neopolitan cake

A few months back I found this cake online and knew I had to have it.  It was just too pretty and sounded too tasty.  For my birthday I always have a Hummingbird Cake made by my mom or mammaw (I haven’t attempted one on my own yet but I need to—same with banana cake) but this year I decided to switch it up and decided I wanted this. 

A few things ended up a bit different in our version—the strawberry layer especially was just too delicate for splitting so all our layers were WHOLE layers!  I also didn’t have enough sense to have Andy get strawberry oil from work so our icing was not strawberry flavored. 

Pictures from the process are below—one odd thing was that, despite being baked in the same pans, the different types of cake had different diameters.  You should make this!

Lasagna

Topography

 Tonight I made lasagna--one of my favorite meals.

I started off by making the sauce, mixing together some cottage cheese and mozzarella, and getting out the fresh noodles.  Once the sauce gurgled enough I got everything together and started layering.  A bit of fresh parsley was added to each layer as well.  I love a bit of fresh basil added right before chowing down.

Zahi Hawass

Dr Hawass gave a lecture in Cincinnati last night.  I was very impressed with his charm and wit.  It pleased me greatly that he spent time discussing the political situation in Egypt.  My friend Amanda does a better job than I at describing the event. 

While we waited for things to start there was an ad for the Cleopatra exhibit.  So glad that Cincinnati has this come through town.  Great job on the design too.  The hour and a half lecture was never boring and it was great seeing a number of kids there.

Note: the museum center is the same building as the train station so it's a great reason to take the train here :)

Win a trip to Paris!

Check out the lovely Oh Happy Day and do your best to win a trip to Paris!

DC

A few thoughts from my DC visit:

Spy Museum: love the stuff in it, wish pictures could be taken, the layout as you get closer to the end is atrocious.  

American History: amused at seeing Ric Flair’s robe and boots, they need more stuff—just not enough pop culture items!  Loved seeing Minnie Pearl’s hat as she’s an idol of mine—even met her in person once.  Was expecting more.

Mall: work on that landscaping!  Awful!  Was nice seeing everything in person though.

Food: lots of yummy. I want another one of those habanero infused tequila drinks from Fruit Bat.  I had some awesome/spicy penne arrabiata as well.

Allergies: bite the big one.

Friends: loved seeing them. Really wish we were all closer to each other.

Rain

I've always enjoyed playing in the rain--just standing, dancing, whatever.

One time it rained so hard I took a shower outside. Washed my hair even.

recent things

I've gone to Reds games.  I always recommend a Reds game.

Opening Day was amazing as always even though I didn't attend the actual game.  Love watching the parade.  The Budweiser Clydesdales were in town for the parade and Opening Night and made an appearance on the Square one day at lunch.  I took lots of photos.

I went to a Cyclones game.  They're now out for the season so no more of that for a while...

A bunch of people came over to watch WrestleMania.  Always fun.

Heather and Harper came to visit.  We ate Thai food and flew a kite.  That's a good night.

I have been extremely busy at work.  Things were hectic to begin with and now a co-worker is out for an extended period of time due to injury.  More work for me.

The father of one of my close friends (since Kindergarten!) passed away.  He was sick for a while and old/a full life so I'm fine on that part but feel bad that I can't make the trip home to be there for her.

Amanda visited this weekend.  I will make this a separate post.

I will update soon

I promise.

in my head now.

Really wish her solo album had happened.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

in the snow

This morning's scenery.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Chop

I used to eat green beans with chopsticks.

My mom was a member of Homemakers for years and one of the other ladies, Jan, had lived in Asia for a while.  Jan exposed them all to Asian food and gave everyone a pair of chopsticks--very nice ones and there was a pair for me too!  I thought they were the coolest thing.  None of Jan's recipes made it to the Grant household but I used those poor chopsticks to death (my mom's, of course, are in pristine condition in a glass cabinet).

Other fun facts about Jan:
She dressed as Santa one year--my biggest Santa memory is of her--she made a good one!
Her husband was named Butch and had a mechanical larynx.
One year for Halloween she gave me Dr. Mario for my Game Boy!!!
I haven't seen her in years.

Rink

charm

When I was a kid we kept chickens in a house in the backyard near the woods.  I remember that I named the rooster Kenny Day after a man my dad worked with (but this has nothing to do with my story).  Anyway, when you live in the country and you have chickens—opossums are a big problem/threat.  To protect the chickens we had opossum traps set up out back.  This is a big metal trap that slams shut whenever something gets inside.

When I was a kid we also kept a bunch of cats.  Yes, I know you see where this is going…  Grey--a furry, bob-tailed cat decided to investigate around the hen house one time and we ended up with a three-footed kitty.

Maybe I should have kept that foot…she was a very rabbit-like cat! 

claire

Spiral

Today I opened up a new spiral notebook and the last page was part of a Vietnamese newspaper.

There's a bomb in the bathroom

Throughout school there were always a few bomb threats each year.  Usually these were just from someone calling in a threat but my senior year things went a bit differently.  There was a bomb in the school!  ...or so they thought.

After it was known that we needed to get out of the school, word spread that a bomb was found in one of the bathrooms.  Someone noticed something suspicious in one of the toilets and alerted the principal's office right away.  They took a quick look and determined we should get out of there--better safe than sorry sort of thing.

The "bomb" was investigated a bit more and determined to be....the automatic flusher.  It had gotten loose.

Clarky

In seventh grade I had a teacher affectionately known as Clarky.  Clarky taught Social Studies and was a great and passionate man who truly wanted his students to learn.  One of the ways you could tell this was through his utter frustration.  Every so often the class would make him just so very, very mad.  The worst of this occurred one day when he had too much of a student not knowing or paying attention and decided to throw his book across the classroom.  We paid attention the rest of the time.

My other biggest memory from that class happened the day someone decided to put a dead bird on Clarky's desk.  Yes.

Sometimes I wish I could turn back time

One year when I was in high school a lot of people wore Carhartt jackets.  Makes sense, I’m from the sticks, lots of farmers/hunters, etc.  It became so popular that it was somehow thought to be “gang” related and there were threats of it being outlawed.  It was all very laughable.  Anyway, for senior skits that year, a group of guys performed “Quit Playing Games with Carhartt” to the tune of “Quit Playing Games with My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys.  It was one of the most fabulous things ever and I can’t help but sing along…to the wrong words…if I ever come across the song on the radio.

Planting the future

When I was little my Mammaw Shirley and Pappaw Toodlum decided they wanted to do something for me that would benefit my future.  While other grandparents start a college fund or go gaga over Gerber life insurance, mine decided to plant some ginseng.  You see, the Crumps were quite adept at finding ginseng, morel mushrooms, whatever they looked for.  A pretty penny could be made selling ginseng (and nothing's better than some fried morels) and they wanted the best for me. 

The ginseng was put in the ground at the edge of the woods right behind the house and through the years we would check on it.  Still there, growing along with me, things were as expected...then one year--no ginseng.  During the in-between years wild blackberry bushes showed up in the same area.  It was marvelous as blackberries are one of my favorite fruits (I have a blackberry story for another time) and yum, cobbler!  But, as things go, it turns out that blackberries and ginseng aren't the best of friends and yep, they killed each other...