Friday in the kitchen

Friday means extra cooking at our house, preparing a special meal for Sabbath. Often we take our food to potluck to enjoy extended fellowship after church services, but this weekend we have company so we came home for dinner. Rick has accused me of only making one of his favorite cakes for potluck, where he gets just one serving, so I made it for dessert today. I thought I'd share the recipe here since it always gets rave reviews and is a bit unusual, as it is all whole grain.

Oatmeal-Rye Cake
1/2 cup vegetable oil.
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons barley flour
1 1/4 cups rye flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/4 cups water
1 cup rolled oats, quick-cooking or old-fashioned

Beat together oil, sugar, eggs, and vanila. Combine dry ingredients and add to the egg mixture, along with the water (batter will be thin). Pour into a greased 9"X13" baking pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Spread Brown Sugar Frosting (below) on cake while still warm, and broil until golden brown.

Brown Sugar Frosting
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
4 1/2 tablespoons light cream
1 cup unsweetend, minced coconut

Mix ingredients together until well blended.

Speaking of coconut, Brian experienced his first fresh one last night. He'd seen them in the grocery store and asked me if we could get one. After the novelty wore off he wasn't thrilled, but at least he got to try something new - and I enjoyed the fresh coconut milk. :-)

Finally, while I was cooking up a storm, the above was stewing in the (extra) crockpot. Remember that white Dorset/brown Blue Texel yarn I spun and plied? I was GOING to dye it blue -- Landscapes Sarsaparilla Blue, to be specific. Well, the other night Jackson found the little canister of dye and proceeded to chew on it, emptying the dye on my office carpet (which is dark green, thankfully!) and damaging the lid. I salvaged what I could, but in my frustration decided I didn't want to use the unknown quantity on the 2+ ounces of yarn. I pulled out my supply of Kool-Aid and reviewed Allena's article on dyeing, but couldn't quickly figure out how to tone down the bright blues and get a more soothing shade. So I threw my original plan out the window, grabbed one packet of Blastin' Berry Cherry and two packets of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and readied the crockpot. After dissolving the Kool-Aid in hot water (hmm, not the purple I was going for, but oh well - Valentine's Day is coming!), I wet my skein, added it to the pot, and stirred gently. After the water was clear, I turned off the crockpot and let everything cool to touchable temperature, washed the yarn with a bit of Palmolive and rinsed it well. Then I carefully wrung out the extra moisture and whacked the skein on the counter to set the twist (hurray - I finally remembered to do that!). Above, on my laptop, is the nearly dry skein, approximately 122 yards of mostly rich red, SOFT yarn. I was disappointed to see some pale areas that didn't get dyed, but I'm not sure what else I could have done to avoid that.

That's it for now at . . .