprinkling some shredded carrots on top. Obviously, my grandmother would be mentioning that the caramel could have been darker. I also drizzled some pancake syrup on it again for the desired possible hint of maple effect. It does not look like the photo from the pin, but we’ll just say I made it my own from the creative end. Oh! I almost forgot; you’ll notice there are no pecans on the cake. Yeah, I forgot to buy those.  Still delicious!

My Comfort Foods Aren’t Comforting

I was driving in the car today thinking about food. I don’t think about food all the time, but lately, I’ve been wondering why I want to eat the things I do. I was thinking about the idea of comfort food. I gathered that was food that people want to eat to remember the past and feel better. Then I began to wonder what my comfort food was. Not so much exactly what it was, per se, but more why I called it that. I didn’t have a happy childhood. When we had an abundance of casseroles that meant somebody died. We ate spaghetti once a week and Hamburger Helper because we couldn’t afford anything else. Little Debbie was a member of our family because “she” was cheap.

I tend to lean towards carberific food when I want comfort food. But I’m not eating to eat. I’m eating to feel better. That’s not the point of food. Food isn’t supposed to be around to make us feel better about our lives. And let’s say I eat it then…..I don’t eat until I’m full…..I eat until I feel better. That’s not right either. I can eat a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I add more butter, so I don’t have to worry about the milk part. I do not eat a bowl of cereal; I eat a box of cereal. While I’m eating one bowl, I’m already thinking about the next. As long as the milk holds out, I keep filling the bowl. Do I feel “better” when I’m done? Hell, no! I feel full and uncomfortable. Was that what I was really going for?

When my mother went to the Dr. (she went A LOT) we would get a candy bar from the pharmacy for our troubles. It was a Cadbury Milk Bar. I was partial to the caramel ones. When I go to the Dr. as an adult (seldom), I want a candy bar. Exactly a Cadbury Milk Bar Caramel flavored so I can think about my mother. Was my mother healthy? Nope, we went to the Dr. a lot with her because she had chronic illness, several bouts of almost dying, and she took a crap ton of pills. But I equate this with candy. Does this sound comforting? Not really.

Let’s not even think about birthdays at our house. Our birthdays were almost all so close together that every week we had a new cake for over a month. We couldn’t lump anyone’s birthday together. We all had to have our own cake. Cake came with ice cream and for me, a lot of frosting!

So where does my idea of food and comfort come from then?

My one grandmother used to make homemade macaroni and cheese; my other grandmother preferred Kraft. I want both. I stayed with my homemade macaroni and cheese grandmother when my mother was in the hospital so long we needed to go to school somewhere else for a while. I also stayed with her after I got divorced because my mother died within the same time frame (a week after the divorce) and at that point, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t function, I just had no idea what to do with myself. I was never getting divorced and because I did, my mother was supposed to help me through this. This was not very comforting either. But I did get the opportunity to eat some stale doughnuts (because they were on sale), all of the homemade holiday candy, the onslaught of Easter chocolate, the nut rolls during the holidays, and of course the homemade macaroni & cheese. The only problem with this was that I was an emotional zombie at this time. I went to work and came home. That was the extent of my life for about a year after I was divorced. My grandfather started telling me that I needed to get out of the house. He didn’t even care if I stayed out all night, I just needed to go back to the land of the living because I was creeping everyone out at the house.

Then I took care of my Kraft Macaroni & Cheese grandmother for several years towards the end of her life. We had fun times. We went on a winery tour around Ohio. I paid for the tour for just myself, but she was so damn cute that every winery gave her free stuff. My grandmother was diabetic. My father (her son) wanted her to live her life however she wanted, so one day a week he would take her out and they would eat junk. She would buy candy, ice cream, whatever crap she wanted to eat, and he let her. Does this sound comforting? She always had a stomachache afterward. ALWAYS! My brother and sister-in-law wanted to help, so they bought her sugar-free candy. She ate the WHOLE BAG in one sitting. Ever look at some of the sugar-free candy bags? There’s a warning on there. “Excessive consumption can have a laxative effect.” Yeah, it did. Was that comforting? NO!

So, what is comfort food? I have no idea. I know that I seldom have bread, cereal, pasta, or candy bars in my house. I don’t eat a few and don’t eat til full, so they can’t be around. Will I go out to a restaurant and eat the bread that’s put on the table? Sometimes. Other times I simply say, “No thanks.” and make them take the bread away from the table. I make homemade macaroni and cheese and eat Kraft once in a blue moon now. I still look at the Cadbury Milk Bars in the grocery store, but I simply walk past them instead of telling myself, “I deserve this.”

I know everyone has problems. Most likely the majority of people did not have a happy childhood. I’m not really talking about everyone else here though. Just myself and the idea of comfort food.

I’m not sure what type of food would actually make me happy. I’ve eaten candy bars and noticed that about 5 seconds after I finish it, the taste is already gone out of my mouth. The calories surprisingly are still there, but the taste and memory of the food are already gone. Then I begin to think I got gypped. I think if I’m going to have well over my calorie limit for the day, I should at least get to enjoy it longer.

So, then I’m left with the idea of what is comfort food? I still have no idea.