Living Small

The Secret World of Wedding Cake

Yes, I know it's been a while, but rather than try to account for where I've been, I'm just going to launch right into the reason this blog is coming out of semi-retirement: my dad got married yesterday!  It was about the most perfect wedding ever: my dad, his (now) wife, their five daughters and two sons-in-law, their three brothers and a sister-in-law, a close friend and her daughter, and the couple who introduced the bride and groom.  The ceremony was outdoors at a nature center on the edge of a cliff overlooking a gorgeous expanse, and after some champagne-drinking and photo-taking, we made our way to the private room of a fabulous restaurant.

The ceremony was perfect (once we all found the location and the minister got through some horrendous traffic), as was the reception, and I'm delighted to have a new stepmother and two new stepsisters (one of whom is also named Emily!).  But the real reason we go to weddings, of course, is because they are an excuse to eat cake.  We don't admit it, of course, unless we are twelve years old, as is my youngest sister, Maya (she reminded me of this when I handed her a glass of champagne for the toast after the ceremony).  I can't remember now whether Maya began to talk about the cake on the way to the ceremony or only on the way to the reception, but of course she only voiced what everyone else was thinking.  Maybe I should only speak for myself, here, but I was certainly thinking about cake and, when we arrived at the restaurant, it was the first thing everyone checked out.  The food was delicious -- Italian wedding soup, a salad with roasted beets and feta, and a main course of salmon/chicken/filet mignon/osso buco -- but at some point well before the cake was cut, all attention turned to it. 

At my end of the table, we began speculating about how the cake gets cut.  Not what the bride and groom do when they feed each other cake and everyone takes pictures, but how the cake then gets turned into the slices we all eat.  We realized that none of us had actually seen this process occur -- usually (probably always) at a wedding, after the bride and groom do their thing, the cake disappears and only slices return.  Several theories were put forth: perhaps there is some cake-slicing genius who can't be let out of the kitchen because, while a prodigy at pastry carving, he is a complete failure as a human being; maybe there is some kind of machine, similar to the industrial dishwasher, that closes down over the cake and does the work automatically; or perhaps it isn't cake at all, but rather a cardboard box shaped like a cake that has the pre-sliced stuff inside.  As theories circulated and proliferated, we all became more and more curious. 

Sure enough, after the bride and groom cut the first slice, the waitstaff swooped in to take the cake away.  But my dad stopped them and asked if they could cut the cake out there, as his daughters were curious to see how it was done.  The waitstaff were a bit thrown by the request -- obviously, nobody had ever questioned the process before -- but they played along, returned the cake to its table, and brought out a stack of empty plates.  And then they realized they had no clue what they were doing.  So they went to the kitchen and came back with...the cake-slicing genius -- evidence in favor of Theory #1.  But apparently he can't do his work in public.  After circling the cake for a few seconds, he consulted with my dad, convincing him that everyone would get a better slice (whatever that means) if they cut it in the kitchen.  So the cake disappeared, offering evidence in favor of Theory #2.  While the cake was gone, my sister Sophie (between halves, steps, and near-steps, I now have six sisters!) went down to the bathroom, which is right next to the kitchen.  She poked her head inside and saw a woman with her hands in the cake being reprimanded by the man we had thought was the cake-slicing genius, telling her to be careful because, "It's a wedding cake, dips**t!"  I'm not quite sure which theory that proves.

When the slices appeared, we were all momentarily absorbed by eating it (it was a delicious cake, as Sophie and Maya already knew because they had helped to audition the bakers), but then David began to do some cake accounting.  Even when additional slices showed up boxed for all of the guests to take home for the next day and the top layer was reserved for the first anniversary (or for the next day!), there was no way all the cake was there.  It appeared that everything right under the top layer (as opposed to the part of the bottom layer that stuck out from it) was missing.  Perhaps the kitchen staff had simply thrown it away, or perhaps it was evidence of some kind of collusion in the wedding-industrial complex between wedding-cake bakers and wedding-reception servers to ensure on the one hand that marrying couples buy way more cake than they actually need to feed their guests and on the other hand that the servers get to partake in what is undoubtedly everyone's favorite part of a wedding.

Hating Delta

Late last night, David and I returned from our third trip to New Jersey in the last year. My grandparents live there, so we went for Passover last April, then for my cousin's engagement party in July, and then again for the first night of Passover this year. My mom and aunt met us out there, and we had a wonderful time with them, and with my grandparents, and with my cousin who lives in Brooklyn. We mostly just hung out and prepared for the Seder and ate a lot, but we also had a day of rainy sightseeing, the highlights of which were Coney Island and the Brooklyn Museum. My mom and I played a flute concert for my grandparents and David and I managed to wheedle a few stories out of them.

It was a fantastic trip until we got the dreaded robo-call from Delta yeasterday morning, telling us that our flight home had been cancelled. We were supposed to have been on the same flight back as my aunt at 12:35, but she got bumped to the 4:20 Detroit flight and we were routed through Atlanta. When I called Delta to see if we could get on the 4:20 with my aunt, I was informed that Atlanta flight had been canceled as well and we were now on the 6:30 to Detroit. There were no more seats on the 4:20, and I declined her cheerful offer to put my aunt on the 6:30 so we could all go together. We had originally planned our flight to coordinate with my mom's return to Los Angeles, so we still had to return the rental car and get to the airport in time for her flight, which hadn't been canceled because she wasn't on Delta. So we settled in for a long afternoon at the airport. We tried to get on the standby list for my aunt's flight, but it was so oversold that they weren't even taking names. She finally got off the ground about forty minutes behind schedule, and then David and I sat and watched as our flight got delayed again and again. He was convinced until the moment we took off that we weren't going to get back to Detroit, but after a long sit on the runway we were in the air shortly after 9pm and home about eight hours later than we had planned. If we had left in a car when our original flight was supposed to have taken off, we would have been home sooner. One might blame it on the weather or just accept that things like this happen once in a while, except that we had a very similar experience the last time we tried to come home from Newark, and the weather then was perfectly clear. I never thought I would be nostalgic for Northwest Airlines, but it definitely seems that service has gotten worse since Delta took over.

Procrastinatory Cooking

Cooking is one of my super powers.  I cook dinner nearly every night, make ice cream about three times a week (yes, we eat THAT much ice cream), and bake bread every week for David's sandwiches.  Mostly I do this without recipes and kind of on auto-pilot, and it doesn't seem like it takes up that much time in my life.  But the important thing is that I enjoy being able to feed myself and David.  This semester I have been busier than ever and, for some reason, instead of cooking less, I find myself cooking more.  I'm trying to find creative things to do with the pork from our farmer, and I have also found myself procrastinating by reading cookbooks and cooking blogs, and when I come across an interesting-sounding recipe, I just have to try it.  My mother-in-law recently gave me this cookbook, and it is already food-splattered and well on its way to being well-worn.  My favorite food bloggers are currently Bridget and Molly, and I have been avidly testing their recipes.  In the last two weeks, I have made these three breads and a fantastic dip, and I made this salad at least three times.  Last night for dinner, we had Molly's polenta, Bridget's kale, and a thick slice of ham from Jerome.  It's little wonder that I have gained five pounds this semester!

Giant Ball of Ick (Photos Omitted)

For about a month now, I have had this huge constellation of pimples right under my nose. It started out as a red welt, then developed a white head, which turned into several white heads, and now they have merged into one really really big one. I know this isn't what you want to read, but it is about the only thing on my mind -- aside from class, prelim reading, and next month's conference paper, that is. I have tried all the tricks I can think of to make it (them?) go away: heat, ice, fingernails, and $50/tube prescription medicine. Nothing has worked. I really thought that I wouldn't have to worry about this kind of thing after I turned thirty! I'm even wondering if I should take it to a doctor to make sure it isn't some kind of malignancy. Any suggestions?

Springing

My trip to Colorado was a short one -- Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon; a day and a half of work in Fort Collins and two nights in Boulder -- but I seem to have brought the good weather back with me. It was fifty degrees and sunny when I landed in Detroit on Saturday, and yesterday I went for my first outdoor run (VERY slolwly) since November. It looks like we will have highs in the fifties for most of the week. It may be time to put away the long down coat. Is it too early to think that spring is springing?

What Happened To Bagels?

Bagels are an ideal food item -- crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, and a perfect vehicle for cream cheese and lox. But ONLY for cram cheese and lox! I just stopped into Einstein Bagels at the Denver airport (on my way home from a business trip to the Great Plains) and was mortified at what they sell there. The only things that belong in a bagel are sesame seeds, poppy seeds, onion, garlic, egg, and salt. No raisins, no chocolate chips, no green chile, and no asiago cheese. And I'm not even going to begin with how wrong the bagel dog or egg-and-bacon bagel sandwish is! Somehow they have done away with all of the real bagel flavors and now just specialize in the totally unacceptable. Though as I walked away with my plain bagel and plain cream cheese, I started to wonder if I may have just gotten old and crochety.

Still Winter

My mom called on Sunday evening and asked how we were doing with our snow. My response was, "what snow?" -- we had had a sunny and even warm (for February) weekend. I was convinced that winter was over. But my mom insisted that, according to her iPhone, it was snowing here. And it turned out that she was right. The snow had started to fall by the time we went to bed, and we woke up to about six inches yesterday. Fortunately, we have a neighbor with a snow blower who seems to love clearing out the whole neighborhood, so we just had to shovel our front stairs and we were off to work. Unfortunately, snow blowers don't seem to be evenly distributed around Ann Arbor, so getting to work was kind of a trudge. Still better than driving, though!

Tea Kettle Update

I emailed a recording of my tea kettle to my friend Claire, who has an actual degree in music, for analysis. Claire hears the G that my tuner picked up, and also a B (which might be slightly flat) in the octave below. But the most interesting thing she told me is that when we hear the G and the B, our minds (for reasons of both physics and cultural expectations) fill in the D so that we perceive it as a G major chord. Neat -- thanks, Claire!

A Sharp G

Last weekend David came across some lovely Chantal tea kettles on deep discount at TJ Maxx. He had had one long before and always wanted another, but at a list price of $80, even a small one seemed out of reach. The special thing about the Chantal is its harmonica whistle. It makes such a nice sound when the water boils that it still takes me a minute to realize that I need to get up and turn off the stove. After a day or so, we got a bit curious about just what note it was playing. I no longer have a chromatic tuner, but figured there was probably an iPhone app that would do the trick. Sure enough, there is a chromatic tuner iPhone app, and it seems to work just like a real tuner. The next time the water boiled I turned on the tuner and it registered as a slightly sharp G but not a G sharp. David and I are pretty sure that it is a chord rather than just one note, but sadly my ear isn't quite sensitive enough to figure it out.

Shaving Like a Girl

When I finally ran out of blades for the man-razor I have been using for the last four years or so, I sent David to Costco to get more. They didn't have the right ones, though, so instead he got me a new razor -- the female version of the one he uses. I haven't used a woman's razor in forever and was surprised at how flimsy it feels after the weightier male razor I've gotten used to. I guess they figure that women have weaker arms!