We got raindrops instead of snow for a spring shower. This is a wonderful development, n’est-ce pas?
Bad news: severe water restrictions already in place.
All the news channels reported last night. They are trying to make it impossible to even garden (which could save me from pesticides and hormones that kill in my food and grocery-store prices). Ugh! Send the rain, Lord.
Denver Water, Colorado’s largest municipal water supplier, imposed mandatory usage restrictions including designated watering days due to a lack of snow in the mountains and “serious” Stage 2 drought conditions.
Good news: from Isaiah 44.3-4 NLT:
For I will pour out water to quench your thirst
and to irrigate your parched fields.
And I will pour out my Spirit on your descendants,
and my blessing on your children.
They will thrive like watered grass,
like willows on a riverbank.
More good news: I am baking polka dots today. A.K.A. Cake Pops. :)
The Coconut Cake (actual, shredded coconut is optional, strangely enough). It is about the cake, people!
#1 Cake:
1 white cake mix (Duncan Hines is the better choice, always), mixed according to boxed instructions with 1 teaspoon coconut extract added
#2 Creamy coconut mixture for slathering:
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened, condensed milk
1 can Senor Lopez’s Coconut Creme (15 oz.), or any coconut cream found near the drink-mixing (pina colada) supplies
#3 Optional topping (but treat yourself and add it):
Toasted shredded coconut sprinkled on top for people who really love their coconut (which leaves out most of my family, tsk).
#4 Rich, delicious icing
See below! You’ll be so glad!
Here’s how
Bake the cake in a 9 x 13″ pan according to directions (don’t forget to add that teaspoon of coconut extract to the mix). While it is baking, stir together the Eagle Brand Milk and the Coconut Creme.
While the cake is still warm from the oven, poke {lots of} holes in it with a butter knife or potato peeler and pour/slather the mixture over the cake to saturate. Keep back a couple of tablespoons of the mixture to use in the icing (I just don’t scrape the bowl and it gives me enough for my needs).
Let the cake cool completely. Then use 1 batch of any cream cheese icing recipe with that little milk-creme mixture you reserved and spread over the cake (use the same bowl for the icing, for heaven’s sake).
Gavin liked it! :)
But wait – there’s MORE! Don’t you want the MOST AMAZING Cream Cheese Icing Recipe EVER, too???
Ok, then I will share it, as well. I got it off Pinterest. It is so ridiculously simple and easy you won’t believe it. It’s called Marshmallow-Cream Cheese Icing.
1 8 oz. block of cream cheese (give it a chance to come close to room temp, as the cake bakes)
1 (7 oz.) jar of marshmallow cream
1 tsp of vanilla. Or, as I did in this case, 1 teaspoon of, you guessed it – coconut extract!!!
That’s it! Three ingredients. It is luscious, delightful, creamy, airy, light and delish! It is not too sweet and whips up in 2 minutes flat. SO fast, so perfect!
Now, I also “toasted” about a cup of coconut and sliced almonds in a pat of {real} butter on the stovetop and anyone who wished could sprinkle it atop at serving time. If you want, though, you may just generously sprinkle the cake top with soft coconut from the bag. But my son Rocky liked the crunchiness over the uber-creamy, soft cake. True – it was wonderful.
Pop the iced cake in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Mmmmmmm. I don’t even really like cake. But I love this…it was breakfast!
Quick re-cap
Thank-you, Heather, for sharing your wonderful recipe. And Stef – I plan to make one for you to celebrate Wryder’s arrival! xxoo
There is a coconut cake* in the oven and the doors and windows are open wide to let the spring air flow freely. I hear something (?) in the neighborhood – is some one mowing already?
The washer and dryer are at their rumbly-sounds work and my dining room table is lined with colorful Easter bags, each designated for one amazing grandbebe or another, as I busily prepare for THE day, the day more important than all the rest of the days ever – the one celebrating what Jesus did. Easter. Resurrection – the complete and finished work. New life, the new birth, the fulfillment of all longing. I can’t help humming, singing, contemplating
Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow
And we are rejoicing for we have a Savior and we are also waiting, longing for the new little bebe who will join us soon. Jovan and Rocky were “due” on Friday and so, as every woman who has ever gone past her due date will attest, the longing increases to almost unbearable heights for birth, for what has been carried, to see the baby who has been hidden, being knitted by the very hands of God, right here, right now in our arms, in our sights, please, Lord! From womb to waiting arms. From darkness to light. From will-this-ever-happen to the miraculous she is here! From waning, worn-out hope to bright-light joy!
Mommy and daddy are ready! Mommy is really really ready, doing the hardest of the work. :)
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. Romans 8.22-25
We are enlarged in the waiting! Oh, my goodness, our expectancy is JOYFUL!
So we are remembering Jesus, all He did, what His suffering and death on the cross gave us – while we were still actually sinners {don’t give up on this evil world, my friends and family – what Jesus did was enough and is enough for even these troubled days, for all men, for all times}. Jesus is all.
And we are looking ahead with joyful expectancy for this new little girl, Baby-Girl Rhoades and we are blessed, so blessed.
So pray for Jovan if you think about it. Pray for that promised strength to deliver (Isaiah 66) and Have a blessed Easter.
Jesus died. But He conquered death and rose. And His blood washes white and His wounds brought us healing and what He has done means everything. So be blessed on Easter!
I hear the Savior say, “Thy strength indeed is small; Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in Me thine all in all.
Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow”
Soon!
*About the coconut cake…Pure decadence. I have been delivered of the very luscious, yet too-many-steps-from-scratch recipe I used to make to Heather’s delightful use-a-mix-and-you’ll-never-go-back-deliciousness. It is a wonderful cake. Maybe I will share the recipe with you! Soon.
Once the bird’s song dissipates in the afternoon sun, which I presume means they are napping or resting their voices for tomorrow’s bright chorus, soft quiet rides through the open windows on golden sunbeams, with only an occasional variation.
A little girl on her hot pink Big Wheel pedals down the sidewalk, which is still slightly gritty from sand and salt leftover from a snow, before all signs of winter are finally, fully past.
There is a sound to the spring sidewalk, pedal-pedal-pedal, the hot pink Big Wheel moves steadily. A small Wire-haired Terrier follows brightly behind, with the grandma and grandpa straggling as they pull baby sister along in a Little Tykes wagon. Their family Easter parade takes up nearly half a city block and is delightful to behold, leaving a trail of sweet. gritty noise behind them.
Whilst one quick-dries home-tended and harvested rosemary between 2 paper towels in the microwave for future use, one willst be overcome with an immediate and strong urge for fresh-baked foccachia.
Come, thou long-awaited spring – decided proof that life goes on. Bare branches, having lost all great glory as winter overcame resolve and strength waned, have waited {working so much harder to dig in deeper than can be fathomed} and now bud to give birth to glorious leafy-green life. The brittle-dead fields are shedding that golden debris-blanket in strong March winds where green shoots have quietly emerged unseen, looking heavenward. The tulips pop up and then out, the birdsong gets sweeter.
Come, spring ~ release us from heavy garments of mourning, from the dry burlap and twine of packed-away hopes to sun-warmed dreams as big as the cloudless blue-sky. Let the seeds of desire and vision, though dropped barely {breath-held} hopeful into the black soil of despair, now ~ softened in the unseen tomb of dark ground and cold night ~ spring forth with gladness. Life does go on, life is renewed in the spring rains via sorrowful tears. So, come spring.
O spring, how grand the hope you bring, we look for you, we count the days, we hold onto promise barely, our anticipation growing. And then, the crystal-blue light of the freshest of sunrises, a cloudless daybreak, diamond-dew on new grass catches the morning sun and sends it glistening back to You. We are loaded in daily grace, divine benefits – veritably dripping in treasure.
All my springs*, O Lord, are in You. All my springs, my seasons, my days, my hours, my minutes, my wretched body-soul-and-spirit, all of my life and new life, all life abundant, my past, my future, but mostly my today – this minute – all of it is in You, by You, for You and because of Your faithfulness. I thank-You, Lord for the spring which vigorously compels me to concede that letting go or giving up what was cannot deplete nor diminish what will be…
Come now, spring. Fully, finally. Faithfully.
And for fun:
Winter has passed. This must be baseball… :)
*Psalm 87.7 NKJV
Both the singers and the players on instruments say,
I don’t know if they still do this in school or not, but they should. And in case they don’t, I have decided I am going to do it the next time all the grandbebes are here together. This is an experience I consider to be essential to life.
Mrs. Devin, the tiny, blond woman who taught our 1st grade class in her sleek sheaths and slingback shoes (I found her fashion very Jackie-O, even though Jackie had not added the “O” yet, at that time) gathered our class in a big circle.
We were Iowa kids, yes, but we didn’t live on farms. We were “city kids” in Iowa, and despite the infamous Iowa State Fair butter sculptures – we lived in Des Moines and used Imperial Margarine, of course! :) I hadn’t really had real butter, that I recall, except at my cousin’s house in Missouri a time or two. Other than that, our typical mid-American diet, even there in Iowa, was about using margarine, or oleo, as it was commonly called then.
But Mrs. Devin was about to change my world forever as she gathered us around her chair that day. She was going to teach us about rich, sweet butter. And how it came from cream, which came from cow’s milk. Now being the daughter of a milkman (Anderson-Erikson Dairy), you’d think perhaps I’d have thought of this. But I hadn’t.
We watched, wide-eyed, as Mrs. Devin poured the thick cream into a mason jar, added a dash of salt and tightened the lid. Then we passed that jar around and we each got to shake it a certain number of times. I am not sure what that number was, 20? 25? Then we’d pass it to the next person, all of us chanting the count, watching the jar to see if butter would magically appear.
And suddenly, at some point, after we’d each had 2 or 3 turns at shaking it up, it was ready. It happened. It actually became butter and this is when the splendor and love of butter descended into my very soul like an Apollo spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Yes – with that much 1960s force!
Mrs Devin opened a sleeve of saltines, the really good saltines. And she spread some of our very fresh, barely yellow butter on the little squares. She placed three on a napkin for each of us and we began tasting the fruit of our labors and oh.my.great.goodness! It was so delicious. It was amazing. It was beyond wonderful. I was hooked.
I went home raving about it to my mom, who told me, having bought into mad-men marketing, that margarine was way healthier and had less calories and wasn’t as “rich” (the term being used in a rich-is-bad-for-you way) and all that other ridiculous nonsense the mad-trans-fatty-hydrogenated-evil-people were pushing back then to get people to buy plasticized-toast-spread. I wanted butter, real butter. I had touched the divine! To no avail.
Though my mom wasn’t about to buy me cream for butter-making, I wasn’t dissuaded. I even tried making it with milk. I shook and shook and shook a jar of milk to no avail. *sniff
But the taste of that savory treat on a beautiful 1st grade afternoon in Des Moines, Iowa has lingered on my tastebuds, lo, these many (many) years…never forgotten.
I don’t really believe in margarine at all now. I certainly don’t believe in oleo. But I believe in butter. I love butter. I love that Julia loved it and Paula Deen, too, though she seems to be tempering herself now. But I love it. I simply do. And it is my mission to share it with my little band of bebes, so they will love it, too.
And now, a word about butter from Julie-Julia. You watch this while I go make some toast and spread you-know-what on it:
There is this driven, heavy snow naturally Christmas-flocking the trees and bushes and tapping on our window panes. Which would be ever-so-perfect if Christmas weren’t, oh, you know – 291 days away. *ahem
This was out my window and out my door about an hour ago:
Our Amelie-Belle-is-turning-three celebration has been postponed and almost any organization or business that can has cancelled everything. Back to the 50s on Monday. Until then, snowed in. :)
The weather men and women called a blizzard and huge snowfall and they were right!!! This would be wonderful, earth-shattering good fortune, you know, to have the weather report actually be as it has been fore-casted…if only they were not SO right in this instance.
But Colorado NEEDS this snow.
We were supposed to have a big ol’ celebrate-Malakai-shindig today. But it shall be postponed due to lots of flurries and wind and cold and snow piling up. We are still going to venture out, though, and go see bebe anyway. Even though the Front Range world is on accident alert and all the newscasters ar saying stay in if at all possible, well…we just have to see our little Kai.
So the fam will gather in Frederick anyway and eat all the food we would have shared. :)
Bonus track.. SNOW!
I will just be hanging around…washing my hair in snow! :)
