Half an Angel Food Cake and Balloon Surfing

My favorite dessert? desert?.. is angel food cake. I usually ask for it for my birthday.

Charly has never made an angel food cake before and she decided to make it for me for my birthday. Now if you want to hear the more interesting side of this story you better go read Charly's blog because she had quite the adventure.

Now my side of the story is that when I got home from doing eight hours of physics homework there was angel food cake, and a super cute wife waiting for me.

The cake was a little interesting to look at. There was a little bit of candle wax melted into it, and the entire bottom half of the cake was... unique... BUT the top part of the cake tasted great and I loved it. It was perfect for me. I am super thankful to have a wife that thinks of me so much and works so hard to make me happy. I have so much to learn still and I have a good example to learn from.

One of the other things that I got to do was balloon surf. There were enough balloons to cover the entire floor and so I got on top of them. They held up my weight just fine. Charly thought I was crazy I'm sure but I loved it. Balloon surfing is fun.

Benjamin's Birthday Cake. Ahem. Sort of.

Every year for Ben's birthday, he has his mom make Angel Food Cake. It's his favorite cake. This last week, I was asking him what he wanted me to make for his birthday dinner. 

"I don't care what we have for dinner," Ben said. "But I do love Angel Food cake ..." It was not a subtle hint at all. If you have any background knowledge of my cooking skills, you'll know why I was more than a little nervous for that particular request. 

The morning of his birthday, we both had to leave for class around the same time. I got home around eleven in the morning, the house empty. I pulled out my mom's recipe for the first time and felt my stomach sink. 

I didn't have cake flour. 

Or cream of tartar. 

Or a tube pan. 

I thought maybe I could do it without those, but I wanted to wait and ask my mom. I decorated our kitchen with streamers and blew up 174 balloons (hours of entertainment for Benjamin) until my mom was home from work. I called her and told her my dilemma. 

"So, can I make it without those?" I asked. 

"Well, I'm afraid not," she said. "Definitely not without the right pan, or cream of tartar. You might be able to get away with using something other than cake flour, but it just won't work as well." 

"Okay," I said, my heart sinking. What was I going to do? I really wanted to make the cake, since it was Benjamin's favorite. Plus, I'd already bought candles for it. "I'll see what I can do." 

After my mom wished me luck, I hung up and decided to head to Wal Mart--despite my time limitations and the floods of rain that were coming down outside. 

I went to the pan section first. I found a round pan, with a bottom that came out. I wasn't sure if it was the right one, but I couldn't see any others that might work. Unfortunately, I had left my phone at home so I couldn't call my mom to make sure i was right. If you know anything about Angel Food cakes, you know how this is going to end. 

I finished my shopping and hurried home. I started mixing the cake, following the recipe exactly. I was very worried I was going to mess something up and was being very careful not to do so. There was one part of the recipe I wasn't quite sure of, so I called my mom. While I already had her on the phone, I told her the kind of pan I had gotten. 

"That'll work, right?" I said. I expected her to assure me it would. 

She told me it wouldn't. I guess because the cake batter is made up primarily of egg whites and sugar, the cake can't support itself in the middle while it's baking. That's why angel food cake pans have a smooth tube in the center and the batter cooks itself around it. 

Well, I was determined to make this cake, especially since I'd already started to. Realizing that Wal Mart hadn't had what I needed, I decided to go door to door on our street trying to find a pan I could borrow. We have plenty of older ladies in the ward and I figured somebody had to have them. I went to four different houses with no luck; the fourth house, though, the lady introduced herself as Shelby. She told me that she did not have one, but she knew her mother, the bishop's wife, had one. 

It was a miracle. Except that her mother wasn't home; she was at parent-teacher-conferences, as a teacher. Shelby took me over there and looked everywhere she could think. Her 8-year-old son was with us and was convinced that "Papa" would know where to look. He ran and got the Bishop, who had no idea what a tube pan even was. 

To make a long story short, I went home without a pan, my time before Benjamin got home dwindling. Still wondering what in the world I was going to do, I looked up online if there were ways to make an angel food cake in a different pan. And I found one! 

Following the instructions, I emptied a can of peaches and washed it out. Then I took some shortening and spread it on the bottom of the can to seal it to the middle of my pan. It made an interesting makeshift pan. I then poured the batter into the pan and put it in the oven with a sigh of relief. I thought my cake nightmare was over. 

THEN, about five minutes after putting it in the oven, I smell burning. I open the oven and the cake batter is DRIPPING OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF MY BRAND NEW PAN. I wanted to cry. I pulled the pan out and tried to scrape the burnt cake off the bottom of my oven. It was too late, of course, to stop the burnt smell from filling my entire house. 

I didn't really know how to fix the pan, so I set it on a cookie sheet and put the cake back into the oven to finish cooking. When it was done, I took it out and flipped the whole pan upside down (exactly how you are supposed to). As soon as it was upside down, the entire bottom of the pan decided to come apart from the rest of the pan and flop onto the counter, cake first. 

At this point, I was so done with the cake. I didn't even try to get the bottom (which, by the way, was covered in melted shortening from my "sealed can") of the cake off the pan. I set the entire pan bottom on a plate and stuck the candles in that. 

Ben got home and the first words out of my mouth were, "You do not know what I went through to make you this cake today."

It was worth it. We ate the entire top of the cake off. And it was delicious. 

Starving for a Sandwich

Last night, I got onto my email account and lo and behold I have an email. It says, "Charly has invited you to contribute to a blog". I know Charly minimally ... as in, I have seen her twice and gone on a double date with her once, so to say that I was confused is an understatement. I considered writing something yesterday, just for the heck of it; it was my birthday, after all, and I obviously can get away with anything and everything on my birthday--even if it was potentially causing havoc and ruin on the blog of someone who I barely know who, without meaning to, allowed me to contribute to it. My more charitable side decided that was a poor decision, so I didn't. Then I get home today and I bring it up to my wife, thinking she will be just as confused as I am. She wasn't. Turns out she had roped me into being part of this blog then forgot to tell me that I was being roped into it. I will have you know I am coming into this kicking and screaming, or at very least pretending that I am. 

Anyways apparently I am supposed to respond to the stories that my wife tells about us, so you can get both sides of the story. So I shall.

I was at work, and I had no idea what was going on. But that is not the true tragedy of this story. I went into work at 11 in the morning, and I, foolishly, had not taken food to eat while at work. Add in the fact that I had two "midterms" (two weeks before finals) the next day and several person (or personal if you want to read it that way--I personally like both) issues at the time and you can imagine my mood going into work. I had pointed out the aforementioned shirt to my coworker because it is gorgeous and the only really red shirt that we sell there. Then I had pushed through the day like a trooper.

About four in the afternoon, who should come to visit me but my dear wife. She is so very sweet but I am a self proclaimed trooper and, having to live up to that fact, I was busy working, helping out as many customers as I could feasibly help while giving my wife as much attention I could give her, which was very little. Next thing I know, she is being sent to go get us sandwiches. Now remember who has not eaten since that morning; yes, I am talking about poor, starving me. So the guys give my wife money to go down the street and get sandwiches from probably the BEST sandwich shop in Salt Lake (the Gandolfos on main street). She wanders off and I continue troopering on. She comes back, and this is when her story takes place. (Insert wife's story here)

Now back to my story. She had gotten sandwiches for the guys, including a foot-long for her and me, buy I didn't have a lot of time to sit down and actually eat it. The problem is that it was connected to hers and if you read her story you can guess where that sandwich went. That's right, while she was being mischievous and conniving, she took my half of the sandwich and walked RIGHT OUT THE FRONT DOOR. There it is right there. The fact that because my loving beautiful wife wanted to surprise me with something for my birthday, I had to starve....

So it really wasn't that tragic and let's be honest, I look dang good in that shirt, but WHO DOES THAT!?!?! Oh, wait, my wife.

Surprise Presents

KC loves clothes. He likes to look good, to put it more accurately. Most of the time he uses that to get me nice clothes, but that's not what this story is about. It's about his surprise birthday present.
We usually get KC's clothes from Jos A Bank, since he works there. Unfortunately, that makes it very difficult to surprise him since he's always there when I am. His birthday was coming up, and I wanted to surprise him with something. I'd gotten him lots of clothes for birthday and Christmas, but he knew about all of them. (I almost surprised him with some vests, but the store called his phone to tell him they had come in. Ugh. Thwarted again.)

One day, I went to Jos A Bank to visit KC. They were very busy and we only had a few minutes to talk. I waited a couple hours. While KC helped a customer, I talked to Richard, who wasn't busy at the moment. Richard mentioned a burgundy sport shirt that KC liked. I brightened up. 

"Is that the same one he showed me the other day?" I asked. 

Richard shrugged. "I don't know. Let me show you which one it is." 

We walked to the sport shirts. He grabbed the burgundy shirt and showed it to me. I grinned. 
"That's the one." I had a mischievous look on my face. "KC thinks we don't have any money for any more presents. But I still have plenty saved up. Could you ring me up while he's distracted?" 

Richard looked back at KC. He was still helping the customer in the back, out of sight from the register. He nodded. "Yeah, not a problem!" 

I handed him my debit card and walked away so that if KC glanced over, he wouldn't be suspicious. Richard quickly rang the shirt up and paid for it with my card. While he put it in a bag, I walked back to KC. I had realized that if I waited around any longer, he'd see me with a bag and he'd know what I'd done. I'd already been there for a couple hours, so it was time to leave anyways. He looked disappointed that I was leaving, but we said goodbye and I walked to the front of the store. Richard handed me the bag and I left.

KC didn't have a clue. 

The First Spark Between Benjamin and Me

Jeremy's birthday is on November 19th. He held his eighteenth birthday party the next day, a Saturday. Aaaaaand, because he's Jeremy, he didn't tell me about his party until after I had already committed to babysit. 

But Jeremy's my best friend. In the whole world. I couldn't not go to his 18th birthday party. 

So, I told him I would be there late. And I was. I was there very late. 

It seemed that the forces were against me that night ... 
The couple I was babysitting for stayed out late. They didn't get home until after ten. 
When they did finally get home, we had to shovel my car out of the snow. Literally. 
I had to get gas. And almost crashed my car into a tree on the way. 
I hadn't wrapped Jeremy's present yet. So, I had to stop at home to do that. 
And I ended up battling a snow storm in the dark to get actually get to the party. I was terrified.

Before I left my house to drive to the party, I glanced in the bathroom mirror. My hair was in a falling-out, frazzled ponytail after my long, busy day. I had very little (as in, only mascara) make up on. I was wearing jeans and a green t-shirt I'd owned since seventh grade. It was one of my typical babysitting outfits. I thought, before rushing out the door, It's fine, my friends have all seen me worse than this. 

I got to the party, but the blizzard had scared away most of Jeremy's guests (meaning his friends, the ones who were also my friends) away. All that remained was his family and three people I had never met before. One was a girl, Jeremy's latest crush. One was Alex Hill, a junior in Jeremy's seminary class. And one was Benjamin Anderson. 

How in the world does Jeremy have a friend that attractive and I don't know him? I thought, when I first saw him. I didn't say anything, though; the combination of my shy nature and Ben's good looks was too much for words. 

The group was already playing a game when I got there. I quietly sat and watched, content simply that I had made it to the party. The game they were playing required three people to stand in the front of the room at a time. Ben was up when it happened. 

I looked up at Ben just as he glanced over at me. 
Our eyes caught. 
And, I felt it.
The spark. The one that everyone talks about. 
I felt it. 
And blushed, of course. 
And quickly dropped my gaze. 

We didn't talk that night, not really. But that night, I went home with a head full of Benjamin, dreaming. 

Dreaming of a love story with Benjamin Anderson.