Keeping of the Grounds

Betty Crocker called. Wants her calories back.

Whenever I bake something irresistible, I sneak into the pan and straighten the edges. All day long. I printed a chocolate cake recipe from Pioneer Woman's blog and made it for Mother's Day. Her blog says it is so good it will make you "wig out". That's a weird expression that I had never heard before. What is wigging out? And am I allowed to do that if I'm a baptist? :) I took my first bite of this cake, and I'm pretty sure I wigged. It's that good. I enjoyed a respectable piece on Mother's Day, and ever since have been slicing long, skinny strips which, all added together, total an inappropriately sized mound of chocolaty deliciousness. I tidy one corner, then an edge, then back to the corner to neatly trim. By late yesterday afternoon my sink looked like this....

Four knives (pointed little daggers piercing my guilty conscience) stacked up as a sharp reminder that I had misbehaved four times by 4:30. Sigh. It's better to just leave one knife in the pan.

It's mid-May, which means it's time to get the yard in shape for summer. My goal for the week is to do at least one thing in the yard every day, so I've declared this Grounds Keeping week. Due to my overall lack of enthusiasm for yard work, I chose a very simple project to ease in gently. No use getting too productive too quickly. Our shed needed some spiffing up.

I never thought I'd become "that girl"...the one who "plants" plastic flowers in her yard. But, the reality of my life lies somewhere between really wanting to water all the flowers and actually getting around to watering all the flowers. So, if the sprinkler system can't reach it, it needs to be drought tolerant. Or plastic. While purusing the fake flower isle like a pseudo-gardener, I stumbled upon these cute little garden picks on clearance for only fifty cents. Aren't they cute?

The birds were white when I bought them, but I decided they didn't show up too well, so I brought them in and rubbed on some blue paint on them with a paper towel. Now they are just right. I have three loads of laundry dumped on the foot of my bed, I haven't graded math, and so far left-over chocolate cake is the only thing on the dinner menu. But thank goodness I got those birds painted. The plastic flowers would be so lonely without them.

Our gangly, twisted garden hose drives me crazy. It is always snaked along the ground in a disorderly fashion, and no matter how we try to neatly coil it in the corner, it always seems to escape the flower bed and spill haphazardly onto the patio. So, I took my smart self to Home Depot yesterday and got a hose house. I intended to make my man right proud by getting it set up before he got home from work, but the confusing directions caused me to head inside and start straightening some edges! Manor Man handled the assembly, and now my tidy little hose house sits near my spiffy little shed. Not that I actually need to use the hose to water my shed flowers, but if I did, I could. It's all as neat and straight as my cake pan.

Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake

Combine in a mixing bowl:

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1/4 t. salt

In a pan, melt:

2 sticks butter

Add 4 heaping tablespoons cocoa. Stir.

Add 1 cup boiling water, allow mixture to boil 30 seconds, then turn off heat.

Pour over flour mixture, and stir to lightly cool.

In a measuring cup, mix:

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 beaten eggs

1 t. baking soda

1 t. vanilla

Stir into chocolate mixture and mix well.

Pour into sheet cake pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, make the icing.

Melt 1 and 3/4 sticks butter in a pan.

Add 4 heaping tablespoons cocoa, stir to combine, then turn off heat.

Add:

6 T. milk

1 t. vanilla

1 pound minus 1/2 cup powdered sugar - a strange amount but it works

Stir together and add 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, if desired.

Pour frosting over warm cake.

I highly recommend this with a batch of homemade vanilla ice cream.