Gloom & Doom

Woke up to dark, gloomy rain clouds yet again! I am a creature who feeds on the sun. I tell ya, I can be in a total trance on a horrid wet day, the sun will peep through the clouds and it just shoots right through me and WAKES me up. In an instant! This week we are supposed to be getting back on track with school after a week of Spring Break. But the kids have a hard time even dragging out of bed. I allow them the extra time to sleep in, knowing that we're obviously not going outside today, and we have all day to do school. I can appreciate the occasional storm, especially when it's offering reflief from a streak of hot, dry weather. In that case, it's nice to open up a window and let the fresh rain scent waft through. Nothing like curling up on the sofa in lounge pants, under a soft blanket with a good book and a cup of tea! But there's nothing dreamy about it when it's been raining for days. I'm beginning to wonder if I should start building that ark soon...

Well, enough doddling for me. Time to face the gloom head on. After-all, it's only Tuesday!

My ironic new cake recipe...

I find the most ironic things occuring on a fairly regular basis. Recently I fell in love with Julia Child. After watching the movie- Julie & Julia, I began to realize how amazingly lovely Julia Child really was. I ordered up her old series on Netflix, and read her biography "My life in France". I have found that she is one of those people who- the more you know of them the more you like them and the more you want to find out! She was simply fascinating.

People who know me- know that I am pretty much food obsessed. (Now, if I could just break down and buy a treadmill...I think I could get the food and my figure to agree with one another.) Anyhow, I love food. I have purchased old cookbooks from garage sales, estate sales, ebay. I have new cookbooks, too. But, I do love the older "used" cookbooks more dearly. I love the thought of who they belonged to, if they belonged to a beloved wife or mother. Or, how many times she may have used the exact recipe and the people she served it to, with love. My favorite recipes are the ones that have notes scribed to them in messy hanwriting offering variations or substitutions. Or the recipes that have smudges of muffin batter. I know - I am crazy! Those things would probably gross most people out.

Anyhow- today I took out an old dessert cookbook to find a recipe for crepes- which we made for breakfast, yum! And then I left the cookbook lying on the ground. I asked Bradley to pick up the cookbook and put it away for me, when an old newspaper clipping fell to the ground and caught my eye. The headline read "French Chef branches out, goes American"!! Whoa! How exciting, a "new" article by Julia Child (actually this clipping is at least 30 years old) and it's a splendid new recipe for me to try, not published in any of her books.

Hows that for irony? Anyone up for "French Chocolate Cake"?