The switch to WordPress is moving along, albeit slowly, but at least it’s moving along. I’m taking my time and am quite satisfied with the results so far. I found this template and I really like it though it’s a bit plain, but it looks clean and feels less cluttered than the old site did so I’ll keep it for now. Until I understand the code well enough to tweak things to fit my personality better I think it will suit me fine. Some nice new touches; I now have an “About Deb” page in the sidebar and a page dedicated to my cookbook collection…wee! I’ve been meaning to list my collection for ages but like so many things I just never got around to it. I’m glad I’ve started it though, after all, it IS from the pages of all those books that I get the inspiration to experiment and putter around my kitchen so they do deserve some spotlight. If you take a look at the list just note that it isn’t complete, it is a definite work in progress. I have to still unpack and then catalogue most of my books and that is going very sloooowly. I’m a little overwhelmed actually, I really do have a LOT of books, luckily I found this neat little piece of software that turns the camera on my laptop into a barcode reader so that I can scan the isbn numbers on the books into a database so (thank you powers that be) I don’t have to type each one in manually.

Anyway, I don’t mean to bore you with the minutiae of the website, I’ll just say one more thing…the archives from the old blog still haven’t been imported, I ran into a little problem and need to figure out how to troubleshoot that so if you can bear with me a bit longer I’ll be your best friend forever.

Winter has finally arrived. It is mutha-furfin bitter cold out there, 8 degrees F. when I checked the temp this morning. I guess it’s all relative though, I was in Fairbanks, Alaska about 10 years ago and remember our host telling us that the elementary school lets the children outside for recess up until 20 below zero. Minus twenty is buh-buh-bitter COLD people! So yeah, it’s 8 degrees F. here but I’m not complaining. We finally got a little bit of snow, maybe 2 inches at the most but it was enough to make me happy. The whole trip to Australia brought to light that fact that I need seasons like we have here in the Northeast. We basically had 18 months of continuous nice weather. We left while it was still fall here in NY and were in Australia for their spring and summer then came back at the beginning of our summer, so when it was starting to look like we would not have a cold snowy winter I was getting a bit bummed out. The whole family bundled up and went out to play in the snow on Saturday, the girl made snow angels and I shoveled the driveway. Nothing like shoveling the driveway to bring out the obsessive compulsive tendencies. I had to get every…last…bit…of snow on the shovel before I started a new section of driveway and if it wasn’t right…I spread it all back and started again! HA! j/k

The little girl that lives in my house has been sick with a very bad ear infection. Since she hasn’t been outside since Saturday I’ve been trying to find things to do around the house that are fun and that will help take her mind off of “the bugs and crickets” in her head. We’ve done a lot of crafty projects; coloring, painting, gluing, paper cutting, using glitter (omg the glitter) and when that became boring, we started baking.

Eight Animals Bake a Cake by Susan Middleton Elya is a cleverly written and charmingly illustrated book about eight animal friends who gather together to bake a cake. Each animal is responsible for contributing an ingredient to the pot and it’s fun to see who is going to bring what as well as try to guess what kind of cake it will be.

Horse gallops over, swinging the salt. “Sal” neighs Caballo as he comes to a halt.

After working in harmony to assemble the ingredients and make the batter, their enthusiasm gets the better of them when the time comes to pull the cake out of the oven.

“I’ll take the cake out,” says Rana. “No, me!” “I will!” No, I will!” They just can’t agree. “We need the best paws,” argues Perro, “like mine.” “My patas, says Gato, “will work out just fine.”

As with all situations where there are just too many cooks, disaster strikes and the cake is dropped to the floor. It is up to the animals to come up with a solution that allows them to salvage their efforts and still enjoy the cake.

Clever Vaca steps in “Well neighs Caballo, “we’ve all eaten worse.” “He’s right” Vaca moos. “But bring me my purse…”

Written in rhyme in both English and Spanish with a glossary at the beginning of the book, the colorful illustrations by Lee Chapman together with the charming story make this a fun book to read to a 3 year old (although I’m sure it holds well for kids a bit older too, heck I was charmed by the story)! The cake recipe at the back of the book (I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what kind of cake) is veerrry easy to follow and yields a delicious cake that your child may or may not eat because it’s more fun to lick the spoon than eat the actual cake-results may very.