Needing something that takes up a lot of space in the garden, I settled on squash. I planted my last five Oregon Sweet Meat seeds (the variety was selected and developed by Carol Deppe, my favorite gardening writer) and also started a few delicata seeds I’d saved from a few years ago. They sprouted! I moved them to the back porch and have been covering them at night with Nancy’s Yogurt containers to keep them warm. Fingers crossed!
I was tasked with the cake making, so I made Vintage Cakes‘s Daffodil Cake. It’s a marbled chiffon/angel food cake with lime zest and a lime glaze.
My “Easter bunny” gift this year was asparagus. 
A friend posted a retrospective of Hilda illustrations (article also here) on Facebook and I excitedly told her about the the one that had been hanging in my grandparents’-now-aunt’s house since before I was born. And here it is! I’ve always loved this illustration. And in the second link above, there is a different version of this with a washcloth over her nipples. I’d always wondered where her nipples had gotten to.
Back to Easter. The table is full of delicious treats.
And we had a good variety of things for dinner too! 
My mom wanted almond-flavored cupcakes for her birthday, and thus I made them. I have tidied my way to owning just one muffin tin, so I only made 12 cupcakes.* So I made a small cake with the rest. And then got carried away with the frosting part. Those are the first frosting roses I’ve made since I took the cake decorating class when I was 14 or something.** My grandmother could make frosting roses. She was a cake decorator before she got married. I used her flower nails, which are the base where you build the rose. Hers are made of wood, not metal or plastic like the ones in the tutorials. This was also fun, using tools that my grandmother had used.
Overall, the frosting was great. The cake was a little dense, probably because I had trouble understanding done-ness.
*Plus, what was I going to do with 24 cupcakes? The new workplace really doesn’t eat sugar. Three boxes of Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies stayed on the table unopened for two weeks. And even then, they weren’t eaten, they were eventually moved to snacks drawer.
**More evidence that I’ve always been a middle-aged woman at heart.
For five years, our friends Laurie and Burt have been hosting Breakfast once per month in their home. They live less than a mile away, so Matt and I have attended regularly. Free food! We’re good at that.
Today is, alas, the last Breakfast. I brought a Gingerbread Man friend along, so you will see him in these photos.
This is Burt and Laurie’s house, which I love. Partially because Burt and Laurie live there, but partially because it’s a very old house (for Portland), has a really awesome fireplace that came around the Horn, and also because you can see how the house grew as time went on.
Laurie and Burt always have a variety of beverages, including coffee, hot chocolate, orange juice and water. Because this was the last Breakfast, there was also champagne to make mimosas.
Laurie poses with the food. There are always scrambled eggs, feta cheese, potatoes, vegetarian sausage, bacon and fruit. Plus either pancakes or waffles and some small sugary bready thing like mini cinnamon rolls. It’s a great spread. Laurie’s nephew and his mother also are enjoying breakfast.
Burt is the pancake/waffle man. His pancake/waffle job keeps him in the kitchen, but he pops in and out while things are cooking.
It’s been fun to have five years of breakfasts. I will miss the second Saturday food and conversation. Thanks Burt and Laurie!
They are melting snowmen. See?
They were planted in the spring and managed to grow through a drier-than-normal summer even without supplemental water. I harvested them today, carefully cleaned them and sliced them to roast so I could eat them with goat cheese on a pizza.
Sadly, I forgot they were still roasting when I kicked the oven up to 550 degrees to heat the pizza stone and they became little bits of beet flavored charcoal.
Sorry beets. I wish I would have given you a better ending.
Usually with such lists I complete nearly all items. So it was with this one. I ran out of steam before the Broccoli Salad. But other than that, I was ready for this week.
You need a scoby to make kombucha and if they are properly fed, those scobys grow new scobys. I had four jars going and, boy howdy, did I grow some scobies. Sadly, most of the kombucha went down the drain, being too tart to drink. I saved a few scobys so I can work my way back to four jars. The rest went in the worm bin.
Having gotten our mansion on, we took a trip to Glam Doll Donuts.
Might I interest you in some sprinkles?
Shawn got a cream-filled. I got some herbal tea and a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Sara had a delicious strawberry concoction.
Aside from the quality, I liked how big the shop was. There was ample comfortable funky seating, something most Portland donut shops are lacking.
For some time now I’ve wanted to crunch the numbers on this equation. The avocado on the left costs $1.25. The one on the right costs $0.99. Let’s break this down. 
Here we can see that the pits are similarly sized.
The large is 2.75 ounces bigger than the small.
Overall, the large avocado gives us 6.5 ounces for $1.25, while the small gives us 4 ounces for $0.99.
Crunching the numbers: Large is $0.19/oz
Small is: $0.25/oz.
Large is the better deal.
However, I also conducted a taste test, and I liked the taste of the smaller avocado better. Someday I should do a blind taste test.
