Saturday afternoon

    I have 35 minutes until the cake is done. How much can I write in 35 minutes? Tomorrow is my Dad's 94th birthday. His favorite birthday cake has nuts and candied fruit in it. I never liked it much, sometimes it's a little dry and crumbly. He doesn't eat nuts and professes not to like desserts or sweets. He did, however, suggest that I could make him a white cake without nuts. In my research I found that a truly white cake has a lot of egg whites in it. I object to wasting a bunch of egg yolks. If I were having a dinner party like we used to do, I would make zabaglione with the egg yolks--it's basically Marsala and egg yolks--and sugar--chilled in fancy glasses, very rich and elegant. One or two egg yolks you can throw in scrambled eggs or pancakes. But 12-14 egg whites is a lot. I found a recipe for daffodil cake (McCall's Best Daffodil Cake). This uses some of the egg yolks (5) for a yellow cake with a little lemon zest that is marbled with the white cake in a tube pan or a Bundt pan (not sure the difference at the moment). Other advantages--no greasing the pan, no frosting! Hopefully, it will be beautiful and delicious and could become a new tradition. In any case, it fills the bill. I had about 4 egg whites left from other recipes (they keep a long time and I usually make meringues with them every now and then). So I only put about 9 egg whites in, rather than 12-14. It beat up most impressively and will probably be great. I also only sifted the cake flour a couple times, instead of the 5 it called for. And used a lot less lemon zest. I'll report back. 

    Today is Michael's birthday. Michael is my son-in-law since almost a month ago. Michael and his son (and my daughter) will come for dinner tomorrow night. If it is as nice tomorrow as it is today, we will eat dinner outside. We might cook some of the food on the grill. The menu has to be pretty limited, since my Dad does not eat many things. We can have green beans or yellow squash. The yellow squash could be cooked on the grill, so that's kind of fun. I'm thinking pork roast or pork tenderloins, but I still need to buy them and then marinate or rub them. For carbs, no rice (who can't eat rice?). I would make potato salad, but that might be hard on his digestion. No milk product, so no mashed potatoes...macaroni would be okay, but not macaroni salad and no cheese...so just plain potatoes I guess. 

(Oh, Dad's back from his swim; he went to the beach and said it was warmer than he expected. It is a lovely time of year here, early Fall. The ocean is warmer than in the early summer and the air is still pleasant.)

My husband is attending his 50th high school reunion. I could have joined him, but committed to attending the Massachusetts state Democratic party caucus. It was all on line, but I didn't know that at first. Lots of heartfelt speeches and hope for the future. We'll see. I did have a little nap afterwards, but Dad was calling for me. I never nap, so can hardly blame him for waking me up. He wanted to know why he didn't get the voice messages that people had left him. He did have one important message from last Wednesday, which he was going to return right away, but I pointed out that the message said to call back Monday through Friday 7-7... Then I had to test his phone, which was working but the volume was turned all the way down. He didn't know how he could have done that, but I pointed out that the volume was on the side and it was pretty easy to do. He said he never knew the volume knobs were there, but I think he did once. I guess there's no reason to get him a new phone, it might be harder for him to learn to use it. I can barely figure this one out, it's so old. Needless to say, it's not a smart phone. 

Today is Paturday. or is it Patturday? Every other Saturday morning, I leave the house early and get to Michael's about 6. His son is an early riser (and so am I), but my daughter and her husband like to sleep in on a Saturday morning. My grandson (by marriage) and I often play games, like Monopoly or Uno. Today he was teaching me a game I was not really excited about (Isaac and the 4 souls?). It seemed a little creepy, something he likes and I don't. (Also Michael likes and my daughter doesn't.) But we had a mission today. There were 4 bags of assorted Legos in the garage--big black plastic trash bags. My daughter had gone by The Container Store yesterday and bought a piece of plastic furniture--9 rainbow-colored drawers. The boy and I spent about 2 hours sorting the Legos into the right drawers--and we only got through half of the first bag! The color with the most Legos? Gray. There was not a gray drawer, of course, but we repurposed the pink drawer, not having any pink Legos. Purple was used for brown, and teal for white--and black. Not my system, but it worked, In fact, I thought we should sort them by shape. But he was sure they had been sorted by color before. 

Aside from my biweekly gift of spending time with his son, and the dinner tomorrow night, a start on sorting the Legos will have to do.