Cupcake showdown (Austin versus Boston)

I've had a request for some fall photos. We haven't gone leaf peeping yet (though fall color is everywhere). So instead, I offer this photo of another fall sight. Sugar! Pre-Halloween goodies.



Delicious cupcakes from Sugar bakery in West Roxbury (http://sugarbakery.net/). Hiding off-camera was the grown-up cupcake: mocha raspberry. Mmmm...

How did they compare to...say...Austin's Hey Cupcake! (http://www.heycupcake.com/splash.html)? Well, Hey Cupcake has that cool retro vibe going for it. I mean, enormous cupcakes dealt from vintage metal Airstream trailers. What's more fun/funky/Austin weird?

But the one day that I brought my kiddos to Hey Cupcake! turned out to be a disappointment. We were celebrating a minor something. My son protested that he preferred Central Market cupcakes, but we were right by Hey Cupcake! I'd heard about how delicious they were so we stopped to buy some. At $2.50 a pop, they fell into the splurge category, but the cupcake was certainly Texas-sized, an enormous cupcake practically dwarfed by its mountainous crown of frosting.

They were too large. Too sweet. Too much. The frosting was overpowering, and its slick, oily feel was eventually nauseating. I ate most of mine and regretted it. My eldest was both disappointed by the cupcake and vindicated by our opinions.

So I was hesitant to try Sugar cupcakes. My experience with specialty cupcakes hadn't been the best. However, my husband was in the store to pick up some Italian bread, and he brought home these beauties. And oh my! What a difference. First of all, the size was appropriate. Massachusetts-sized perhaps. The price was a bit over $2 each ($12.50 for four cupcakes and a giant loaf of delicious Italian bread plus tax). The children eagerly gobbled their cupcakes. When asked who thought these were the best cupcakes, hands shot up in the air and frosting-smeared lips screamed, "Me!!!" The verdict was unanimous.

The grown-up cupcake. Oh my. The delicately mocha-flavored icing with the generous smattering of coconut. The lightness of the cake. The perfectly sweet dollop of raspberry hiding in the middle. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Thumbs up from us all.

Pine sap removers that work

I'd meant to post days ago. But time passed, and I didn't. As it's useful stuff, I thought better late than never.

(Other blog subjects that I'd meant to post, but didn't include our trip to the farm, our trip to Arnold Arboretum, and our culinary adventures with peaches and applesauce. Oh well. This just means I'm too busy living life to blog, right? Or just too tired after long days of living life with three children.)

Anyway. After much internet research, we came up with these candidates for pine sap removal.



These are (from left to right) hand sanitizer, non-acetone nail polish remover, and rubbing alcohol.

And after extensive testing of the first two (haven't gotten to the rubbing alcohol yet), I'll say that non-acetone nail polish remover works fantastically. You pour a little onto a clean cloth, dab it generously on the sap, and scrub it off. Then you wash off the area with water. You have to keep moving to a clean area on your cloth because the sap sticks to the cloth. Other than that, it really does work well. I got my hood almost entirely clean in a bit less than an hour.

The hand sanitizer. Well. I tried it on the windows. I glopped the sanitizer directly on the glass, waited a while, and then scrubbed. It worked okay, but the glass didn't come clean as easily as I'd hoped. Now...this was after a long time of working on the hood so my fingers may just have been tired. Or perhaps the hand sanitizer is just not as effective. I keep planning to head back out to the car to finish taking off the sap marks, but a combination of busy schedule and weather have conspired to keep me from it.

It's Friday night, and do you know where your kids are?

It has started. Well. That's being a little overly dramatic. Tonight marks the very first night that a child of mine has gone on his own to an open social function. He has, of course, been dropped off at many a playdate or birthday party. However, this time, he is at a party that's open to all fifth graders in my town.

Yikes!

So it starts. The nights of staying up wondering how your child is doing and when he/she is coming home. Okay. Tonight he's coming home at nine o'clock, brought home by a friend's mom. But...it's the first step. A big first step. Tonight there's a dj with music and dancing and foosball and pool. Whew!

I hope he has fun. I hope he remembers the values with which he was raised. I hope he doesn't get bullied. I don't he doesn't feel pressured into doing something he isn't ready to do. I hope he doesn't feel he has to get a girlfriend. I hope he just enjoys hanging out with his friends, making new friends, and savoring that first little nip of freedom and responsibility.

A fairly heavy load to be putting on a fifth-grade get-together, right? Right.

I'm already picturing the time when Lucy sneaks into the fifth-grade shindig with Claire. I can see her now. They grow up so fast.

The truth about pine sap

When we researched our Austin to Boston move (which we did extensively), pine sap was never mentioned. Not once. Ice, yes. High cost of living. Poor roads. Standoffish folks. All of these and more. But no one even mentioned pine sap. And when we went house shopping, I never once considered pine sap as a reason for a garage.

But pine sap. What a nuisance! I used to love pine trees. So Currier and Ives. So coniferously charming. I wanted to collect pine cones in the fall and display them in a bowl à la Martha Stewart. But first the pine trees dropped an unbelievable amount of large brown rice krispie-like litter. Then sap. Lots and lots of sap. My new Pilot became generously embellished in sap.



This was our huge mistake. If you're new to the Boston area and don't have a garage, don't do this! We left the sap on the car. Various stores were out of remover, and we didn't hurry to find some. Weeks later, I ambled outside this cool, breezy, bright fall morning to finally tackle the sap issue. Here is what I used.



This lovely, toxic petroleum derivative is supposed to take the tar, pine sap, and other sticky substances right off your car. I poured a liberal amount onto the cloth and wiped at a sappy spot. Nothing. I scrubbed vigorously. Nothing. I scraped with a fingernail. A bit came off. I tried pouring some on spots, waiting, and scrubbing. A little came off. The new, still soft sap wiped off fairly easily. But the hardened, older sap had almost become a part of the finish. After an hour, I had only done part of the hood with very spotty results (pun intended).

So. We're moving on to fingernail polish remover with no acetone. This is supposed to be better. We'll see. I hope it won't strip the finish off of my car. I'd be a bit pissed. Maybe this is just part of the higher cost of living in the area. The professional car detailing budget.

A garage is starting to look mighty tempting. At this rate, the kitchen remodel will never get done!

Nemesis

This morning I spent half an hour battling my nemesis to a not very satisfactory conclusion. I'm so annoyed by this that I'm blogging about it, instead of teaching the little girls how to write their letters.

Here's my nemesis.



Pretty innocuous, yes? Sure. A shower. Albeit a very small shower. So what, you think?

Well...this shower...this aged shower...this not-very-well-maintained shower...has permanently embedded mildew/mold/ucky gruck in its tile grout. This requires liberal use (and breathing in) of Soft Scrub with Bleach. In the three months I've lived in the house, I've gone through more Soft Scrub with Bleach than we used in a year in the old house. (Granted, we had a housekeeper then, but I didn't buy that much Soft Scrub). This ucky gruck is so ensconced that a dousing with Tilex doesn't work. Not at all. One must douse it with Soft Scrub and scrub, scrub, scrub. The gruck on the lowest tiles cannot ever really be removed because one must get on one's hands and knees to get enough leverage. The shower is too small to get on one's hands and knees in it.

At one point, someone decided to paint the gray floor grout with white grout paint. Now it is peeling off so it looks perennially filthy. Not intentional like gray grout, but like very, very dirty white grout.

After all of this, this scrubbing and cursing and kneeling (on the bath rug reaching into the shower), one would think the shower would gleam. No. Not really. It just doesn't look disgusting anymore. We really, really, really need to talk to a contractor.

For anyone worried about an upcoming visit, the children's/guest bath has been renovated by the previous owner and is gorgeous...green marble and white subway tile and unlacquered brass fixtures from England. It's just my bath that is the yuck.