Once in a blue moon...I baked a cake.

It's a blue moon tonight.

Wiki has an interesting article on what a blue moon is HERE . 

Read the article and you'll understand where the saying "once in a blue moon" comes from.

Sheila decided this occasion needed a cake and I volunteered to make one...as if I wouldn't.  I didn't want to just make a regular cake though.

I wanted to make a BLUE MOON CAKE!!!!

I had all these grandiose visions of having the man in the moon on the cake, all sorts of nice craters and things showing up, and I even thought of putting up some moon landing stuff for fun.

My vision was pure art I tell you.

The reality was more like this,

Yeah.

It's just half a sphere with blue icing.

BUT, I made a spherical cake without one of  those spherical cake pans!  IT CAN BE DONE!

And there was minimal cutting involved.  I used 1 9inch springform cake pan, 1 pie plate, and 1 pottery bowl.    FYI the batter in the pottery bowl cooks up fine, it just takes a bit longer.  The only thing I cut was the cake out of the pottery bowl because the bottom side wasn't flat enough.  Other than that, stack them up in a 3 layer cake and ice it into a sphere.

In other news, I made my first home made pasta sauce recently.

We had an insane amount of roma(plum) tomatoes from our garden out back so I blanched roughtly 2 colanders full of them, peeled them, and chopped them up.  I also used a bunch of onions from the garden out back and sauteed those with fresh garlic and olive oil.  I added fresh basil paste, fresh chopped oregano, salt and pepper, a bit of sugar to balance the acid in the tomatoes, and I have to admit I didn't have tomato paste so I threw in a store bought can of sauce to help it thicken.  I also browned some lean ground beef and made it a meat sauce.  Oh and I added a little hot sauce and one secret ingredient to give it some zing.  :-)

Here's my very first ever from the garden made pasta sauce!

IT WAS AMAZING!!!!

I worked hard on that sauce and even burned my thumb.  Yes, suffering and love went into that sauce people.

WHAT?

IT ADDS TO THE FLAVOUR!

I can't believe I had an Italian grandmother and I never got around to making a home made sauce until I turned 40.  She'd probably pinch me and be proud of me at the same time.

Wish I could have known you Grandma Ida!

Dave, tell her good things about me ok?  And tell her I love elephants too.

Miss you.  Always will.

I think of you all the time...not just once in a blue moon.