use real butter

Recipe: chocolate pistachio cake

Boy, I have been posting a lot of sweets lately. I try to mix things up, but I wanted to get this cake recipe up because it’s so pretty and a great dessert to serve for a holiday weekend. Tomorrow is the fourth of July – the quintessential summer holiday here in the States. My favorite part? The fireworks. I am a visual creature and nothing dazzles me like pretty colors and bright lights. I am drawn to lovely sparklies like Lite Brite (remember that toy?) and gummy bears and shooting stars and… fireworks! Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

a mountain of dry ingredients

batter in the pan

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: sangria

On a recent post where I bagged on annoying blog characteristics I got a lot of comments and emails about why I hate Blogger. I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. There are a lot of people who blog on Blogger, and I love those people, I just HATE BLOGGER. Aside from the incredibly stupid and clumsy mechanics of Blogger, it is ass slow. I know this because when you try to visit over 1000 Daring Baker blogs in the course of a few days (where the majority are on Blogger) you start to pick up on how painfully stupid and poorly designed the commenting procedure is. I’m no authority on blogs, I just know what makes me crazy when I go to other blogs – although I do have professional experience on the design, programming, and implementation side (including some user testing).

my avocados ripened too late for the party, but not too late for us

Now I’m going to make a few observations about photography… I usually keep quiet, but every now and again I will let loose and rail. Here is more brain dump. And away we go!

**Jump for more butter**

Plenty of good things to bandy about on the blog today. For one: sushi, which is always a plus for me. More on that in a moment.

I spied some incredible looking mammata as I left the cancer center this afternoon. I had my camera with me (it goes just about everywhere I go) and was able to take a few shots from the parking lot before it dissipated. We get a lot of these in the summertime down on the flats – all of that atmospheric instability makes for gorgeous cloud formations. It made me recall something Tom told me recently, “the best camera is the one you have with you.” So true (what I would have given to have had my camera in my lap instead of in the backseat of the car when a bobcat crossed our path a few weeks ago driving home).

ominous

**Jump for more butter**