Story of the Day 10/ 7/ 2012

Tonight starts another two day Jewish holiday.

Jewish holidays come in two varieties- ones where we eat nothing and fast all day, and ones where we overeat.
This holiday is the latter.

I have been cooking.

It is chilly outside. The days are getting shorter.
I am not making a lot of cold salads, but am thinking fall types of foods.
I am making burekas, and challah, and salmon with honey /mustard/pecan sauce. I am roasting eggplant, and making a butternut squash.

I bought whipped cream and am planning on making a special dessert.
I told Sarah, "I will make pumpkin crunch cake."

Pumpkin crunch cake is one of my family's favorites. The recipe was a friend's.
She used to make it using yellow cake mix.
Obviosuly, she is a friend, or was a friend.
She died 19 years ago.
But at any rate, a friend and not a relative.

That is because, in my family, if it isn't chocolate, it isn't worth the calories.

So, I have made a small alteration to her recipe.
I substitute a dark chocolate cake mix for the yellow cake mix.
I top the pumpkin custard with the chocolate cake mix with butter melted over it.
The butter crusts the top of it- and mixes with the pecans on the very top.
The lower part of the cake mix- which is added dry on top of the pumpkin custard- mixes slightly into the top of the pumpkin and makes a brownie top- a crusted brownie top.
It is delicious.

So, I was opening the can of pumpkin, and discovered, while looking for the cake mix, that I do not, in fact, have a chocolate cake mix.....

I ask my husband, "Will it be all right with you if I use a yellow cake mix?"
It is almost 3 PM. The holiday starts in a few hours and I still have a lot to do.

He smiles and tells me, "That will be fine."

I go upstairs to where Sarah is watching football on TV.
Her response is, "NO! It has to be chocolate!"

Her tired, old mother, I mean me-myself and I- look at her and sigh.
An unheard sigh, of course, since she is deaf.

I go back on downstairs and ask my husband, if he would please, pretty please, run out to the store and get a chocolate cake mix.
I explain that Sarah has decreed it needs to be chocolate.

My husband says he will go.

Then he smiles at me and says, "Oh good, I wasn't going to eat any if it wasn't chocolate."