Worm Bin

I started a worm bin last week - basically a large plastic box filled with shredded newspaper bedding and about a thousand worms. The bin is commercially available - Worm A Way - pre-drilled with PVC pipe air tubes and vents on the lids. I ordered from Fisher Scientific's education site, Scienceville, and the kit was supposed to come with a lot of extras that didn't show up. After some back and forth with customer service, they refunded my purchase price completely while not asking for the bin back. They still haven't changed their site, so you could try for your free bin if you're up for a gamble.





I had to order my worms separately from Worms Etc - 1 pound of red wrigglers. They arrived Priority Mail exactly when Matthew said they would - packaged in some loose bedding in a little canvas bag all wrapped in cotton. A few worms had escaped from the bag, but they were still alive. A pound of worms, if you've never seen it, is A Lot of worms! They estimate 800 - 1200 worms per pound, depending on average size. My bag contained all sizes of worms, a good mix! Excellent customer service and the worms looked just as healthy as the ones on the website. I hope I can keep them alive and happy.

I set up the bin as directed - moist shredded newspaper, a little bit of soil, and worms on top. If you leave it open with a light on, the worms will migrate down into the bin away from the light. It's hard to tell if they're doing okay. Besides a few with wanderlust who migrated out the top of the bin and died in the laundry room floor, most of the little guys are down in the bedding doing their thing.

The idea is that we bury our kitchen scraps in there - a pound a week or more - and the worms very politely convert our waste into worm castings that we can add to the garden. I took the bin to show the children at Kids' College and they LOVED it! I gave them worms to hold and we talked a great deal about composting. Even though they had gloves, most of the kids took them off to play in the worms.

Yesterday I buried a little leftover cantelope and coffee grounds. I checked this morning and the worms had migrated to the food scraps. Eggplant parmesan for dinner tonight, so the worms will get eggplant trimmings and more. I'll keep you posted on how they're doing!

I've been making cake, lots of cake.



Cake with turquoise bow

Dear Kylie

Dear Kylie,

It is May 16, 2010 and you are 6 years old. You are a quiet child, thin and strong. Nobody can beat you at anything. You are beautiful and sweet and sometimes cry if you don't come in first. You are fast and smart and at the top of your class. You keep callouses on your hands from the monkey bars and you can do chin ups with ease.

When you meet new people, you won't speak to them and that's okay. I quit trying to make you talk a long time ago. But once you get to know someone, you are a fiercely loyal friend, and I have no doubt that you would stand up for your friends if they needed you. I don't always understand you, especially when you are hurting and refuse to tell me why. Your eyes beg me to understand and I want to read your mind, but I can't, so I hold you.

You love to help me in the kitchen and you are excellent with eggs. You can crack and separate them and you seem to enjoy the process as much as I do. Sometimes you cook for your sisters - cinnamon toast or oatmeal. In your kindergarten graduation last week, you dressed like a baker - apron and chef's hat. I gave you my pearl necklace to wear with it.

I know it's not easy to be in the middle -- too little to do everything that Lake does and too big to get away with the things that Cami does. My prayer for you is that you will find peace in the middle, that you will grow in love and strength, that you will trust me, and that you will never know a day without Christ's love.

Mom

A gift

In theory I'm opposed to becoming attached to an object. But in practice, it's not easy to separate the love I feel for people from the objects that represent them to me. I am a borderline packrat married to an extreme minimalist, though we rarely have a hard time respecting the others' point of view.

While helping my grandmother clean out her old laundry room (which is really the size of a very small house), I acquired something new to hold on to. This beautiful old colander belonged to my Nonnie's mother, my maternal great-grandmother Maude, also known as Mama Bays.
When I hold it, I feel solid. The women who have held this colander in their hands have shaped my life in ways both seen and unseen. The stories of Mama Bays are mostly tales from the kitchen. I can imagine her rinsing her blueberries to make her famous blueberry cream cheese pie. My own sweet grandmother, her youngest daughter, who prayed for me and loved me enough to change the course of my life, has used it in her own kitchen. And now I will use it in mine.

Another, tastier, zebra cake . . .

I have found my favorite cake recipe. It's from Recipezaar, White Almond Sour Cream Cake. Half a recipe makes a 9x13 cake.

The texture is wonderful, moist, but durable enough to stack without crumbling. And it's delicious.

I made two 6" layers (and a pan of cupcakes that I delivered to a special friend). After leveling (it didn't require much trimming), I cut each layer in half and filled with strawberry cream cheese filling. Unfortunately I had extra filling and I've been eating it on everything! It's delicious.

I was a little concerned about the layers slipping because I used a generous amount of filling. I probably should have stabilized it with a dowel, but I didn't. Here's what it looked like filled. Notice my layers are not even. I never measure, but I will if I'm trying to get more than two layers from a cake.

I made a pink bow to go on top, this time using a trick I saw in the Cake Art book, layering two colors, so the bow was pink on the outside and white on the inside. If I was bolder, I would have tried black on the inside to really make the pink pop. Maybe next time.

I covered the cake in white almond fondant, cut black zebra stripes, and attached the bow to the top. Turned out very cute, but I didn't trim enough off the sides after I covered it, so the edges were "baggy" for lack of a better word.

I just hope that the bow held up and the layers didn't slip before they ate it!

Trimmed with the Susan Komen pink M&Ms. If I had known those were limited edition, I would have stocked up.

I made this small zebra cake for a surprise birthday party. I think it's totally adorable and I hope somebody wants a BIG zebra cake so I can play with the stripes some more.

Maybe I'll make zebra cupcakes for somebody.
This bow turned out better than the anniversary cake bow. Or maybe I just like the pink better.

Anyway, let me know if you need cake, cake pops, or cupcakes! July and August are my easiest months.

sigh