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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Cupcake Wars

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So….not only am I the domestic UNgoddess, but I’m the worst blogger ever. Truly. My sincere apologies for having been so derelict in my blogging duties!!!!!

On both the professional and domestic fronts, life has been a bit hectic (though not in a bad way) so I haven’t had the energy and dedication that this really demands.

But on the up side, I’m back! And on the down side, so are my rather repugnant domestic habits. My kitchen looks (and is starting to smell….yikes!) like a really nasty bomb went off in it. I just haven’t had the chance to give it a thorough scrub. I had it pretty clean before leaving for the weekend, but then hubs took it over….and then Tuesday night, my dad came over (unexpectedly…) for dinner and didn’t leave until almost midnight. Last night I didn’t get home until after 11. Tonight will be the same. And so the mess and ick shall remain until tomorrow night….at which time I will attempt to resurrect some semblance of domestic normalcy. Oy.

Also, I haven’t done laundry in weeks….thank goodness for a lovely husband whose threshold for piles of laundry is so much lower than my own (or perhaps I just have too many clothes…I have a rather expensive habit of just buying more clothing when what I have isn’t fit to wear…).

But I haven’t been entirely unproductive. This past weekend I traveled across the province to help semi-host a bridal shower and bachelorette party for a good friend of mine. It all came off very well, except for the fact that there was food enough for at least 30 people and we only had 13 (the number was expected, but I had nothing to do with actually buying the food, so I had no influence on volume….seriously, who buys blue cheese at COSTCO for 13 people? Yuck.) So there were a lot of leftovers.

My contribution to the occasion was nice fluffy, tasty cupcakes. Except no one ate them. And I’m actually super pissed off about this. So I spent a night last week absolutely slaving away to make four dozen cupcakes. And I transported the blasted things across the province, icing gun in tow…decorated them, plated them and they look awesome. And then some shower guest WENCH brought a whole crapload of PURCHASED desserts (not home-made!) and set them out. And so people at the cheap, crappy, trans-fat laden purchased desserts and left my lovely cupcakes. GRRRR. Moral of the story – bridal showers are NOT potluck. Odds are, someone has put a lot of thought and effort into the menu. Do not taint the table with your purchased nastiness and definitely call before offering to bring anything. And I was even more pissed because I had to be polite to this stoopid woman who obviously thought she was being so helpful.

So we have lessons to learn from this:
- if you are invited to a party that does not state potluck, you are not expected to bring anything
- if you feel compelled to bring something, please call first and ask
- if the host declines, you definitely don’t need to bring anything
- if the host accepts, please don’t forget to bring the thing you said you would bring or a reasonable substitute
- if you are so rude as to just bring something without asking….at least make sure it’s homemade. If we had wanted to host a shower with purchased crap, we would have purchased it ourselves!

Bitter much, eh?

This brings me to my second frustration….pot lucks. I actually hold a special place in my heart for such occasions…reminiscent of wonderful special salads and secret family recipes. But there will always be those who will insist on bringing something that is so completely and utterly lame that it should never be marketed as potluck-worthy. I remember our Christmas pot luck at work. Most people made something tasty and home-made – chicken curry, beef curry (yay me!), meatballs, chili, salads, etc. If you don’t have the talent to bring something tasty and homemade, bring something tasty and purchased (preferably purchased at a fine foods store and not some gross grocery store salad or bag of chips). But this one person brought brown rice. Now, when I saw that on the list, I figured that the person was probably bringing something else as well (I mean…meat curry probably costs about $15 to make, and a dish of brown rice is practically free) or perhaps making a tasty and creative pilaf. But nope….come the day of the party, it was a sad, solitary Tupperware of plain brown rice. And the woman was basking in her brown rice glory all afternoon. Meh.

Tonight should be fun….my SIL is working on a project and I have offered to help. The unfortunate thing is that this project is in an area in which I have zero skill….will post updates and perhaps pictures tomorrow for your amusement and perusal. You shall all laugh at my expense. I’m looking forward to this weekend though – hubs’ birthday was last week, and mine is early next week….so we’re going out for a fab-u-lous dinner. I love fancy dinners. I also have a date with the weeds in my garden….I planted plants and they are doing great (only because it hasn’t stopped raining), but sadly, the weeds are also flourishing so I have to do something about them. Does anyone know what I can use along cracks and crevasses to kill weeds? I don’t do scary poisonous chemicals….is there something natural?

Thanks for reading! Here’s a cupcake picture to tempt your senses. I’m going to make more cupcakes next week and bring to work for my birthday. :) I’m going to make the famous Cinnamon-scented Devils Food cupcakes from epicurious.com – they look sooooo tasty. The two types of cupcake below are angel food with raspberry swirl filling (from www.foodandwine.com) and pineapple-coconut whole wheat cupcakes (based on the papaya coconut cupcakes from the chockylit cupcake blog)

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