Last week I started teaching about 10 - 15 campers how to knit and a few of them how to crochet. Needless to say I am completely uninterested in working on any projects at home involving yarn. However, I am working with the well behaved campers for a few hours a day, and I am certainly not complaining. Although it is nice to get out of the room and play games with the kids.
I can't remember what we did last weekend. Hmm... oh yes. We walked all the way to the downtown mall and back with Theo early Saturday morning. Maybe I cleaned the house... Sunday we walked Theo and I cooked a yummy roast.
I had this past Friday off and oh goodness how could I have forgotten about my quest to find the best bakery in Charlottesville?!?! (I should really be making notes during the week!) As you know, when we moved we didn't take the top layer of our wedding cake with us, thinking that it would surely make it up here before our anniversary. Gustav had other plans which left us cake-less. The lady who made our cake offered to make another cake but shipping that up here wouldn't be practical. So the quest began as I realized our anniversary was creeping up on us. My coworkers suggested Chandler's bakery. On Tuesday I hurried there after work. The girl who helped me was completely uninterested in my plight. They don't split fillings in the cake. Their cake was ok and the icing had a weird almost salty taste. I was a bit disheartened as it seemed that this was the place to get cake in Cville. I knew of several other bakeries and I decided that I would go to them and buy a cupcake from each to get an idea of their cake skills.
On Friday I went to Hot Cakes, Whole Foods (per Melanie's advice), The Baker's Palette, and Capellini's Crazy Cakes. The person I spoke with at Hot Cakes was not helpful and their vanilla cupcakes had chocolate icing. This would not do, and last time I had their buttercream icing it tasted only like butter. Later I went to Whole Foods and I was in luck. They had mini cupcakes! The cashier tried without success to scan them and told me to just take them and have a nice day. Bonus! It turns out that their cake skills are excellent. I headed to The Baker's Palette only to find that they didn't have cupcakes. A shame really because they make dynamite cinnamon rolls. Oh well. Last I went to Capellini's Crazy Cakes on the downtown mall. I figured that if worse comes to worse we could get a small assortment of yummy cupcakes and forego the cake. Michael was impressed with his free mini cupcake and we decided that we will order our cake from Whole Foods.
Friday afternoon I cooked my second jambalaya for a get together with my coworkers. Michael came with me and we had a few drinks and some laughs. One of my coworkers definitely agreed that going with Whole Foods for the cake is the right move since they gave us free mini cupcakes.
Yesterday we took Theo to the dog park where he was immediately ganged up on by some big dogs. Poor thing had his tail between his legs and ran for the gate to get out. We took him out for a walk around the area and decided that if we stayed away from the big dogs and got Theo to play with Bean (a 7 month old solid white Jack Russell) then maybe it would be ok. Nope. As soon as those dogs saw Theo they came over to us. We can't understand why because Theo is so good when it comes to playing nice with other dogs. Thankfully the owners of the other dogs decided they should leave. As soon as the main mean dog left Theo's tail perked up and he was ready to have some fun. We stayed for a few hours. The dogs are so entertaining.
Since it was the 4th I needed to have my yearly hot dog. I also decided that baking a pie would be a very all american thing to do. We went to the store and then decided to go on an adventure to scope out the set-up for fireworks watching later in the evening. My second attempt at Lucy's Chocolate Pie was a success. I halved the recipe and was able to use the double boiler (this ensured that it would not turn out like pie soup again).
Laura came over for dinner and brought corn on the cob. Yum yum. Michael and I headed for McIntire Park to watch fireworks. It was an impressive display of fireworks. There was a large crowd and it was neat that the crowd was pretty quiet during the display.
I apologize for a lack of photos, but I am on Michael's computer since something is wrong with my computer when I try to use the internet. Maybe it will work long enough for me to add photos later.
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