Happy Birthday Daddy! I love you!
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When I was in junior high, one of my best friends was Terese Sievers. She was sweet, smart (a whiz at math), beautiful, with perfect black hair; a fine person and a marvelous friend. I spent a lot of time at her house: meals, parties, and sleepovers, her adorable little brother Todd waking us in the morning. Among my favorite memories is the time we baked this cake together. I had never baked with a friend before, and there was a definite specialness to it. We worked with ease in her kitchen, so much so that it overshadows any memory of my first bite of cake. Working together mattered more.
Though the memory of this cake is fine, it has very little to do with how I feel about it now. I am hard pressed to find another chocolate cake that I like so well. This is moist, rich, and always delicious, and certainly among the easiest to prepare. I am not one for fuss in the kitchen – my Julia Child days having long past. The hubster is a big fan as well, nearly always suggesting I make it when I am in the mood for chocolate. Thankfully, too, I’ve adapted it so it is pretty healthy, as far as cakes go, with the rolled oats and whole wheat flour providing a good amount of fiber, but in secret agent fashion. Let’s call it MI5 cake, shall we?
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake
1 3/4 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter, softened (8 tablespoons)*
2 eggs
1 cup flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips**
3/4 cup nuts (optional)
Pour water over oatmeal in a large bowl, and let stand 10 minutes. Add both sugars and butter. Mix well. Add eggs. Sift dry ingredients together, and add to oatmeal mixture, mixing well.
Pick a pan – 13×9 or Bundt
For the 13X9: Grease pan well. Add 1 cup of chocolate chips (and fruit if you are using it) to batter, pour into pan, and sprinkle remaining chips over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake springs back when touched.
For the Bundt: Grease pan well. Mix in chocolate chips (and fruit if you are using it), pour into pan, smoothing the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake springs back when touched. Cool for 5 minutes before turning out of the pan.
The cake is great warm, at room temperature, on it’s own, sprinkled with powdered sugar, or frosted. You really can’t lose.
Enjoy!
*If you are itching to make the cake, but your butter is not soft, do what I do: use a cheese grater on the butter. I also do this for pie crust. Freeze the butter and put it through the grater. It will still be cold and in uniform pieces. I love uniformity in the kitchen!
**Use any chocolate chip you like, but know that white chocolate chips tend to melt entirely and form slightly unsightly cracks in the cake (this is why God created frosting).
***If you like dried fruit, this cake is the perfect vehicle for it. I am rather fond of adding dried cherries or raisins (reduce the amount of chocolate chips by whatever amount of dried fruit you use), but was thinking that cranberries and apricots would work nicely, too. If you like orange, you could also add the zest of one. Oh the possibilities!
Tags: Cooking and Baking, Friendship, Recipes
The Portland Chinese Classical Garden, in celebration of ten years in the heart of the city and the changing of its name to Lan Su (Garden of Awakening Orchids), offered free admission for ten days, starting after the new year. The hubster and I took advantage, as we hadn’t visited the garden since it’s inaugural season. It was as beautiful and tranquil as I remembered, and quite thankfully, they limited the number of people in at a time, so it did didn’t feel at all crowded, save in the line out front.
The flow of water creates the unique shape of a Lake Tai Rock.
The dragonfish swallows all evil influences and protects the building from fire.
I have always admired paths like these, so beautiful and precisely laid. And, just in case you were wondering, no one stepped on my blue suede shoes.
Bamboo is a friend of winter, bending in storms, but not breaking – a reminder of perseverance.
The Chinese believe that a view within a view creates the illusion of infinite space.
The Yin reflection of the sky is mirrored on the Yang of the earth below.
I have always loved this sign, but it would not be our final stop for lunch.
Being who we are, we decided an Irish meal at Kells was on order. Fish and chips (the BEST), soup, and salad.
And, of course, a little Guinness, too, with hard cider to make a Snakebite. A fine winter day.
Hey brother. Happy Birthday!
Tags: Portland, Restaurants
We watch a lot of movies Under a Red Roof. Though I think you probably know that. This holiday season was no exception, save it may have been slightly more exceptional in volume. Golly, did we spend a lot of time in front of the telly (in my defense, I did a lot of reading, too!). Here are my favorites, in no particular order.
This is a real gem. Peter, a young man nearly finished with med school, learns he will not be getting the residency he hoped for after a serious blunder with a fake patient. Depressed, he goes to a bar to see said “patient.” She is his polar opposite, and he is swept away by her, quite literally, hours away from home, to hers. It is a world of counterculture pot smokers and growers, kooky and angry, living as close to the land as possible. From here, we see the interplay between these very different worlds, learning the benefits and deficits of each.
I loved it. As is expected from the BBC, it is light and funny (loud peals of laughter caused the hubster wonder what was afoot in the tv room), sometimes sad, and very engaging. The cast, costumes, and sets are top notch, too.
I was surprised by this one, fearing the worst for some reason. It is an alluring tale of first love (and poetry), the tragedy of loss, and our varying and sometimes highly unusual ways of coping. Australian and beautifully filmed, I might add.
This one is a bit wacky and sometimes gross, really gross, while being totally engrossing (I couldn’t resist). A famous DJ suddenly loses his hearing and copes in solitude by taking copious amounts of drugs, eschewing them all together, and learning to feel the music instead.
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” That line is all I knew of this rather eerily prescient film about editorial news programs. I really liked it, even though some of the dialogue was very dated. 1976!
The hubster and I saw this waay back when we were dating, having turned on the television thirty minutes into it, wondering what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks was going on, and laughing all the while at Albert Brooks and Rip Torn. Meryl Streep is delightful and carefree as Julia, a character who likes to eat. This reminds me of someone else…
Katharine Hepburn received an Oscar nomination for her role as Jane Hudson in this lovely film from 1955. A lonely woman, she’s on holiday in Venice, looking for beauty, adventure, and companionship. She finds it, though not quite as she expected. It is a sweet and sad story, filled with great fashion and fantastic sights.
Being a revolutionary is about patience and education, even for those watching (it is nearly five hours long). Everything happens in good time. Follow Che through his first victory in Cuba and his final defeat in Bolivia. I rather liked it, but for such a fascinating character, I would have preferred seeing his whole life. There was time enough, I think.
Harbour and his perpetually suicidal brother Wilbur’s lives are changed for the better when Alice and her daughter Mary enter their disorderly book shop. This one is sweet and sad, too, with a couple of surprising plot twists. An aside, a dialogue representing the shorthand of sixteen years of married life:
Hubster: Who is that (Alice)?
Me: She’s the one with the ronnie (female moustache) from that Irish film (Intermission).
Hubster: Right!
Tags: Movies
