Revenge of the Bromeliad

Happiness in pictures today. And go back and check out the pic I'm adding to the last post too.

The farmer's market here tends to have mostly common staples that are both boring and expensive. I've managed to figure out which things are a little less expensive and necessary or interesting and fun and how much I can eat in a week. Here and there we get some exotic or just fun variation, but it can be surprisingly uninspiring some weeks. For a while, everyone had multicolored beets which look amazing, but I don't like beets. The last couple of weeks, though, wow! This picture represents both this week's and last week's haul less a few fuji apples, navel oranges, and hass avocados.



This is two weeks together because last week was a little weird. I had an event on thursday and had to run out without doing my vinegar rinse, then I just kept not doing it. (Can't cook, reading!) My kitchen drain hooked to both the disposal and dishwasher got blocked up. I tried various schemes to unblock it, but didn't want to haul out the fruits and veg and risk blocking the other side. The last couple weeks have been more fruitful, so to speak, and cheaper than usual. The strawberries that are usually $7-$12 for a 3 pack were $5. The new sweet grapefruit hybrids are producing. There are rainbow colored cauliflower and carrots! I couldn't resist. I have orange cauliflower and purple, orange, and yellow carrots. (And the kettlecorn people now offer a $2 bag, not just a $4 or $6 bag so I got some of that too and ate it before the picture taking.)

The drain kept me occupied for a while. The admin at work got me this gorgeous bromeliad when I got my tonsils out. I forgot to water it before I left for Vegas and it kinda died. Only not so much with the kinda. It made me sad, but since the plant just popped off to indicate its state, I just ran it through the garbage disposal. And suddenly, the drain ceased to work. Not even a trickle of water got through. I know because I tried all sorts of tricks: filling the sink with hot water, pouring in vinegar, pouring in drano, bailing out the drano and diluting the remains, running the disposal grinder, etc. Nothing worked. Didn't even seep overnight. Finally today I took off the pipe connecting the disposal to the drain and found this lovely ball of goodness. The penny is in there for scale.


At first I thought the root ball had been the culprit, but I dug that out mostly whole. What happened was the leaves didn't really chop, but went through as long strands all in a bunch. When they got to the joint with the other sink drain, there's a pinch point because the T has a diverter plate in there to try and prevent both sinks from stopping up if one does, just in situation s like this. But the reedy bits jammed in there, spread out on the backside, and formed a really solid plug. But I'm happy I fixed it and so far so good on the drain not leaking. I put a dish under it just in case, but here's hoping.

In happier news, mom didn't send me a chocolate bunny this year, just the ears and some butter almond candy stuff. While tasty, it was not a rabbit. I would have been ok, but my brother got a rabbit. Mom said she didn't think I liked them. I don't eat them fast, and when I was a kid had trouble breaking through the body, but I use knives now and am better at sharing. She went back the day after easter and they were out of the normal size. But they had this! A solid milk chocolate easter bunny weighing two pounds six ounces. Let's just call it 2.5 pounds. It's GIANT. I ROFLMAO when I opened the box.



I put it next to the manhandle for scale, although it doesn't probably help. Trust me, it's huge. And mine! But I'll share!

First Principles

When I want to update the blog but can't think of what to say, I just have to look up top and remind myself of the basic format available - happiness posts.

Today's sources of happiness will be mixed with yesterday's.

• It can be hard to tell on the internet what is real and what is just an internet page. This site for BBQ and Foot Massage feels fake. But wouldn't it be great if it were true? I don't have time for fact checking because I'm still giggling over the video ad.

• A couple weeks ago I went shopping for underwear and came out with new shoes, boots, and jeans. I LOVE my new shoes, boots, and jeans. Usually, I only wear jeans on fridays, but I needed to wear them again today...(Since I figured out the jeans were causing an allergic reaction and washed them, they're even better.) ...with the boots. I'll see if I can update this later with a picture of the boots. Check out the picture. They're like miniature cowboy boots and sound really authoritative when I walk down the hallway. I hadn't noticed the tiny things next to the taller boots but the saleslady brought them out and I didn't want to take them off afterward. I feel like the hottest chick in the world when I wear these jeans and boots. Add to that my swingy sweater from Santorini and NZ fishhook necklace and I had a fun outfit.
  
  
  
  
  It's saying something particularly since this is the first pair of Levis that has ever, in the history of the world, fit me. I just grabbed all the sales jeans in my size off the rack and tried them on. Up until I finally gave up a couple years ago, when I was superfit and the Levis still didn't work on my frame, I tried some Levis on at least once a year, hoping that there would be some alteration that would make them fit me. This has been going on since the 4th grade when I was still in kids' sized clothes. (Just shows you how well postitive branding from a young age will stick in the mind.) Turns out that Levis put out a style of plus sized jeans that have just a little bit of stretch and an expanded waist and they fit me perfectly. Once again, it's not what shape or size I am, it's a matter of the clothes fitting my shape and size in a flattering way. And boy howdie do these.



• I seem to be making progress with the Diva tool at work. I do like doing process development work better than sustaining. But it helps when I can get repeatable results. I'm still kinda not getting repeatable results, but I can say that my results are as good as and sometimes better than the regular recipe so I have a hope of progress here.

Love the Skin You're In

I've been grooving on the Already Pretty blog. It fulfills my desire to read more positive, constructive, how-to messaging rather than thinking too much about what I can't do, all the ills of the world, etc... There's a particularly good post I want to share with you all, especially after the grimness of my last post. It's particularly good because she talks about something I think it's good for mindful people (I would say grownups, but it works at any age) to do - realize you're making a knee-jerk reaction and stop yourself. Think about why you're reacting that way and if reacting that way is helpful to you, your friends, or society as a whole. And if the answer is "no, it's not helpful", go about changing your response to certain stimuli. (A concept well described and used in Suz Brockmann's "Into the Storm" by main Character Jenk.)

In this case, allow women to be self-confident in their bodies without doubt, mistrust, or disdain for their confidence. I think a lot of what holds women back in some areas of life is other women. "I had to go through the horror of experience X, so you will too!" is a destructive social construct. It should be no surprise to you that I also think hazing is one of the worst things we do to people we should be supporting. Passing tests for a purpose is one thing, but beating people down because you were and you don't want to look retroactively silly is unconscionable.

This is also the same self-reflection that I used when I realized that I needed to decide whether or not to be homophobic and chose not. Previously, I'd only ever knee-jerked my reaction. Once I thought about it and realized that my societally conditioned response wasn't fair or helpful, I set about changing it. Some changes come easily and some are hard fought. Helping ourselves and other people see the beauty of themselves should be something to strive for.

One of the best things I learned from my communications class at Harvard Extension (where you too can get a Harvard degree! for cheap!) was this sequence

1. Unconscious Incorrect (UI)
2. Conscious Incorrect (CI)
3. Conscious Correct (CC)
4. Unconscious Correct (UC)

We all have unconscious behaviors or thoughts we do or think all the time. Not all of them are bad. They're unconscious because they are quotidian and habit frees up time for our brains to think of other, unusual things. But every so often, we have unconsious bad habits. When we realize that that we have these habits, they go from UI to CI. During the CI phase we can make a decision to change it or not. Usually it involves doing it twice - once wrongly, then once corrected. I had to do this when learning new de-gowning procedures at my new job after 10 years of doing it a different way. Going from top down to down up de-gowning was a challenge but I do it mostly UC now, but still occassionally CC. For a long time I'd come out of the fab, take my hood off, then put my hood back on, take my boots off and work up. I found if I just left my hood off, I didn't improve, but by being a bit of an idiot for a while, I was able to change my habit to match the new company's protocol.

If it's something you're learning new rather than changing, you might even start at the CC stage. But for new learning or re-learning, going slow correctly allows you to build the skill to do it faster correctly. Like in practicing the piano, it usually involves taking longer to do something. Yes, it can be frustrating because it's slower than you're used to, or slower than you do other stuff. Eventually you get consistently to the CC stage where you do things the right way, but you always realize it and it still takes a bit of effort on your part, which can make if feel slower even if it's not. The real party should happen when you move to the UC phase - but it often doesn't because "unconscious" means you've stopped thinking about strutting your stuff the way you want to! These stages aren't fully clean. The next time you want to change something and are frustrated by how long it takes, think of this sequence and how far along it you are. It might be that it looks more like UI, CI, UI, CI, CI, CI, CC, CI, CC, CI, CC, CC, CC, CI, CC, CC, CC, UC, CC, CC, UC, UC. Think about how often you've done it right and give yourself props for even realizing you need to change, even if you don't do it right yet. And be nice to you - and your friends.

They've Summoned Up a Thundercloud

I've been spending time this week reading a new author, Nalini Singh, and really enjoying her books. The series is paranormal and of the first two, I find them well balanced between plot and emotion. The characters are well drawn and grow - and as ought to happen with romances, grow together throughout the story. The worldbuilding so far is well done - fluid rules are not expressed as absolutes or made for no reason and is internally consistent.

I also managed to do a tricky data extraction, baked my favorite cookies tonight, heard from a Cued Speech contact, and had lunch with a friend. I've realized that "thunder" and "lush" are words that really resonate with me. Some words just have power and for me, those do. The rainbow cake experiment branched out: one friend tried the soda mix method of cake making and another eschewed the soda for eggs and oil, but spread cheer to those in her community with a rainbow cake. She even put a rainbow of Skittles on the frosting - how cool is that!?! That's the good stuff.

The bad stuff is mostly external to me, while horrifying me to my core because it reflects on what I stand for when I say I'm American. Check out the posts on torture that Andrew Sullivan has been posting at the Daily Dish this week. He mostly expresses what I feel, although I'm willing to give Obama more time to deal with it than he is. One of the things most wrong with the last administration was their insistence that something be done IMMEDIATELY! Now! Now! Now! without review, without reflection, without asking or paying attention to experts or dissent. I know that it took me a year to settle into my new job and start to feel firmly rooted there - and it's a job I'd been doing professionally for a decade, just in another group. President Obama's had just under a hundred days on the job and has had other things on his plate like the total meltdown of our economy and establishing relationships with the other world leaders. If this doesn't have his full attention right now, I'm ok with that as long as things eventually shake out and he knows it's not partisanship to punish war criminals for war crimes. It has felt in my mind like three years since my last post but I now realize it's been just a few days. I'm from the Gen X, MTV, short attention span generation, but there are times to step back from that speed and let things settle out so the important stuff stops getting lost in the urgency of now. Giving the torture response more than 100 days is fair.

For those who might think there's some debate about whether sleep deprivation is torture, I can tell you that it is. It robbed me of my 20s and a hunk of last year. The danger is in the cumulative effects, and it steals your potential. Lots of little horrors are as bad as a big one and someone who is sleep deprived has less ability to re-center themselves after big or small horrors. Not even sleep professionals really understand it.

For those who think that there's some debate about whether or not waterboarding is torture, there is no debate. It was a favorite torture tool of the Spanish Inquisition, Pol Pot, and various other regimes we recoil from and believe our selves to be better than. That it is torture hasn't been a debate since the 1500s or before, until Cheney - with Karl Rove, the closest living persons to pure evil that I know of - asserted that it was, the media swallowed those soundbytes hook, line, and sinker, and some in Congress were still reeling from the blacklisting / disappearing of the early dissenters to the Bush administration and realizing how little power they had (until they just got used to doing whatever the Executive branch told them to) and let it happen. Torture is always, always wrong. There are very few things one can say that about. The best thing I know about McCain is that he tried to stand publicly against torture when it could damage his influence, although the degree to which he softened his stance during his campaign almost negates it. I can't find any grey area and grey area is my particular spec.i.al.ity. Calling it enhanced interrogation does not absolve it from being torture. Try to find a news outlet calling it torture though, and you'll see how far the hooks went down.

The last administration is the most unAmerican thing to happen in my lifetime and we'll be recovering ourselves for a long time to come. I'm still shocked and furious, but cannot live all the time full of shock and fury and be a benefit to my community. If we can heal up from it and come out stronger, I may come to have some forgiveness. That forgiveness will come easier if people who ordered torture are held to account by us as working against our laws. It will likely leave a scar that will be raw and itchy and gruesome in the psyche of not just us, but everyone who ever thought that America was somehow better than that. But healed scars are a sign of strength and lessons learned. We can say "never again" and "we'll be more careful" but unless people are held accountable for their actions it won't have meaning. If we work toward our ideals and work to uphold the laws that protect us and refine or get rid of the ones that hurt us, we can become better than we are today. But I don't expect, or really even want, speed. We need to take care and ask the experts and reflect and sleep on our decisions before going crazy. I have hope that this will happen.

And that's why I haven't posted all week. I wanted to think on and sleep on what I wanted to say about America's role in torturing people. Because it's a little heavy in a blog on happiness. It may not be a stance that will win me friends or influence people. But what I need to do differently is be less silent, when my soul needs to scream. Now to figure out what to write to people who can take action.

From Leonard Cohen

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd.
While the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned,
they've summoned up a thundercloud.
They're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still will ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

Talk in the Shower

Yeah, sorry, this isn't about talking in the shower, that's just the only lyric that popped at my from Jen Trynin's "I'm Feeling Good" aside from the "I'm feeling good" bit. I'm feeling ok. The irrational irritability of a couple nights ago, when I almost re-cut my laboriously grown out bangs with nail scissors to get the stray hairs out of my face, is fading.

My boss came back from maternity leave yesterday and is getting back up to speed. That's good. She seems to be doing well. I still need to see the new kid. We all gave her "high level" updates about our tools and projects and I rambled a bit because I think out loud. Maybe next time I should try typing it out first. Fortunately we kept it to a half hour of rambling and she seems to think I got a lot done on my primary project (because I did, and I wrote it up coherently) so that's good.

Her boss was looking for a ride to pick up his car (I think he got it detailed) this afternoon. He caught me looking at stock prices after the market had closed (my "sell point" has tripped and I have vested options above water and could use the $ but need to wait until tomorrow) asked if I was busy and I said I could drive him around. It was finally gorgeous and sunny and warm out after weeks of a kind of foggy dampness in the low 60s. It's amazing how much 5F and a little sun changes everything. So I opened the hole in the roof and enjoyed the SoCal spring sun.

It wasn't far to the car place but passed the farmer's market. I made the executive decision to hit the farmer's market early, on the way back instead of after work. It was totally the right call. My hydroponics vendor greeted me by name with a little shriek and a "you're early!!!" as if she was waiting all week just to see me. Kinda gave me a little thrill. All told, I spent an extra $2 today and splurged on a giant asian pear that looked perfect, and decided to try some sprouts. There's one vendor who just has vats of sprouts. Some are pre-packaged in baggies and from a distance it looks like, well, something we can't buy legally. Felt like it too. "Here's your 2 ounce baggie, that'll be..." Of course it was radish sprouts but somehow it felt wrong and I slunk (slinked?) away. I told the guy selling melogold grapefruits (seriously delish with an nice mild flavor) that his girls helping with the samples last week (on spring break) were helpful and he broke out into smiles. I remembered which vendor sells relatively cheap strawberries without packing the bottom of the pints with mealy mushy old berries. I also got a years supply of full grown white radishes (2 pounds for 75c!), a few Fuji apple seconds, 6 limes and 5 mini avocados. Really, I should have taken a picture, but I processed it in batches.

It took all night to wash, dry and put away the fruits and veg because I was distracted. I picked up a stupid little suncatcher kit at Target yesterday in the $1 bin (got out of that section after only $15, might be a record low). The suncatcher is a snail about 2 inches in diameter and the plastic pellet colors are green-orange-purple and yellow. The first 3 are my colors, the snail has a "wow, it's the best day ever today" grin, and I am a total sucker for making these things. I've probably only ever made two in my whole life but I always *want* to make them. So I made the snail and had more pellets. I dug into my extra fasteners drawer and found a couple keychain sized metal bead chains (the kind with the link you pop the last bead into) of different lengths and used some extra green-orange-purple to fill them in and now I have a freeform suncatcher with no hole that makes me happy too.

Then I flipped the used tinfoil over and used it to roast some veggies which I mixed into some pasta with the remnants of a jar of pesto, a spoon of the TJs sundried tomato bruchetta spread, and a slosh of leftover wine. Not a bad dinner, but I still had to put away all the veggies.

You can tell I'm overtired when I get supertalkative about not much and use a lot of parenthesis, like this. Still. Although the day was nothing monumental, the air was clear and bright, the vendors were happy - even the fruits and veg seemed to know spring is in the air and looked their very best today, and I like melting stuff so it was a good day.

Civic Fail Averted

I remembered today at about 5:03PM that I was on call for jury duty this week. Whoops! Fortunately I found out when I called in for the schedule that I'm not scheduled until tomorrow. Whew! Good thing I have new books. I should probably dig out a games magazine and some sudoku as well. These are the times that make me re-think the decision to get a dumb phone rather than a smart one.

Big Jimmy Scholarship

I've got some strong feelings about giving $$ to the source of my college degree. On one hand I do want to show support for the things that gave me joy, but on the other hand, who wants all their hard earned dough to go to a soulless corporation? Because any time you get too far removed from the details, you lose the soul, is my theory. Fifty dollars to the general fund is not as useful as fifty dollars to buy frit for glassblowing, lab supplies for a materials project, or for a specific scholarship based on something one cares about.

When I graduated, my stance was that until I had paid off my student loans, I was not going to be volunteering extra money in donations. I've since learned that there are several metrics used to determine "success" in getting alums to donate. The obvious one is dollar value. The next one is % of students donating, then % at particular intervals post graduation. For this latter set, you could give $1 or $5 and your contribution would carry as much weight at $100 or $5000. If they had explained this to me, I might have been donating $5 all along, even if it went to the soulless general fund. But if they handed me a customized list of specific funds to donate to, saying "even $5 will help us beat those overendowed nuts just down the river", I might have done it before leaving even.

So for all those of you who intend, someday, to donate to your school of choice, start sending them $5 to get in the habit. Then, work on getting matching funds from your workplace. Then figure out if there's a specific fund you want to help. If you want to donate to MIT, I recommend this one. The Big Jimmy Scholarship Fund 3538700. Big Jimmy was a stand up guy who died too young. Very few security guards know your name. Ten years after I graduated, he could greet me by name and recount the details of my one pathetic attempt at mud wrestling, and this did not make me unique. I was lucky to still be in the area to attend the viewing before his funeral. I was perhaps one of the first 2 dozen to show and the family was overwhelmed by the student response at that point. I later read in the paper that so many current and former students showed that they had to open all their auxilliary rooms and they ran out of chairs. Now, the Big Jimmy fund has hit $100K! I'd like to see it hit $500K. For this, I willingly donate $$ and would do so even if I were still paying off loans.

I've got a Smile on my Face

Wey, hey, hey it's just an ordinary day. Well, for many people it was not an ordinary day, being Easter. But for me, I slept in, fixed my shower controller, took a luxurious shower, started in on one of the books I bought while shopping with a friend yesterday, and finally found a good Indian food restaurant within 20 minutes. Whew! That, and talking to several family members, including grandma, on the phone, made it rather more than an ordinary day but still. Go listen to Great Big Sea and you'll see why it's still ok to have an ordinary day today.

Yesterday was a little less ordinary as I drove into LA, passed the blackened smoking shell of a car on the freeway, and used my Cued Speech for the first time in a while to help someone with their research project. (My cold-start lipreading ability, sans CS is at about 12%, or functionally no ability.) I even got paid for it, although I hadn't been expecting to. I was able to call up a friend at a good enough time that she was able to meet me at Borders where I pretty well shot the wad. Although I did have to kill a few minutes first and spent them replacing my windshield wipers which made up the rest of it. I don't use the wipers often in SoCal, but they were kind of shot and I have a bee in my bonnet about good driving visibility so it was time. I'm doing a test - an upgraded blade on the driver's side vs. the cheapest one on the passenger side. And then I found a book I'd been looking for and couldn't find in my town and had dinner with a friend. Yay!

Today's Good Stuff, detailed

• Shower! With the communal arrangement on our water supply and no interior shutoff for my shower, I worried that I'd have to shut off water to three buildings, roughly 30 condos, in order to fix my broken shower handle. I did find out that I could replace it pretty cheap - they sell the exact part I needed for a coupla bucks at any home improvement store here. Then I got to thinking about whether or not I'd just as soon replace it if I had to turn the water off anyway, which delayed the project by several weeks.
  
  I finally decided that I was tired of mucking about with not being sure the water was turned off and worrying that one day it wouldn't be. I stopped at an OSH in the Valley on my way home and found that I could buy the turn-off handle for $5.99, or the turn-off handle AND the water temp adjuster for $3.99. Uh, ok. I checked the directions and it didn't say anything about turning the water supply off to replace it. The picture showed a faucet adjuster that had no way for water to shoot out, and thinking it through, I realized the plastic handles would never be able to withstand the water pressure anyway. So I've been watching the handle crack and fall apart for about 2 months more than I had to, since it turns out I don't have to turn off the supply! Now that I know that, I can also pull the handles off at intervals to clean off the soap scum that builds up behind them.
  
  When the condo was inspected before I bought it, the inspector only found 3 things to point out - one was that the temp indicator on the shower was backward. It turns out that if it was rotated 180deg it would be on the right way, but would be harder to see while showering. Since I shower rather than bathe, I shrugged and replaced it in the "wrong" position. I was able to use my new shower handle and temperature adjuster today and took a luxurious shower. I still feel good and freshly showered hours later. mmmmm.
  
  
• Family: I talked with most of my family today. I ate some chocolate rabbit ears that mom sent. I had sent baskets to my grandmas, one of whom I talk to on the phone. Grandma liked her Easter basket and took the other to my dad's mom on her birthday a few days ago (Thanks for being thoughtful that way, Grandma!) and my other grandma liked both it and the card.
  
  When my friend was here we went shopping after brunch and found some adorable easter baskets. I hadn't sent anything to my grandmas at Christmas because I'm a dork. Mom suggested sending something for easter, and when I saw these, the inspiration became action.
  
  Cost + World Market had these brightly colored felt baskets for about $5 or $10 surrounded by candy and toys. I picked out two - one like a picket fence around grass and another with a flower on each side - and enough candy to pack inside. I also found a funky chicken that dispensed candy out its "barn door" that I thought my step-grandpa would get a kick out of and I was right.
  
  
  
• Indian Food! Long time readers of this blog may recall my frustration with having no decent Indian food in town. It wasn't so bad when I was heading to El Segundo regularly to blow glass because the studio was near a tasty place (Indian Summer on Main St.) and I could get my fix in. But in town, there was a place and I can only say it was a mercy when it burned down. Sadly, the rebuilt, and the food is no better. There are some places in the Valley and Ventura, but the ones I've been to have not been as much to my taste, not offering my favorite dishes.
  
  I have noticed on occasion that there's an Indian place over the grade but had issues finding it. Finally at lunch this week, we got off at its exit and I was able to figure out where it was. Then, after trying 3 places tonight only to get there at or after their closing time (closing early on Easter for reasons not clear to me), I remembered the Indian place while I was nearby, having just been craving some yesterday. It turns out that they make a tasty Matter Paneer and Chicken Tikka Masala. Even more, they offer a "dinner plate" where they serve a relatively small individual portion of a meat dish and a veggie dish with rice, naan (reg or garlic) with daal (soup) and kheer (rice dessert) for $15! It turned out to be too much food, now I know, but normally I have to buy a full entree of each, then pay for bread and rice additionally if I want them. Sure, it lasts for 2 meals and a snack, but it's usually around $35 plus tax. So happiness on my end - I have a local, affordable place to satisfy my Indian food cravings!

On the surface, I didn't do much today - sleeping late, having a shower, reading, cleaning the kitchen, talking on the phone, going out to eat, watching the sun set over the harbor - but I figure any day that makes me feel good to be alive should put a smile on my face.

Box Mix+Soda=Cake

Regular food coloring does not make for good cake colors. It does ok in icing, but not in baked goods. So when I saw the picture of a bright rainbow cake on the web, I had to track it down. I've heard of the gel colors, but haven't really had reason to look into it, but this intrigued me. Then I found out it was made with a box of mix and a can of soda and I became obsessed.

My apron explains a bit of why I'm so excited about a psychedelic, neon colored cake.

Rainbow Cake Ingredients
• 2 boxes white cake mix
• just under 24 oz. clear/light soda (reg or diet) like Squirt, ginger ale, plain soda water.

Here's what it takes to make a rainbow cake - if you're also conducting an experiment. To just make it and be done with it, it takes half this cake, topping, pudding, and pop. Duncan Hines was 4/$5 and Betty Crocker was 2/$4 at Ralphs today so I got two of each just to see if they came out different. Betty Crocker makes the tubes of gel coloring, look in the frosting section, I had to have a store manager help me find it.



Click the picture if you want the gory details. It'll jump to a separate entry and load a whole load of pictures. This is the summary version, here.

The batter looked great and the cake looked just fine too.



After finishing, though, I'd seriously consider adding

• 2 eggs

while the texture was light and moist, the cake was really sticky with a gummy finish, yet fragile. Yeah, that cake was cut with plastic knives, but it still crumbled like a sandcastle. I think replacing up to a third of the soda with an egg (per box) might improve it. But make no mistake, a box of cake and a can of carbonated soda - even just soda water - will net you edible cake batter that becomes an actual cake.

• Preheat oven to 325F.

The Colors, the Colors!

Divide cake batter into roughly (or exactly) 6 equal parts in other bowls. Color mix/soda batter to desired red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple hue with gel colors. Betty Crocker makes some, look in the frosting section. Add 9-15 lines of 1.5" of gel color from the tubes or just eyeball it until it looks good. Do all colors before starting to fill the pans.



To get a rainbow, dump about 2/3 of the red in center one pan, slightly less than 2/3 of the orange in center of red, then half of the yellow in the orange. Similarly, Dump 2/3 of the purple in the other pan followed by slightly less than 2/3 of the blue and half of the green.



Then switch sides and continue to layer with remaining colors in order.



This method of regular and reverse rainbow order helps balance out the inevitable asymmetry of color usage. You can use a different method, scattering blobs or trying for even layers, but this method works to put every color in every wedge slice.




Baking
I decreased the oven temp to 325F and tented the cakes with Al foil at about the minimum time on the box for the pan size to reduce browning. And like this when they came out! These cooked about 45-50 minutes (18+15+15 on timer plus time to shift, tent, etc). I let them sit in the pan for 15+ minutes to solidify and make them less fragile.



Soda Verdict: Before starting, I knew that diet soda was an option, but I don't eat aspartame. Apparently any light colored soda would work, but I wanted to know if it was just the carbonation or if it needed some of the other soda ingredients. From my tests, all carbonated liquids worked fine. I did not try any non-carbonated beverages. Squirt and Club Soda tasted the best, probably due to adding salt and the fact that Shasta ginger ale is nasty. It worked fine to make cake but did not add anything. After cooking, I think it all tasted the same. And I would add in an egg per box if available to see if it helped with making the cake less fragile.

Gel Color Verdict: The colors, they were glorious and entertaining. Gel colors are awesome.

Bake Mix Verdict: There was about 45g more mix in the Betty Crocker, which slightly overshot the "517g" listed on the package. Both cakes taste a little chemically to me, but not much and about equal. The textures appeared the same as did the color mixing and baking. For all intents and purposes I can't tell them apart for this application.

The Frosting

But wait! There's more! 2 more ingredients.

• 8oz. tub of non-dairy whipped topping (Cool Whip) at fridge temps or so.
  
• 3.4 oz package of dry Vanilla instant pudding
  
• 2-3 oz soda or seltzer (or milk, if it won't be sitting out long)
  
  Mix ingredients in any order with your favorite mixing technique. Frosting should be smooth and form stiff peaks. Spread on cooled cake. (Repack in container and refrigerate if not needed immediately.) Carefully stack another layer on and keep frosting. If it's goopy add another T of liquid and keep going. Cut into your fabulous Rainbow cake and show everyone the pretty colors!

Pudding Verdict: Vanilla over Lemon, no contest. Lemon is tolerable; Vanilla is lush.

This cake, it is not organic. It's likely not even recognized as food by the intestines. It is pretty fun to make and eat. I had the notion that doing this could avail vegans of cake sans eggs, but the sorts of people who are vegans tend not to overlap much with the sorts who buy boxed cake mix and soda. (Much like those who eat hummus tend not to overlap with those who eat ham, and thus the world is deprived of quick availability to my favorite, the ham and hummus sandwich.) If you let your kids eat food coloring (some people have really bad reactions), it's an extra good project because there are 6 spoons and spatulas that need to be licked clean. And then it turns into cake.



Enjoy!

Rainbow Cake Update

I've got a lot of energy this week. If I don't get to bed in about 10 minutes, this energy will likely wane. However, I wanted to give a cake update while it's still fresh, so to speak.

I've now made 4 rainbow cake layers and 4 rainbow cupcakes with two different boxed mixes hydrated with 4 different carbonated beverages colored with 4 gel colorings mixed into 6 colors, and two different puddings in the frosting.

Rainbow Cake
(see prev entry for link)

• 2 boxes white cake mix
  
• 24 oz. clear/light soda (reg or diet)
  Mix and bake per box/recipe instructions, after coloring.
  
  To color, divide batter into 6 parts, in six bowls. Color mix/soda batter to desired red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple hue with gel colors. Do this before starting to fill the pans.
  
  Line 2 cake pans with parchment, then spray with "Pam for Baking". Dump about 2/3 of the red in one pan, slightly less than 2/3 of the orange, half of the yellow. Dump 2/3 of the purple in the other pan followed by slightly less than 2/3 of the blue and half of the green. Then switch sides and continue to layer with remaining colors in order.
  
  Bake per box directions, check at minimum time and continue baking until cooked but not golden brown, if possible. Let the cake cool for 10-15 minutes before handling.

Frosting

• 8oz tub of non-dairy whipped topping (Cool Whip)
  
• 3.4 oz package of instant pudding
  
  Mix and spread on cooled cake

My experience:
Duncan Hines was 4/$5 and Betty Crocker was 2/$4 at Ralphs today so I got two of each. Betty Crocker makes the tubes of gel coloring, look in the frosting section. I started with DH and divided the batter into 4ths (due to 4 liquids) but tried to make 6 colors out of it. That was dumb. I cracked open the second box and took out a quarter of the mix for the last color. For BC, I used both boxes from the start.

I sifted the cake mix into a big bowl I had tared (zeroed with bowl on) on a scale reading in grams, divided by the number of grams by 6, and scooped that many grams into a separate bowl. I poured out my liquid (3oz per quarter, 4oz per third of box) into a measuring cup. I started dumping all the liquid in at once then whisking, but the bubbles burst up the edge of the bowl and had to be scraped down. The best method was to start whisking the dry ingredients to get the motion going and a pit in the center, then slowly pouring the soda in and whisking until incorporated.

I tried mixing the cake with ginger ale (for the record, Shasta brand is nasty), Squirt, Club soda (which has salt and other drink additives) and seltzer water (carbonated water, otherwise known as mineral water, fizzy water, soda water). All of them made cake batter. Squirt and Club soda mixes tasted the best. (I'm sure good ginger ale like Vernors would have been good but I wouldn't waste Vernors on this.) It all looked and felt pretty much the same, even with plain 'ol carbonated water, while mixing and pouring but for one batch of green that was slightly runnier, probably due to slightly more liquid rather than type of liquid. I'll give another update if I can suss out any taste or texture differences by liquid, but so far they're pretty similar.

For the colors, the method that worked well for me was to use my IKEA dessert spoons, dip one in the batter and turn it over. On the back of the battered spoon, I drew lines the length of the spoon bowl. Then I turned the spoon back over, swirled it over the surface to spread the color out a bit and then stirred like mad. Putting the batter on the spoon first meant there were no intense bits of color stuck to it. I used about 9 lines (roughly 1.5") for single colors in the 1/4 box batter and 12-15 for slightly more intense color in the 1/3 box batter.

The first cakes became dark before fully cooking at 350F, so I decreased the oven temp to 325F and tented the cakes with Al foil for the last 3rd of the time. The colors, they were glorious and entertaining. The texture, though. It starts light and gets gummy when you chew it. It's extremely sticky, but fragile. Bottom line? You can make cake with a boxed mix and a can of any lightly colored carbonated beverage, flavored or otherwise. And gel colors are awesome. But I think it needs an egg to give it some structure.


Rainbow Cake, Rev C.O

• 2 boxes white cake mix
  
• just under 24 oz. clear/light soda (reg or diet) like Squirt, ginger ale, plain soda water.
  
• 2 eggs
  
  Sift box mix (can make all together or half at a time) into a biggish bowl. Make a bit of a hollow in the middle. Pour some soda into a measuring cup. Add an egg. Fill with more soda to get a known measure up to or less than max amount. (Start with soda so egg doesn't stick as much.) Start pouring it into the mix while whisking, increasingly incorporating cake mix. Add remaining soda. Total liquid should be 24 oz (12/box), including the egg. Reserve remaining soda.
  
  
• Preheat oven to 325F.
  
  Divide cake batter into roughly (or exactly) 6 equal parts in other bowls. Color mix/soda batter to desired red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple hue with gel colors. (Betty Crocker makes some, look in the frosting section.) Add 9-15 lines of 1.5" of gel color from the tubes or just eyeball it until it looks good. One method is to draw lines on the back of a batter covered spoon used to blend the color in. Stir until color is uniform. Scrape down with spatula if needed. Do this before starting to fill the pans.
  
  Line 2 cake pans with parchment, then spray with "Pam for Baking". Dump about 2/3 of the red in center one pan, slightly less than 2/3 of the orange in center of red, then half of the yellow in the orange. Similarly, Dump 2/3 of the purple in the other pan followed by slightly less than 2/3 of the blue and half of the green. Then switch sides and continue to layer with remaining colors in order.
  
  Bake per box timing directions, but at 325F. Check cake just before minimum time. When top looks solid, grease a piece of aluminum foil and tent it over the cake (can touch it). Continue baking until cooked but not golden brown, as far as possible. Let the cake cool for 10-15 minutes before handling.

Frosting

• 8oz. tub of non-dairy whipped topping (Cool Whip) at fridge temps or so.
  
• 3.4 oz package of dry Vanilla instant pudding
  
• 2-3 oz soda or seltzer (or milk, if it won't be sitting out long)
  
  Mix ingredients in any order. Frosting should be smooth and form stiff peaks. Spread on cooled cake. Carefully stack another layer on and keep frosting. If it's goopy add another T of liquid and keep going. Cut into your fabulous Rainbow cake and show everyone the pretty colors!

This cake, it is not organic. You can also make cupcakes. This might be a good candidate for "ice cream cone" cakes where the batter goes into flat bottomed cones to be baked. Layer it a t or T by a time. It was pretty fun to make. If you let your kids eat food coloring (some people have really bad reactions), it's an extra good project because there are 6 spoons and spatulas that need to be licked clean.

So that was an hour, not 10 minutes. I'll add pictures tomorrow, probably just editing this entry.

Rainbow Cake

I was searching for images of turbines and gears, while contemplating possibly maybe dyeing some eggs for this weekend. It was all innocent like. But now, I'm not sure about egg dyeing, but I will be making some cake. Not just any cake, but rainbow cake. For the gay marriage happiness, for the spring seasonal holiday, because it looks freakishly cool. I'm going to go to the store now, unless flake boy calls to say that we're on for Outback tonight.

If I had any Phish, I'd probably have to play it in the background. Mmmm, cake.
(Now we will also find out if the gel colors make me act up. I think I felt a little weird after my boxed red-velvet cake.)

Conflicted

Which breaking news is cooler?

Vermont legislatively makes gay marriage legal, making it the fourth state and the second this week,

or

Kumar from "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" gets a job as White House Public liason?

Question two:Does the Kumar (Penn) appointment mean we'll end the ridiculous war on weed soon?

Infinity

I'm not sure I ever had a proper grasp of infinity before the internet.

You could look at the stars and know intellectually that some are closer and some are farther, to the end of the observable universe (@11:20), but pretty much they are all further away than we can comprehend.

But I go online to check out a wikipedia page mentioned by a book I just finished and write an email but I see a yahoo news headline which reminds me to check a blog I like which leads me to being rick-rolled for the second time this week. And the Muppet roll leads to this which I think is entertaining and well executed.



Now in addition to the Ode to Joy linking my mind back to "meep" and "bork" saying dorm mates, and yet another recent blog title "Be Not Afraid" - a beautiful phrase which instantly called to mind my brief stint in the MIT Concert Choir for Elijah, which although I dropped out for lack of practice time, the people making the drop poster (an on-campus advertisement) used my idea from the first week for the poster design, and I later became friends with the lead poster maker only to find out months later of this brief earlier connection - the Ode to Joy (and amazon, for that matter) has links for "in response to", "other people who watched this also watched", "videos somehow related" and at some point, realizing that one is the 19 millionth 747 thousandth 902nd person to watch a 2007 video of two cats meowing at each other, that this infernal linkage has gone too far.

While I still haven't been to my wiki page (ok, now I have, to get the link), I did send the email (but it was 12 times longer than I meant for it to be; I'm a typing fool today). One has to have massive impulse control (not my strength) or the internet will entice you to infinity. And beyond. It's the best and worst thing about it.

[meandering rant]
I'm never sure if I'm getting smarter or stupider when I count the hours I spend sucked into following link after link. The 17 TED videos (and counting) I count as a plus. But then I worry that I should try to absorb them for a while before moving on, as I'm clicking on the next offering. The main point of Outliers is that just working hard isn't enough - you must have opportunity and enthusiasm for your work - but it is a necessity. All really successful people, though, have put in hours and hours - 10,000 or so at their chosen obsession, in order to hit their stride before they really take off. But not just any work, but "practice" where you consciously work on improving. And I know I've spent 10,000 hours reading fiction for pleasure (not practice although I am a much pickier consumer now), doing math/logic puzzles for fun (prolly nudged my college choice), and emailing which I've done almost daily for hours since 1990. (2+ hours/day, 6 days/week, 50 weeks/year for 19 odd years = 10,000 hours.) And yet I still make grievous email errors (sending a contentious email before sleeping on it) and spend less time than I need to in organizing my email, and way less time than I should keeping up with good friends (one of the reasons why I blog). I am better at composing messages and using email as a tool than I used to be, but have no deep and profound ability to show for the masterswork amount of time I have put in.

So now what? It's 3:15AM. I need to schedule my time better to get the last details of the kitchen finished, get back in the glass studio, start reconnecting with my cued speech network, exercise, date, have friends over, etc... But first, there's this hilarious video...
[/meandering rant]

Internet Enabled Shopping My Way

I need to run to the grocery store. I'm about out of paper towels. The only kind I buy is the Bounty select-a-size. I hate "full size" sheets because I use them like constantly and the smaller size is perfect for 99.9% of my paper towel needs. (I only use Bounty because Viva stinks to high heaven and Brawny isn't; it shreds. In the last 10 years I've only not had B:S-A-S for 3 rolls and every moment of that deviation caused regret.) Even using them fiendishly, it still takes me a pretty long time to work through a roll. Still and all, I'd like to know quickly where to get them cheap. Today.

Much to my surprise, given the variety of crap I come home from the store with, my shopping list is actually pretty consistent. The variety comes from buying whatever's on sale that week that I like but wouldn't buy without the sale. (Why I don't want to pay $2.50 for a can of soup but will gladly spend $6 for half that soup in a restaurant I haven't yet wrapped my head around.) Anyhow, given this proclivity to have the same core list, and for the most part, the same fringe list, I was just thinking of something that would make my life easier:

Automatic list pricing and comparisons.

My vision is a spreadsheet (I really do love Excel) laid out with columns for:

1. the grocery item
2. preference for name brand, store brand, or generic
3. quantity
4. units
5. price at Preferred store A
6. price at Preferred store B
7. price at Preferred store C (opt. etc...)
8. price at Wildcard store within X distance
9. optionally, where last purchased

The "price" columns may need to be 2-3 columns each, one for regular price, one for today's price, and one for a link to a coupon (although that could hyperlink from the "today's price", now that I think on it). Regular price could either be entered by hand or preferably, given today's "club memberships", uploaded from the store database after a purchase. It also occurs to me that this could be used for any routine purchase - jeans, grooming, sporting goods, office supplies with their own sheets. Items could be grouped "weekly" , "monthly", "quarterly", and "yearly" if desired. Naturally there would be a checkbox to select desired items so a list could be printed or sent to a PDA. But for the first pass, all items stay up.

The money feature is this: Each "today's price" column would then be conditionally highlighted with one of 2-3 colors, indicating best price, second best price, etc. So when I need to get paper towels, fresh mushrooms, clementines, and soy sauce, I can hop onto my list, highlight those items and, with a quick glance for the most orange (or green or purple) column, see if there's any one store that would be a better deal that day and go there. If I have more items or the deals are disparate, it might make sense to hit two stores. If I have a feeling that I'll be doing some impulse buying I can do an "update all" and see which store, overall, has the best prices that week and go do my impulse shopping there.

There are lots of other things related (why do these things always get exponentially bigger?) like how to make money - the regular stores can pay per expected customer base or advertise based on volume; the wildcards (which would come up based on a best price or other algorithm) could pay to increase their view percentage. Food companies could pay too, to offer an "equivalent, alternate" product. (Although Pepsi can kiss my ass because I drink Coke, I also like Dr. Pepper and Squirt; Maybe Dr. Pepper wants me to try their new cherry version.)

More interactively, maybe a store could offer instant personalized coupons good for you or me (using your club number) for that day only to get us to a particular store: if I start to print the list for Vons instead of Gelson's, say, Gelsons could offer 2-3 specialized coupons. If cheap strawberries would swing the deal, they'd discount my strawberries to get me there to impulse buy their prettier stuff with higher profit margins.

Then I come home, feed in my receipt numbers, and a secondary database (from which one can plot trends or totals) records my expenditures (this is ancillary from the main idea, aside from updating "regular costs and last point of purchase info). When it notices that I buy a lot of, say, Easy Mac, it can ask if I want it moved from quarterly to monthly. And I can either say "yes" or think "damn, am I eating that much Easy Mac? I thought I ate a lot of cucumbers!" Which reminds me that I'd have to have a column for "farmer's market" which, ideally, would list foods by season. Since the FM's a cash transaction off the books, it would be a voluntary update, but I think I could handle that if I was already getting the use of the rest of the list, just to keep everything in one place and find out how much more I spend there.

poll by twiigs.com

Huh? Huh? If someone already does this, do let me know where to find it. I didn't want to google search it before I was able to record my original ideas.

At long last!

After roughly 6 hours of trying to upload pictures from my reluctant computer into photobucket, crashing Firefox 6 times, Rejoice! for I have uploaded 114 pictures from my vacation!

Uh, I cannot post all of them here. There's a slideshow option though which I tried out for the first time. Here's the view of the road leading into my series of rather scraggly looking trees. We start with palm trees and progressively lose water. Naturally, I did the best pictures first. [Yes that was sarcasm. But there's a reason I have "landscape" as a tag.] I am pleased that I got something set up to post and managed to make some of this newfangled software work on my tiny-brained compusaur.

Pics tagged with "iJ" were taken with my friend's iPhone, most likely by him. Especially the "on the road" photos because I did a lot of the driving.

Overcome

Not quite overwhelming, although I was tempted to use that title, Iowa has essentially ruled gay marriage legal. This makes me proud to see that in the often heartless-to-the-nonconformist heartland, equality is making real strides at the same time I'm still horrified at California's reversal. (Seriously, how did this happen in CA????) It's not often that Iowa gets to bitch-slap California, so stand up Iowans and be proud to be more progressive than "those SF/Hollywood liberal elites".

And keep up the bacon production. Because bacon makes everything better and I think we can apply that aphorism to gay marriage too.
PartnerA: "Good morning wife, would you like some bacon?"
PartnerB: "Yes, wife, I would love some bacon."
Son: "Me too! I want bacon!"
Neighbor kid: "Can I have some bacon?"

Edited to add: The summary of the decision is wonderfully clear and an excellent read.

Underwhelming

I took two small videos on vacation to represent my excellent helicopter view and the wind gusts at the grand canyon. What I got was one video that under-represents how cool the helicopter view and ride was and one video that under-represents the force of the wind at the grand canyon. But I bothered to take them (and picture uploading to photobucket is taking for eh-eh-ever unlike the instant gratification of youtube) so I'm going to share, even if the vids aren't successful at capturing what I wanted to capture. They could bring you a collective 18 seconds of vacation at your desk.

I thought of doing the helo video while we were over some of the less interesting terrain, and my computer's video refresh rate isn't good enough to see if the shaky helo console is captured - the shaky console is what actually inspired the video, the view is the afterthought. And it's noisier than it felt in reality. Really, it's not as bad as I'm making it sound.


As to the wind video, I had really hoped to get the trees really bending to the gusts - they were twisting and flailing in the wind, but this is how it worked out. The noise is more representative of the fear in my soul than the view. They let you walk to the edge here - rather unAmerican of them, in my experience. Usually you have to go to another country to get this great opportunity to kill yourself over a beautiful view. Heights don't bother me, edges do. I'm considering taking a picture of my bruised knee, from a rim trail fall after dark, to highlight even further why I don't like edges or any place where an inopportune stumble or gust of wind could do me in.

Rainbow Cake Recipe Rev C.O

Regular food coloring does not make for good cake colors. It does ok in icing, but not in baked goods. So when I saw the picture of a bright rainbow cake on the web, I had to track it down. I've heard of the gel colors, but haven't really had reason to look into it, but this intrigued me. Then I found out it was made with a box of mix and a can of soda and I became obsessed.

My apron explains a bit of why I'm so excited about a psychedelic, neon colored cake. The rest of the post goes into the painful detail.

Rainbow Cake Ingredients
• 2 boxes white cake mix
• just under 24 oz. clear/light soda (reg or diet) like Squirt, ginger ale, plain soda water.

Here's what it takes to make a rainbow cake - if you're also conducting an experiment. To just make it and be done with it, it takes half this cake, topping, pudding, and pop. Duncan Hines was 4/$5 and Betty Crocker was 2/$4 at Ralphs today so I got two of each just to see if they came out different. Betty Crocker makes the tubes of gel coloring, look in the frosting section, I had to have a store manager help me find it.



I started DH brand and divided one box of mix into 4ths (due to wanting to try 4 liquids) but tried to make 6 colors out of it. That was dumb. After being displeased by my skimpy shared orange and yellow, I cracked open the second box and took out a quarter of the mix for the last color. For BC, I used both boxes from the start. That was less stressful all around but was too much cake for my 8" rounds and muffintopped a little. But the batter looked great and the cake looked just fine too.



After finishing, though, I'd seriously consider adding

• 2 eggs

while the texture was light and moist, the cake was really sticky with a gummy finish, yet fragile. Yeah, that cake was cut with plastic knives, but it still crumbled like a sandcastle. I think replacing up to a third of the soda with an egg (per box) might improve it. But make no mistake, a box of cake and a can of carbonated soda - even just soda water - will net you edible cake batter that becomes an actual cake.

While your hands are clean, line 2 cake pans with parchment, then spray with "Pam for Baking". (This cake is all about better living through chemistry, so put that butter away.)



Mixing

I sifted the cake mix into a big bowl I had tared (zeroed with bowl on) on a scale reading in grams for good resolution, divided by the number of grams by 6, and scooped that many grams into a separate bowl. I poured out my liquid (3oz per quarter, 4oz per third of box) into a measuring cup. I started dumping all the liquid in at once then whisking, but the bubbles burst up the edge of the bowl and had to be scraped down. The best method was to start whisking the dry ingredients to get the motion going and a pit in the center, then slowly pouring the soda in and whisking until incorporated.

To just mix it all at once (to make all together or half at a time) sift box mix into a biggish bowl. Make a bit of a hollow in the middle. Start pouring soda into the mix while whisking, increasingly incorporating cake mix. (If using eggs, add the egg to the measured soda and pour in with the soda. Total liquid should be 24 oz (12/box), including the egg. I think. At least 16oz.) Reserve remaining soda.

Preheat oven to 325F.

The Colors, the Colors!

Divide cake batter into roughly (or exactly) 6 equal parts in other bowls. Color mix/soda batter to desired red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple hue with gel colors. Betty Crocker makes some, look in the frosting section. Add 9-15 lines of 1.5" of gel color from the tubes or just eyeball it until it looks good. Do all colors before starting to fill the pans.



To get orange and purple and a limey green, I had to mix proportions. Plus, I was curious how much color it would take and wanted to measure. The method that worked well for me was to use my IKEA dessert spoons (because I have a dozen of them), dip one in the batter and turn it over. On the back of the battered spoon, I drew lines the length of the spoon bowl, starting with the proportions suggested on the box and altering to taste.



Then I turned the spoon back over, swirled it over the surface to spread the color out a bit and then stirred like mad.



Putting the batter on the spoon first meant no intense bits of color stuck to it; it all blended in. I used about 9 lines (roughly 1.5") for single colors in the 1/4 box batter and 12-15 for slightly more intense color in the 1/3 box batter. On the second cake I got cocky and just put all the yellow color in at once for the orange batter.



To get a rainbow, dump about 2/3 of the red in center one pan, slightly less than 2/3 of the orange in center of red, then half of the yellow in the orange. Similarly, Dump 2/3 of the purple in the other pan followed by slightly less than 2/3 of the blue and half of the green.



Then switch sides and continue to layer with remaining colors in order.



This method of regular and reverse rainbow order helps balance out the inevitable asymmetry of color usage. You can use a different method, scattering blobs or trying for even layers, but this method works to put every color in every wedge slice.



The colors stay distinct if you don't massage it too much. This is the other result.



Baking
The first cakes became dark before fully cooking at 350F.



On the other hand, the bottom of the cake turned out fine.



I decreased the oven temp to 325F and tented the cakes with Al foil for the last 3rd of the time. They looked like this when I tented them, at about the minimum time on the box for the pan size.



And like this when they came out! These cooked about 45-50 minutes (18+15+15 on timer plus time to shift, tent, etc).



I let them sit in the pan for 15+ minutes to solidify and make them less fragile, but I still ripped a little bit off the top where some of it stuck to my hand.

Soda Verdict: Before starting, I knew that diet soda was an option, but I don't eat aspartame. Apparently any light colored soda would work, but I wanted to know if it was just the carbonation or if it needed some of the other soda ingredients. From my tests, all carbonated liquids worked fine. I did not try any non-carbonated beverages. Squirt and Club Soda tasted the best, probably due to adding salt and the fact that Shasta ginger ale is nasty. It worked fine to make cake but did not add anything. After cooking, I think it all tasted the same. And I would add in an egg per box if available to see if it helped with making the cake less fragile.

Gel Color Verdict: The colors, they were glorious and entertaining. Gel colors are awesome.

Bake Mix Verdict: There was about 45g more mix in the Betty Crocker, which slightly overshot the "517g" listed on the package. Both cakes taste a little chemically to me, but not much and about equal. The textures appeared the same as did the color mixing and baking. For all intents and purposes I can't tell them apart for this application.


The Frosting

But wait! There's more! 2 more ingredients.

• 8oz. tub of non-dairy whipped topping (Cool Whip) at fridge temps or so.
  
• 3.4 oz package of dry Vanilla instant pudding
  
• 2-3 oz soda or seltzer (or milk, if it won't be sitting out long)
  
  Mix ingredients in any order. Frosting should be smooth and form stiff peaks. Spread on cooled cake. (Repack in container and refrigerate if not needed immediately.) Carefully stack another layer on and keep frosting. If it's goopy add another T of liquid and keep going. Cut into your fabulous Rainbow cake and show everyone the pretty colors!

Just to make things harder on myself, I tried both Lemon and Vanilla puddings. The lemon is tolerable. But the vanilla just turns into a taste sensation. I think I'm going to use it for a strawberry dip for dessert sometime. (Although I could be moved to mix the pudding with actual whipped cream, I do love me some Cool Whip and that flavor comes through .) No one else seemed to care though, so pick your favorite flavor. You can also add a T of your favorite booze if you are so moved.

Pudding Verdict: Vanilla over Lemon, no contest. Lemon is tolerable; Vanilla is lush.



You can also make cupcakes. This might be a good candidate for "ice cream cone" cakes where the batter goes into flat bottomed cones to be baked. Layer it a t or T by a time. The presentation can't be beat.



This cake, it is not organic. It is pretty fun to make. If you let your kids eat food coloring (some people have really bad reactions), it's an extra good project because there are 6 spoons and spatulas that need to be licked clean. And then it turns into cake.



-------
This post is backdated because blogger doesn't do a jump cut that I know of, there are a ton of pictures and I didn't want to inflict that on the unwilling. Actual post on 4/9/09, time of post original.