Every day it gets a little better

My dog Koolit is feeling so much better. For one thing, when he visits the water bowl, he’s only drinking for a short time, instead of his marathon sessions that he was indulging in before we put him on antibiotics. He hasn’t woken me up in the middle of the night by banging his tags against his water bowl for five straight minutes, and I haven’t woken up to the sound of urine hitting the tile floor in the bathroom. He’s even seeming to act better. Today was a really gorgeous day, and we let the dog out to do his business just before we left the house. I got tired of waiting for him, so I went to see what the heck he was doing out there. And I found him laying on the grass, sniffing the fresh air and thoroughly enjoying the breeze ruffling his fur and the sun warming his skin. This wasn’t our first nice day of the spring, but it was the first time he’s felt well enough to enjoy himself out there.

It makes me feel so much better, let me tell you.

For those of you who were wondering if the heat was doing him in, let me assure you that isn’t the case. Thus far, I can tell you that Rhode Island has a summer like Washington’s, though I can see the potential for humidity here, where Washington has none. Not enough to be a problem, anyhow. It hasn’t even hit 80º here yet, though it’s now the first day of June. Firefox is telling me the forecast for this coming week is low 70s all the way down to the low 60s for the high temperature of the day.

It’s got to get hot enough eventually for beach weather, since we have some very popular beaches in Newport. There was a front page photo in the newspaper one day showing Easton’s Beach to be completely packed in July. I don’t mind the cool weather right now. I figure it’s that much less time I have to deal with hot, sticky weather without air conditioning. Plus it’s what I got used to in Washington.

How will I survive when we move back to Virginia?? HOW?!

Argh.

Yesterday we headed up to a mom & pop grocery store to get Grace what she calls “sick oatmeal.” See, when she had the stomach flu a couple months ago, the only thing I could think of to give her that was mild enough for a queasy stomach was the Maypo hot cereal I had on hand. Now she has it every school day, and she still refers to it as “sick oatmeal.”

It’s funny what sticks in a kid’s mind.

At this grocery store, we found a pint of fresh blueberries on sale for a mere $3! It must be coming into blueberry season because they’re usually much more expensive than that. It was such a good deal I had to pick them up, even though I had no idea what I would make with them.

I also got some strawberries, though I know what to do with those. Dip into sugar and eat! Yummy!!

That’s when we got an invite to our friends’ house for dinner, and I knew I had to make something special. This was the second time they’d invited us over, and we hadn’t had a chance to reciprocate yet!

I poked around on the internet, finding a recipe for angel food cake — but then I realized it used twelve (!!!) egg whites. Hm. Well. On to another recipe.

Finally I found one for blueberry pound cake. It seemed like it was easy enough, reading through the recipe. But in practice, it was a bit more difficult.

See, I am not a baker. Give me a dinner to make, and I am good to go. I can make almost anything if it’s not too terribly complicated. Things that are rolled, like ravioli or wantons, are out, as well as anything requiring a dough. But anything else, that I can handle.

Baking isn’t hard, per se, but it’s more finicky. Your measurements have to be more precise, and your ingredients have to be fresh enough. And I hardly do any of it since Kurt and I don’t have a sweet tooth. I’ll want one muffin or one brownie if I make them, and then the rest goes stale. So there isn’t really a point to my practicing my baking skills.

Like I said, the recipe wasn’t hard, but it was fussy. First you had to cream the butter, the cream cheese, and the sugar together. Thank God I have a KitchenAid stand mixer; I could throw everything in there and walk away for a couple of minutes to get the rest of the ingredients prepared. Then you added three eggs, one at a time, and then one egg white. So you add, you mix, you stop, you scrape, you add, you mix, you stop, you scrape. Lather, rinse, repeat. Next was mixing the flour with the baking powder, the baking soda, and the salt, and adding the flour in small batches, alternating with adding the lemon yogurt. Finally it all came together as a batter, and the only thing that was left was to fold in the vanilla and the blueberries.

Baking took an hour and ten minutes, but once it was finished, it looked divine. All that was left was to drizzle a glaze made from powdered sugar and lemon juice over the warm cake once it had cooled slightly in the pan.

Behold!

Now doesn’t that look gorgeous?? I was so amazed that I managed to create something so pretty.  And it was very tasty as well.  Our friends kept telling me how good it was.  The husband even had two pieces!!

I guess maybe now I can add baking to my list of things I can do.  As long as I stay away from pies.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a decent crust!