A View of the Valley

by Linda Schwanke I saw a meme that said something like: no one told me that the hardest part of adulting would be deciding what to have for dinner every night. It is so true it kind of hurts. I enjoy cooking but there are times when thinking of what to have for dinner makes me a little crazy. I have a friend I text when I’m desperate for dinner ideas and thank heavens for her. She has come through for me on more than one occasion. I did not ask her, but perhaps should have, what to do with leftover sour cream. It could have saved me hours and hours of work.  Not all that long ago, daughter Gwen planned to make lemon tzatziki sauce to eat with our cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes and bought all the ingredients, including sour cream. But then we ate all the veggies. So no lemon tzatziki sauce. We were left with sour cream - and yogurt but that’s easy to eat up. Being the genius that I am, I decided that since it’s been ages since we made a cake, I’d look up chocolate cake recipes made with sour cream because I realized that there just aren’t that many things we make with sour cream. I spent far more time reading recipes than necessary but it was a learning experience. Many of the recipes I read had coffee in them which sounds yummy but three-year-old granddaughter Mildred has yet to experience caffeine. I am not going to be the one to introduce her to it. So I decided to make the recipe for chocolate cake I found on the Completely Delicious website. (If you want to try it, let me know. I can email it to you. Or I’ll even print it out and mail you a copy.)  I like being able to make time for having fun in the kitchen with just Mildred and I so I picked an afternoon when Gwen was at work and hubby Jim was busy doing man-things. I gathered all the things I needed and arranged them in the kitchen. When Mildred woke up from her nap I told her we were going to make a cake together and away we went. Things started out pretty smoothly. With Mildred on one side of the kitchen counter on her stool, I got the mixer going with butter and sugar. I gave Mildred various sized bowls with flour, salt, oil and water in them. I gave her a half a dozen measuring spoons, cups, a whisk and big wooden spoon to mix up her own “cake.” Mildred, also a genius, figured out that I was setting her up to make play dough to play with and she was not having it. She wanted to really help make the cake with me - for real. Fair enough. How bad could it be? I thought to myself.  I had Mildred mix up the play dough to play with later, then dragged her stool around so she could stand next to me and pitch in for real. And she did. Each step of the way, I measured, she poured and then it all got mixed in. The eggs were especially fun when she plopped them in. Only two slipped away from her…  Checking the recipe over my shoulder, I realized that I had forgotten to melt the chocolate in boiling water. I measured the flour into the bowl for dry ingredients, she put the flour in the bowl. I measured salt. She put it in the bowl. I told Mildred to stir it all up while I took care of the chocolate mix. Turning my back on her to get the water going was a mistake. I heard her giggle. I asked her if she was having fun without looking because I was occupied with boiling water. She didn’t really answer but laughed and laughed, which at long last got my attention. She was elbow deep in flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and whatever else she could get her hands on and it was everywhere. She had apparently tasted the bakers chocolate, too, because she was covered with it. (I have a picture of Gwen and son Bill sitting on the kitchen table covered in chocolate frosting. And I do mean covered. It’s one of my favorites.) It was impossible to be mad because Mildred was so completely delighted with herself, with me, with having fun in the kitchen together. I whipped up a new batch of dry ingredients, we finished putting the cake together and popped in the oven. After Gwen frosted it and Mildred put sprinkles on it, the cake was delicious.  Kids wash up, dishes wash up, the kitchen washes up. I’m not a huge fan of paper towels. My mom used to say that paper towels were invented for me because I was a child who spilled things all the time which could be why I don’t like them. But I don’t like many things that are one use only. I clean with cotton towels but that could change. I had to bleach the towels we used to get them clean and the bleach shredded the towels. And I guess no good deed goes unpunished but I would, and will, do it again. These moments are so precious and how often do you get to take pictures of a kid covered in chocolate? Not often enough. Stay in touch. My phone number is 574-3159, call or text me anytime. You can also email me at homenewseditor@newspubinc.com or write to me at the Home News, P.O. Box 39, Spring Green WI 53588.