Baking Up a Storm

I have been doing a lot of baking lately. It’s impossible to NOT want to make something every time I look at our awesome kitchen. There were the cupcake bites of two weeks ago, of course. And last Friday I made two cheesecakes to take over to Jen and Gavin’s for dinner to celebrate Jen’s birthday. The plans shifted to their house at the last minute after Jen was put on bedrest for the foreseeable future with the twins — and told to watch her carb intake after a suspicious glucose test.

Do you know how hard it is to make a cake for someone who’s supposed to be limiting their carb intake?

Fortunately there are things like the Atkins diet and Splenda. And cheesecake, apparently, which while high in fat is low in carbs since it has no flour and can be made with fake sugar! I had never made a cheesecake before, but it turned out to be quite easy once I made a quick trip to HEB for eggs, graham crackers, and two cheap springform pans. I had always wondered what those weird round pans with latches were for; now I know! I made one plain cheesecake and one pumpkin, and they were both quite tasty. The pumpkin one was better.

I’m excited to try yet another dessert, but this newfound love of baking is quite bad for my waistline.

On tap for this weekend, house-wise, is an ambitious list that I’m trying to work my way down. It includes things like painting the kitchen, unpacking more of the garage, and — oh yes — edging the lawn. We got our first letter from the homeowners association last week politely informing us that our edging was not sufficient. This was not exactly a surprise, since we hadn’t edged in at least 3 weeks.

(For the record, I tried to edge, really I did, but the string trimmer and I were not exactly getting along and I decided to give up in lieu of throwing the entire thing into the street in front of the next passing car.)

So last weekend we bought the edger attachment, and then it proceeded to rain, and rain, and rain. And then this week it was hot, and humid, and more hot, and more humid. But today!

Today it is beautiful! Today is one of those days, and there are only a handful of them per year, that make living in south Texas totally awesome! And it’s supposed to stay this way all weekend.

To celebrate, I think I’ll edge my lawn.