What is it about cooking that draws people to the kitchen. As soon as the knives are pulled out and the veggies are washed a switch goes off in our heads that tells us to go beg for scraps from the cook.

Here are some pictures of some begging going on.

The weekend is about to start and I can’t wait to see what Chuck is going to have cooking up for us.

Bring it!

Step 2: Cool the cake and frost it.

Step 3: Bake 1 cake mix into three small loaf pans and put into freezer. The cakes are easier to maneuver when they’re frozen.

Step 4: Make Pudding. I used Butterscotch.

Step 5: Layer two small cakes with butterscotch between them.

Step 6: Use food coloring to turn the white frosting into a weird shade of pink.

Step 7: Frost the small cakes with that weird shade of pink frosting. Put the small cakes on the frosted rectangle cake.

Step 8: Cut a small hole in a corner of a small baggie. Fill it with icing.

Step 9: Attack the small cake with the icing bag.

Step 10: Pipe letters onto the cake and try not to write on a slant.

Step 11: Take third small cake out of the freezer and carve into what might resemble a shoe if you squint your eyes real hard. (Crumbs were coming off the cake pretty bad so I put one layer of frosting on the shoe and then froze the cake again. That way when I put the second layer of frosting on there weren’t any visible cake crumbs.)

Step 12: Put the shoe on the cake, go nuts with the icing bag and decide that no more damage can be made to it. This is when you know you’re done.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KELSEY!

The birthday girl is obsessed with shoes and has more pairs of shoes than I do so I wanted to make a shoe cake. How hard can it be to make a cake in the shape of a shoe. If I don’t care what it looks like than it’s pretty dang easy. Unfortunately I have just spent enough time looking at crappy shoe cakes and amazing shoe cakes and I decided that if I don’t do anything else today or tonight, this girl is getting one freaking amazing shoe cake.

Anybody ever made a freaking amazing shoe cake before because I’m clueless.

Chuck finally decided on a pasta dish with creme fraiche, bacon, mushrooms and onion and garlic. It’s so good. He also made a tomato and cucumber salad and had cantaloupe with Bayonne ham. I made the dessert which was so fattening I think I gained 12 pounds just mixing the batter. It’s a pound cake that has almost as much butter as flour! The icing is melted chocolate and creme fraiche. Super high in calories but it was divine!

One of the tables was from El Salvador and they made these patties from scratch that were like a pita but inside was refried beans. You top the fried ‘pita’ with something that looked like red cabbage but was sweet and then put a red sauce on top of it and eat it like a taco. I thought my mouth was going to singe off my face but it was really good. Almost better than Chuck’s, not quite, but almost.

I think my favorite part of the evening was when my friend Arianna put me behind the wheel of a car she’s borrowing from a friend. It’s gorgeous and man, does it have scoot. It’s a Mercedes and I couldn’t wait to feel the wind in my hair in that baby but when she handed me the keys I thought it was Christmas, come early! I slammed on that accelerator and felt the rush of power and decided that Chuck is going to have to make enough money for me to have one because that was AWESOME!

I got to drive a convertible, Chuck got to have more than a hundred people tell him how fabulous a cook he is and the kids got to beat on a pinata.

All in all I think everyone has gone to bed happy. I’d be happier still if my house would magically clean itself while I sleep. I have 25 people coming over tomorrow for a barbecue in David’s honor. It’s his first birthday. I can’t believe it’s here already. One year old and he’s still my little baby who’s feet I love to munch on.

Crap, I was so determined not to get all mushy and write crap like that. Everybody writes mushy stuff when it’s their kids’ birthday and I was hoping I’d do it different but apparently I can’t fight the machine.