Two Thumbs up for Red Velvet Cupcake

What is it like to overdose on cupcakes and I don't mean the Little Debbie or Hostess cupcake types. I spent a weekend with my two daughters sampling cupcakes. My oldest daughter will be getting married in August. Before she decided on a wedding cake, she thought that she might go with cupcakes instead. The cupcakes that we sampled were from a little specialty bakery shop called, A Cookie and a Cupcake, located in the Tremont area of Cleveland.

We stopped at the shop on a late Saturday afternoon. My daughter picked out 12 different varieties of cupcakes for us to sample. They included: chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream frosting, Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting, chocolate cupcake with mint buttercream frosting, white cupcake with custard and fresh strawberries and buttercream, chocolate with caramel mousse and espresso buttercream, German chocolate with coconut pecan goo and brown sugar buttercream, and a signature cupcake. My daughter bought a few others but we didn't sample those. Just writing about the cupcakes is making me drool!

We brought them home and later in the evening my daughter cut them into three sections for each of us to try. We sampled and critiqued each one. We ate a few cupcakes Saturday and finished the rest on Sunday. In the end, I just remember the heavenly flavor, and especially the ease of the buttercream frosting as it melted in my mouth. I pretty much hate the sickening sugary icings but the buttercream frosting was something to die for. The Red Velvet cupcake was wickedly moist as it slid down my throat with ease. The fillings in the cupcakes add another element to the cupcakes.

Each of us had our favorites but in the end the Red Velvet cupcake took first place. Knowing we were doing our job for a worthy cause made the adventure much more palatable and rewarding, and something that I had never totally indulged in before, without guilt.

If anyone has ever sampled any of the cupcakes from A Cookie and a Cake, please let me know your thoughts. Or, if you know of any different shops that specialize in cupcakes to die for, please feel free to share.

* Photo from www.acookieandacupcake.com

You Can Never Go Back Home

There is an old saying that you can never go back home...and I think that whoever said that was right. I was with my daughter and her fiancee, who had an appointment with the priest at St. Patrick's Church, in Cleveland, Ohio. This is the Church where they will be married. It is also my old parish where I grew up. I went to St. Patrick's while I attended grade school, high school, college, and where I got married.

The Church, St. Patrick's on Bridge Avenue, used to be an Irish parish at the time that I attended it. I was one of the token outsiders. I am 100% Italian. But my pastor inserted O' in front of my last name (O'Aiello), and I belonged. I was one of them.

We parked behind the Church and my daughter asked, "Is there a school here?"

"No, not anymore," I replied. I looked around trying to figure out where the school used to stand. There is a rectangular area behind the Church. It looked too small to ever have a school building fit there. The school had four stories, a basement with a cafeteria, two floors of classrooms (two classrooms for each grade), and the fourth floor was the gym where we had phys ed., played basketball, and where Father Bork taught us square dancing, right down to a few do-sa-dos.

The school is gone. The priest house still appears to look in good condition, and the convent has a total make over and probably is now privately owned. There is a Catholic Club that looks the same, and I am surprise that it is still standing. The Church is beautiful - old and faded right down to the front doors, which are still the same shade of green. The neighborhood surrounding the Church has changed. It is a melting pot of different nationalities.

While my daughter and her fiancee talked with the priest, I opted to wait across the street at the library. It is beautiful old building. Architecturally it is gorgeous. It is the same library in the round that I used to go to every week, take out ten books, and read them. The only thing missing are prickly bushes that used to surround the building. The inside looks the same, except for some additional bookcases that have been added, and a policeman with a gun, who sits across from the desk where you check out books.

I felt like a fish out of water, a displaced person in a place that I used to call home. It was a place where I once felt comfortable and at home. My conflicting emotions began when I stepped out of the car and onto the ground of my old life, until I got back into the car and drove away.

No matter how long or how much time has lapsed, I can never go back home. I fully understood that now. I can never go back. I can revisit the area where I grew up but for me home is truly gone and only a memory.

Smencils, Chinese erasers, and Rubber Band Bracelets

As a grandmother, I have now entered into a new world of Smencils, Chinese erasers, and the hot world of rubber band bracelet fads, thanks to my two grandchildren, who live with me on a part time basis, along with their father. Years ago, as a mother, I went through the collections of baseball and football cards, garbage patch kids cards, comic books and of course, stickers of all shapes, sizes, as well as the smelly scratch ones.

Now, as a grandmother, I have been suckered into the new world of what my grandchildren are collecting. It is now the delicious world of Smencils, which are encased in plastic tubes and releases the aroma of different pencil flavors like, bubble gum, cinnamon, tropical blast, root beer, cotton candy, very berry, orange, watermelon, and a variety of others.

Chinese erasers are also hot collectible items, ranging from animal erasers, food erasers, and just plain things like soccer, football and baseballs, trucks, helicopters, and cars. Whatever you desire, you can pretty much find it out there. My granddaughter and grandson store their erasers in big size plastic baggies. They like to spread them out on the floor, see if they have any doubles, and then they exchange them with each other or with their friends.

On the heels of both is the wild rubber band fad. Let me tell you, kids are hot on the trail of this one. The newest fad is selling off the shelves as soon as they are stocked. Kids trade their doubles and actually wear a number of the colorful, shaped rubber bands on both wrists. Usually there are about 12 rubber bands in a package, ranging in brightly colorful silicone bands of a variety of shapes: dinosaurs, farm animals, zoo animals, sea, pets, different shapes and even glow in the dark ones. The bands can be pulled out of shape and snap back to their original shapes.

My grandchildren have bought or collected most of these collectible items. The day I took my grandson out and let him pick out the rubber bands that he wanted, he took them out of their packages and wore a number of them on each of his wrists. The others, he placed into a baggie and put them into his backpack to take to kindergarten that day. After school,. when he came home, I asked him about his day and his rubber bands. He gave me a big smile and said, "I was popular," and he ran out to play. The word "popular" summed up my grandson's feelings, the day, and the new collector fads.

Dream Realized, Sort Of

What would an adventure be without a challenge or two? Our dream house was no exception. Although on the surface the place looked great, we soon discovered the truth of the old saw: “Looks can be deceiving.”

As soon as the site manager and his boss left—after a closing ceremony involving signing a document agreeing to have our house photographed and being a reference; and the presentation of two gift jackets (You would have thought we won a golf tournament.) with the builder’s name on them, and the request, jokingly made, that I wear my jacket at all my book signings—we stood basking in our dream. But the basking soon ended.

My first hint that something was amiss began with the weird sound the toilet made when I flushed it. Sort of a gurgling sound like a geyser makes before it erupts. The toilet didn’t erupt. But when I went to wash my hands, I couldn’t get any hot water. Okay, I told myself. The hot water heater just needs to warm up. But after a few minutes I realized it wasn’t getting warmer; it was getting colder. Uh, oh!

My husband ran to the basement and checked the hot water heater. It seemed to be fine, running and hot to the touch. Then he tested the other toilet to see if it too made a gurgling sound. No it didn’t. Great. The water just needed to get flowing through the pipes. Whew!

Just to make sure the toilet was okay, my husband opened the toilet tank lid. That’s weird,” he said, peering down into the tank. “What?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. “There’s steam coming from the toilet tank.”

I touched the tank. It was hot and sweating. A horrible realization was overtaking me. “You don’t think the plumber switched the hot and cold lines, so you?” I asked my husband, hoping he’d say I was being ridiculous.

Instead he tested every water source. Sure enough—cold was hot, and hot was cold throughout the entire house except for the kitchen faucet.

It was already after 5 p.m. and though we were able to reach the site manager, who dashed over to see if he could do anything, there was nothing he could do. And he couldn’t reach the plumber because the weekend had started for plumbers.

“Well,” he said, “sheepishly, “just remember to turn the faucet on cold when you take a shower.”

“And the toilets?” I asked, steam now coming from me

“Long as there’s no splash, you’ll be okay.” Then he scratched his head. “I must have gotten distracted after I checked the kitchen faucet.”

I bit back all the nasty things I wanted to say, because we were at his mercy.

After he left we went through the house checking every nook and cranny, as we should have done before the builder closing. The joke the site manager and his boss made at the closing still rung in my ears. “See you didn’t need a home inspector.”

Like hell, we didn’t.

We didn’t discover the next surprise until the following morning. As I stepped from the shower I started to shiver. That’s odd, I thought, since I’d just turned the thermostat up to 68 degrees. After getting dressed I realized what the problem was. There was no heat vent in the bathroom. We searched the rest of the house—all the heat vents were where they should be, except we had an unexpected one in the master bedroom closet. Could the plumber have mistaken the closet for the hall bathroom? Not too far fetched considering he didn’t know hot from cold.

When I called the site manager with this bit of news, he said, ”Huh, well, it’s an interior bathroom. You really don’t need a heat vent. In fact, I don’t have one in my house.”

“Guess what,” I said, totally losing my temper, “I have three interior bathrooms in my Illinois home and they all have heat vents.”

“We can put one in, but you really don’t need it.”

“Humor me.”

On Monday, not only did the plumber show up, but the owner of the plumbing company as well. He apologized profusely and then said, “I want you to know that the man who did this is no longer with my company. And everything will be fixed this morning.”

And it was. I can’t say I was sorry to hear about the firing of the inept plumber.

As to the heat vent, I admit to having to use my teacher voice with the site manager when he showed up later that day still clinging to the belief that since he didn’t have a heat vent in his interior bathroom, we didn’t need one. But he relented. We now have a heat vent in our hall bathroom. And that nifty one in the master bedroom closet.

Yes, our dream came with challenges, but as dreams go it’s still a pretty good one.

Has there been a dream realized that turned out not to be the dream you imagined?