Cake

This year, the Spawn declared that she wanted an Anpanman cake for her birthday. Anpanman, in case you are not familiar, is a Japanese superhero for the toddler set, and the Spawn is a fan. Anpanman's head is round; the design would be, as they say, a piece of cake. Here is my reference photo, taken from one of her picture books:

The other requirement from the Spawn was that the cake be vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. At first, I declined, but once I got started I realized it was possible - just not as she might expect.
I have, in the past, baked cakes from scratch. This day, however, I also had to open presents with the Spawn in the morning, take her to day care, rush off to the grocery, bring morning snacks (cut fruit and cheese) to the day care for birthday celebration (for almost 30 kids), AND bake and decorate the cake before picking up the Spawn around 5:30. I may be crazy, but I am no masochist. Boxed cake and frosting mixes for me.
I had intended to bake the cakes between dropping off the Spawn and going to snack time; but when I learned that snack time was at 10 am, I realized I would not have time to go to the grocery, wash and cut the fruit, and bake the cake before then. Instead, I started baking right after returning from snack time: two 9" rounds of chocolate cake. I did have the forethought to put the butter out to soften before even driving her to school.

With the cakes out of the oven, I mixed up the frosting. I had purchased one box each of vanilla and chocolate frosting mix - basically powdered sugar and flavoring, to which one added butter and milk. I knew that the chocolate was going to be too dark for Anpanman's golden brown complexion, so planned to use the vanilla to lighten it until I got to the right shade. I ended up using both whole boxes of frosting. In my experience (which proved right), a single box of frosting is only barely enough to cover a two-layer cake, particularly when the cake is darker than the frosting. The half-and-half mix of chocolate and vanilla turned out just the right color, I had about 1.5 cups of frosting left over, and it covered the required vanilla and chocolate flavors.
Once the cakes had cooled, I laid the bottom layer onto a sheet of parchment paper as a work surface. This also allowed me later to much more easily transfer the completed cake onto a cake stand - all I had to do was trim off the excess paper and slide the whole thing onto the stand. Getting the first layer off the cooling rack and onto the work surface was actually much more tricky than the second, as both layers were on the same cooling rack, so I couldn't lift-and-flip it onto a plate. Take note: get separate cooling racks for each layer.
I shaved off the "dome" from the bottom layer to make it flat on top, then spread Mama's Homemade Strawberry Jam, conveniently cooked and jarred the previous weekend, over the now porous top. It was a pretty thin layer, but the jam was so flavorful that it really lit up the taste of the cake. Strawberry flavor complete - Neapolitan Achievement unlocked!

Using a plate, a sheet of parchment paper, and a lot of luck, I got the top layer into position. I then carved the edges of the cake to make them flat. This helps in using less frosting to fill in the gaps and make the sides flat and vertical, but does make the sides crumbly, so you have to make sure your frosting is soft enough to spread properly.

With the basic cake taken care of, I turned my attention to the decorations. The E-i-C had discovered, in the depths of Google, a great many Anpanman birthday cakes made by doting mothers across Japan. One particularly clever baker had used canned peach halves for Anpanman's shiny round cheeks and nose. I stole the idea.
Is food coloring going out of fashion? I was completely unable to find Red No. 5 on the shelves of any of my local groceries. It's OK, though - I had a great Plan B. Or should I say, Plan BEET:

I peeled and cubed a beet and simmered it for a while in water; strained out the liquid, and used it to dye the peach halves. I dyed the nose a little bit longer for a redder hue. I left one unneeded peach half undyed for comparison in the last photo above.
The one flaw in my plan was that I did not drain/dry the peach halves enough. What you see above is about all I did. I should have put them on a stack of paper towels, on a wire rack, over a dish, for a couple of hours in the fridge. As it was, they slowly, continuously leaked pinkish juice onto the cake, which I dabbed away periodically throughout the day. Luckily, the frosting (being mostly butter) was water-resistant.
Referencing the original artwork mentioned above, I drafted my design on a sheet of paper, rubbed over the cake tin for the correct 9" circular size. While I was unable to find food coloring at the store, there was a good assortment of gel decorative icing available. I used black.

I had brought the Spawn with me on the grocery shopping trip in which I bought the cake mix, frosting mix, and icing; while at the cake decoration section, she pestered me to get all sorts of rainbow colored and glittery doodads. Most of them I refused, but I did recognize a role in my design for the chocolate sprinkles. I used them to fill in Anpanman's happy smile. (It looks pretty good from afar and in these photos; up close it kind of looked like he was ODing on coffee grounds.)

We went out to dinner that evening at the Spawn's favorite restaurant, and returned home to share the wonder that was the Anpanman Cake - baked to Her Majesty's specification.
Happy Birthday, Spawn!

Roses

Rather than bore you with excrutiatingly cute photos of my kid, I am going to enthrall you with photos of the roses in our garden.

Oh, did I mention we bought a house?

Open Letter to the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority

Dear MUNI,

It's over. We're through, you and I.

Our relationship has been going on for almost twelve years. It started out so light-hearted; we'd see each other for part of my trip to the office, when I'd hop off the ferry at Embarcadero and take any subway line straight to Van Ness station. It was a reverse commute, so it was never crowded, and even when there were delays - yes, even then, there were delays - the subway line was still almost guaranteed to be faster than one of the street-level buses or the F Market, since they had to deal with traffic and had so many more stops.

Then I moved in, and we took the relationship a step further.

When I moved to the Sunset, a coworker warned me about the N Judah. It's unreliable, she said. In the middle of rush hour, it will suddenly announce that it's turning around at Sunset Blvd, and leave you stranded. No problem, I thought, I live on 27th Avenue, nine blocks before Sunset Blvd, so that kind of flightiness won't be an issue. We're not that dependent on each other.

Well, even then I should have seen the signs. I'd be out late with friends and be waiting for an hour or more for you to pick me up and take me home. Once, I even had to walk from 9th and Irving at one in the morning, because you just didn't show - even though the N is supposed to be an all-night line. Even worse was just trying to come home in the evening from work during rush hour. You'd get your fill of marketing and advertisement girls, finance guys, and old Chinese ladies downtown, and by the time you arrived at Van Ness station, you wouldn't have room to pick me up. I'd be waiting until 5:45, 6:00, even 6:30 before an N Judah would come that I could board.

Eventually I got wise. Instead of just hoping you'd follow through on your promises, I started playing to your strengths. I discovered your 16 express buses. From the days I lived on 23rd and Judah, I started taking the 16BX to and from work, and it was fast! And reliable! And I could get a seat even at the height of rush hour! Sure I had to walk several blocks to the stop at Fell and Gough, but it was worth it. Even after I moved down to 45th Avenue - beyond Sunset Blvd, where the last remnants of the N Judah's reliability were torn away - I could take the 16AX to Sunset and Irving and just walk the last nine blocks. Healthy exercise, right?

Then came the Spawn. No relationship is the same after children, MUNI, and you and I both knew things would change. But I still had hopes. After a few chaotic months, we settled into a routine. I'd drive my car (*gasp!* You see the seeds being planted?) to the day care, park, and drop off the Spawn. There's just no direct route from our apartment to the day care - it would require two transfers and an extra hour of travel time, lugging a baby (and later a toddler) onto one rush-hour-packed bus or train after another. It just wasn't going to happen, so the car was a necessity. Then I'd either take the L Taraval in from 17th Avenue all the way to Van Ness, or take the 48 bus to West Portal station and any line - K, L, or M - in from there. The mornings were good, MUNI.

They still are, mostly, for what it's worth. In the mornings you're usually on your best behavior. I'm rarely late to work and sometimes I'm even early. But by 5 o'clock, you've knocked back a few breakdowns, traffic delays, accidents, absentee operators, derailments, downed power lines, whatever you need to keep you (not) going through the day.

MUNI, I had it all worked out. It should have been so easy for you. From Van Ness to West Portal, I could take the K, L, M, or even S on ball game days. Then I could wait for (or stay on) the L Taraval and walk the last couple of blocks, or catch the 48 outside straight to my car, pick up the Spawn, and head home. But even this, you couldn't handle. I'd arrive at Van Ness to find the outbound platform packed with people. You'd show up with a two-car N, a J, another N, this one practically empty. Then a one-car M Ocean Beach, packed to the gills. Little Chinese ladies with shopping bags and high schoolers with big backpacks would cram themselves on, to a chorus of curses from the passengers already in the car. After a few minutes with the doors unable to close, away it would go, followed by another J, another N. A one-car L, again packed. By 5:40, if I was lucky, I might squeeze onto a train. I'd arrive at the day care at 5 minutes past 6, apologizing profusely to Babi for the third time that week. It's MUNI, I'd whimper. I'm sorry, I tried to get here on time.

And talk about high-maintenance! When we started going together, back in the ferry days, I got a free subway ride along with my ferry ticket. Nice! Then when I started seeing you exclusively, I started paying for monthly passes. To be honest, I can't keep track of all the fare increases. It started out around $35, I think. Then $40. Then $45. This year it went up to $60, and that's if I drop the option to ride on BART within the city. Sixty bucks?

This Spring you announced "further cutbacks in service" due to the budget shortfall. I know you mean well. The cuts were to weekends, holidays, and late night service, and to the last few stops on the lines - things that shouldn't have mattered to me, shouldn't have been a problem for you and I. But something's changed, MUNI. Your peak hour service is getting worse - I don't think it's just me. More and more often I arrive late at the day care. And now, the St. Francis Circle construction? As if it weren't hard enough to get on a train to West Portal, now once I'm on a car, I'm stuck in the subway for half an hour just trying to arrive! You have nine or ten cars backed up before West Portal, waiting for every one of the Ks and Ms to turn around right outside West Portal! It's 6:15 or 6:20 before I get to the day care, and that's if I leave work early. At least once or twice a month - at least that often, MUNI - I abandon all hope and go up and spend half an hour trying to catch a $20 cab ride instead.

You can say it's just temporary, MUNI, but it's a sign of a bigger problem. You don't know how to deal with yourself. I'm not going to lay the blame on the operators, or the management, or the mechanics, or Breda. I can't get inside your head and find the cure - that's not my job. All I can do is deal with the results. And I'll tell you how I'm dealing with it.

I talked to the parking lot attendant at my office building. I'm getting a parking spot. It's expensive - $175 a month - but it's worth it. I'm worth it.

Goodbye, MUNI.

Dear Gap et al.

Dear Gap/Old Navy,

I live in San Francisco - you know, the same city in which your world headquarters is located. It brings me some amusement to "buy local" from your selection. I like a lot of your clothes for my daughter, who is two but wears size 4T. The Gap-branded clothes, particularly, seem well-made, durable (enough), and are designed nicely - classic outfits in natural colors, without godawful gaudy prints, sparkles, or slogans on them (sorry, Old Navy).

Here's my issue. I mentioned that I live in San Francisco. It is now heading into late May, I know. Late Spring, you might almost say early Summer. It's bright and sunny outside. But have you checked the thermometer? Have you looked at the weather report? Have you walked from the BART to your office today? It's COLD. Well, chilly. It often does not get up to 60F in the day, rarely to 70F, and even when it does there's a cold wind blowing off the ocean and a damp fog covering the mornings and evenings - just when we're on our way in to and home from the office and day care.

Now I look for clothes for my daughter. She's starting another growth spurt, so all her size 2T stuff is way too small and her size 3T stuff, which I don't have much of, is getting a little tight. On your online catalogs I see.... tank tops! Shorts! Swim suits! Tube tops with shoulder strings! Strappy dresses! Cap-sleeve shirts with lacey holes! Skorts! The longest pants are flimsy cotton capris (I think I've already mentioned how these are less than flattering on stubby-legged toddlers).

If I dress my daughter in these, Babi at day care will chide me and put some other kid's sweater on my daughter so that she can play outside. Even I wear a windbreaker to work every day. If I wear a short-sleeve shirt, it's because the heating system at the office is stuck on - or because I know I'll be home early so I can put on a hoodie before the fog rolls in.

You live here too, Gap. You know I'm not making this up. There are other places in your market that are in the same boat, really. Pretty much the entire Pacific Northwest. Alaska. The mountain states. We need long sleeved shirts and pants, even in Summer. Maybe even a non-cropped sweater or two. How about those famous Performance Fleece pajamas, Old Navy? Why only thin cotton during the summer? OK, I respect that you only have so much display space in your stores and need to sell to the broad market (although I'm betting you'd do better in your flagship SF stores with cooler weather clothes). But it's the Internet, man, stock a few thousand in a warehouse somewhere and send it to us needy Eskimos!

Pretty please?

Taste the Rainbow

So yesterday we headed up to Fairfax to visit our friends. The Spawn had been resisting eating all day, preferring instead to subsist on milk, and deigning to eat some of an apple, but refusing all other food. After her nap (and a second failed attempt at feeding her lunch), we packed up the car and headed north across the Golden Gate. The Spawn had a sort of weird look on her face for most of the drive - kind of squishy like she was going to go to sleep, but without the heavy eyelids.

Right after we went through the Waldo/Rainbow Tunnel, on our way down the hill towards Sausalito, the Spawn puked all over herself.

As we pulled into the next exit, the E-i-C (who was driving) and I attempted to console her. She was kind of shaken, and pitifully apologized, "I spilled my yogurt." Alas, my dear, that is not yogurt.

We stopped at an overlook and began the process of cleaning what we could with handi-wipes (which ran out too soon), diaper wipes, and washcloths. As we stripped her down and put her into her hideously clashing and too-small backup clothes (the day care asks us to always have backup clothes in her day bag, and we put her ugliest ones in there so we will notice when she's had a change during the day), we saw, over Tiburon and Richardson Bay, a spectacular rainbow. It soon grew into a full arc. The Spawn was enthralled. Karma was restored. We turned around and went home.



(On the way back across the GGB, the rainbow's end traveled across the Bay, making stops at Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the Financial District. I'll let you decide where to find the pot of gold.)

When we returned, the E-i-C cleaned up the Spawn and put her to bed, while I worked on the car. For the first time in the year we've had it, I had to figure out how to remove the car seat cushion. Of course, one does not normally need to do so until it is covered in something unpleasant. It is not an easy task. Halfway through, I discovered the User Guide tucked underneath the cover, which was helpful except for the part where it explained that I had to pull the straps, buckles, and chest and shoulder pads through the tiny little slots that were barely big enough for the straps themselves. I was even more appalled when I read, "Hand wash only." Oh yeah? That's why I have a washing machine with a "Hand Wash" cycle. Suckers.

10 Years

I've been living in the Bay Area for 11 years, now. Ten of those in the Sunset (following one year in Alameda). All of them working for the same agency, on the same floor of the same building, though I've been in three nominally different positions and moved cubes maybe four times (never once by the window! So unfair!).

It occurred to me today, as I was pondering this on the same walk I have done almost every weekday for eleven years from my office to the subway (OK, for a while I walked to a different bus stop), that it won't be long before I've lived here longer than I lived in the town where I grew up.

It feels like time for a change. Too bad my job has me shackled with golden handcuffs; now is not the time to be looking for a new job, and even before the economic "downturn," I did not see any comparable positions with comparable pay. But I sure wouldn't mind moving out of the City.

the entire scale or range

This may be the single most interesting English etymology I've ever looked up. Incidentally, I looked it up because I was at a conference and a speaker (otherwise very good, with a very interesting talk) kept using the word, and kept mispronouncing it "gambit."

From Dictionary.com:

gam⋅ut

[gam-uht]
–noun
1. the entire scale or range: the gamut of dramatic emotion from grief to joy.
2. Music. a. the whole series of recognized musical notes. b. the major scale.

Origin:
1425–75; late ME gamma ut, equiv. to gamma, used to represent the first or lowest tone (G) in the medieval scale + ut (later do); the notes of the scale (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si) being named from a Latin hymn to St. John the Baptist: Ut queant laxis resonare fibris. Mira gestorum famuli tuorum, Solve polluti labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes

Unintended Consequences

The preferential residential parking system was established in 1976 to preserve neighborhood living within a major urban center. It is designed to promote the safety, health and welfare of all San Francisco residents by reducing unnecessary personal motor vehicle travel, noise and pollution, and by promoting improvements in air quality, convenience and attractiveness of urban residential living, and increased use of public mass transit. The program’s main goal is to provide more parking spaces for residents by discouraging long-term parking by people who do not live in the area.

So sayeth the Municipal Transportation Agency.

The street on which the Spawn's day care is situated just became 2-hour parking, except for residents with area "O" permits. Previously, I had been driving a couple of miles from our apartment to the day care, parking on that block, dropping off the Spawn, and then walking a couple of blocks to the L-Taraval stop, which I would take in to work. In the evening, reverse.

Since I am no longer permitted to park on this block for the workday, and it would take about an hour and at least one transfer just to get the Spawn from our apartment to her day care by transit (and another half hour to get myself to work), I can only infer that the MTA would prefer that I drive to the day care, drop off the Spawn, and then drive into downtown, pay $18/day or $200/mo for parking and add to downtown congestion, and then drive home again in rush hour in the evening.

How does this meet their stated goal?