Sunday June 3rd....

After a quickie walk around the neighborhood (I was going to Peavine it sometime this weekend, but alas, I have not the time nor the energy) trying to beat the daytime heat...and I almost made it, but it was a little warm yet...I popped over to my mother and Rozzie's to pick up a bundt cake pan. Now, I know this may surprise you....me being the entertainer and wanna' be Martha (although, I don't want to be Martha per se, I just want to bake and decorate and craft, and well, um get paid that kind of money and whatnot) I do not own a bundt cake pan. Plus, after growing up in the home I did, using all the vintage mixing bowls and vintage cake and muffin pans to learn to bake and create things in...It's super hard for me to buy anything new...So, I usually bide my time until something old presents itself to me for purchase (i.e. yard sales and thrifts)

And, isn't her Swan Flour cake pan just gorgeous?
(You can now see why it's so hard for me to go into a regular store when I have these memories to live up to!)

I especially love it because when I ask to borrow something, she says, "...Ok, but it's that old.......I always use" then she'll pull out some fabulous thing she's used for years, and someones mom used for years before that...Plus, everything at the store is now silicone...who bakes in silicone? I mean while lovely (and the red would certainly match the kitchen) with all the special adjusting I do to recipes making sure not to aggravate anyone's food allergies...is cooking in that form of plastic really safe?

Tonight Rich and I are going over to Ms. Dina's for a bar-b-q...so, yesterday, I made a potato salad...potatoes, green beans, peas, shredded carrots and hand made Italian dressing...I will be making a fresh tomato, Euro. cucumber, olive and marinated artichoke heart salad right before we go...And I am bringing a vanilla iced applesauce cake with fruit for dessert.

This is the first time I've personally made this cake; however, my mother's been making it for years. It is the applesauce cake recipe from Joy of Cooking, BUT using organic ingredients, spelt flour, raw cane sugar, and 1T. soy flour-mixed with 1T. water (to replace the egg) I decided to mix the raw sugar with half the amount of applesauce the recipe calls for before I added it to the shortening because sometimes when I use raw sugar, it doesn't dissolve quite properly, and it makes whatever you're eating crunchy...

And, no one likes crunchy cake.

And, luckily with my mother having tested all these recipes out for years, I can just throw out any food allergy problem, and she magically has a substitution solution, it makes it so much easier. Plus, I realize that this is the first time in a long while I've actually felt like baking or making things...

So, I'm either feeling better, or I'm trying to impress someone...
(I think it may be a little of both)

but really, when it comes to cooking and baking...
everyone wins

Don't you think?