I think cake batter is better than the baked cake; change my mind

 

My son and daughter-in-law came over last night to help us finish birthday celebrations for our daughters. I baked a chocolate-chocolate chip layer cake and frosted it on Saturday afternoon, adapting a recipe to use part butter/part oil, sub soy milk for dairy milk, increase the cocoa powder, and add chocolate chips per my daughters' request. The frosting was a cocoa buttercream made with water instead of milk. 

I've probably baked well over 100 scratch cakes in the 30-some years I've been married. And I still believe that the batter tastes better than the baked cake. I licked the beaters and scraped the bowl with a spatula as my lunch on Saturday. Mmm, mmm, good.

Here's the finished cake, waiting for our guests to arrive. The rest of the dinner of Walking Tacos, tangerines, and alcohol-free sangria turned out fine. Although, I think I was rushing a bit while cooking the chicken and beef for the tacos and didn't season it well enough. Fortunately, we had salsa and hot sauce on hand for everyone.

A fun evening, but I was bushed today.

By the way, the rest of my family thinks the baked cake is better than the batter. How could I possibly be related to them? Oh well, this means I get the beaters and the bowl. I'll put up with being the outlier if it means more cake batter for me.

The Budget Victory Garden

We're not at war, so perhaps my garden is not a "victory" garden -- maybe more of a "recession" garden. But I am still concerned with gardening budget-style. 

There are some gardening things for which you just need to fork out the money, such as some soil amendments or soil testing. But there are many other areas where you can save considerable money in gardening. For example, I've mentioned before that I start all of my vegetable plants from seed, I save seeds from one year's plants to use the next year, I sometimes plant bits from the kitchen (sprouting potatoes, sprouting garlic cloves, green onion roots) at very little cost, I make bone meal from chicken bones and crush eggshells to use as a soil amendment, and we make compost in our backyard. 

Here's another way I save as I start my plants. I wash and reuse plastic food containers for use as pots for seedlings during their growth period weeks before planting out to the garden. My husband and I don't buy much fast food, but my daughters sometimes do. Here I've got 2 plastic cups from Shamrock Shakes, a plastic cherry tomato container, a couple of deli salad containers (Valentine's Day lunch), and a small plastic produce  cup, 

Today I needed to move small tomato seedlings into larger containers. I had 5 garden pots I could use, but I needed another 6 containers for all of my tomato starts. 

Before planting in these recycled cups, I stabbed them well with a pointy knife on the bottoms for drainage.  (The tomato cup already had ventilation holes on the bottom.) With thinner plastic, such as milk jugs, I use a corkscrew to add drainage holes.

While I save money by not buying additional potting containers, there is one drawback. My repurposed plastic containers don't fit together compactly like a purchased set of potting containers. I'm currently working on how to manage all of my indoor seedlings to compensate for that issue.

Not seen here, I also use a 6-inch square take-out container and it's corresponding lid as trays to hold additional potted plants.