for the almost 22 years of our marriage, beth has been attempting to live up to the memory of my mother's cooking. more precisely... her baking.
now... my wife is a great cook. everything she makes is good. very good. and her baking is great too. when i first met her... she had never made a cake from a box in her entire life. her carrot cake was the best around... and totally from scratch.
my mother... on the other hand... was an average cook. she did a lot of experimenting. and often the results were... well... pretty bad. like the sweet and sour brussel sprouts... they didn't stand a chance.
but there was one thing she did extremely well in the kitchen... make me a perfect birthday cake... every year. penuche icing on chocolate cake. (that's a cooked caramel icing for you penuche virgins)
birthdays in our family weren't all that special. or at least i don't really remember them being a fuss day. not that we didn't have presents or anything... but i don't remember birthdays much... except for the cake. i guess you could say that for me... the cake was the present. the cake "made" the birthday special for me.
so when i married beth... she was saddled with this image to live up to. she didn't wear the saddle 365 days of the year... because she's a great cook. but one day of the year... just one... she struggled to compete.
over the years she's worked and worked and worked. and each year it's gotten better. and this year? the best.
in fact... tonight... she mastered it. perfect.
add the vanilla ice cream... some good friends to go along with my family... and... well... it doesn't get much better.
noticeably absent from this post?
any references to age!
(by the way Mike McCoy was on a local talk radio show yesterday talking about the run...made me think of you!)
Posted by: ckd | September 01, 2006 at 09:30 AM
age??? of course not.
you're hoping that by knowing i'm ancient...
...just maybe you will be able to ignore the fact that you're getting older just as fast as i am. :)
Posted by: Randy | September 01, 2006 at 09:39 PM