Close to Nowhere

It's a piece of cake!

Sunday afternoon I made myself a piece of cake ­ just one piece. It was the easiest thing I've ever made and it tasted just like a "piece of cake." Wow.

I am so impressed with myself.

Like so many others, I'm totally bored. So I spend a lot of time either sewing or playing on the computer. And, I'm almost embarrassed to say, a lot of time on Facebook.

But, I get a lot of great ideas. Well, at least I think they're great.

One of the best ones is a little dress I made for Sissie (Ruby June, my 18-month-old great-granddaughter). I saw it on Facebook. I took one of the late Pop's favorite shirts, (it was yellow with grayish green palm trees on it), and cut out the front and back of the shirt. I used the shirt hem and just sewed together. It is so cute. Now, I want to cut up the rest of his shirts ­ the ones I have left anyway ­ kids took most of them to wear (which I love).

But I digress ­ back to my cake. I found the recipe on Facebook a couple weeks ago, but I've had trouble finding angel food cake mix. You take one box of angel food cake mix and one box of any old flavor of cake mix and mix them together. The original recipe says use a bowl, but I'm lazy. I used a gallon Ziploc bag. Mix the two dry cake mixes up thoroughly. Took me about a minute to shake them together in the bag. Store in an airtight container ­ hence the Ziploc bag. Whenever you want a piece of cake ­ one, two, three, and you have it ­ three tablespoons of the cake mix, two tablespoons of water, mix well in a large coffee mug and zap one minute in the microwave.

Voila, a perfect piece of cake. And I didn't have to make an entire cake and throw half of it away in a few days because I'm the only one here who eats cake.

The instructions say to top with fruit, ice cream, whipped cream or whatever. I imagine chocolate chips would melt nicely on top. But I'm a purist. I like just cake. So I enjoyed it twice Sunday.

Another easy, easy recipe is probably my second favorite. I love fudge, especially peanut butter fudge. But good fudge requires time, effort and patience, not to mention you have to clean up the mess. This fudge is so easy.

Take a container of vanilla frosting (yes, canned frosting). Then you need a 16-ounce jar of peanut butter. I highly recommend Jif, as it's the best peanut butter, (in my humble opinion.) Zap the jar of peanut butter for one minute 30 seconds. Pour into a bowl (I use a glass pan about casserole size.) Zap the can of frosting for about a minute. Pour into the pan with the peanut butter. (Do I need to tell you to open the containers and take the foil off the tops?) Stir together well. Let cool, I put in 'fridge for about an hour, then cut and you have really good peanut butter fudge!

I'm probably saving 10-20 recipes a day. I've saved recipes for hot and sour soup, beef and broccoli, Philly steak sloppy joe's, etc., etc., etc. I saved one that's Italian sausage and pasta that I might actually make.

I love recipes. If I just loved to cook as much as I like to eat...