King Cake Recipe

King Cake Guide » 

INGREDIENTS 

For The Dough:
1 1/4-oz. package active dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp. light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
8 tbsp. softened butter 

For the Filling:
1 lb. cream cheese
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
2 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
Zest of 1/2 lemon

For the Icing:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup buttermilk
Green, purple, and yellow sanding sugars 

INSTRUCTIONS 
1. Make the dough: In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a hook, combine yeast, 1/2 tsp. of the sugar, and 1/4 cup water heated to 115°. Stir to combine and let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes. Add remaining sugar, milk, light brown sugar, vanilla, egg, and egg yolk. Beat on low speed until thoroughly combined, 1 minute. Turn mixer off and add flour and salt. Mix on medium speed until the dough just comes together. Turn mixer speed to high and knead dough for 4 minutes. Add the butter and continue kneading until dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, about 6 minutes. Remove bowl from mixer, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit until doubled in size, 1 1/2-2 hours.

2. Meanwhile, make the filling: Combine cream cheese, brown sugar, pecans, cinnamon, salt, and zest in a large bowl and beat on medium speed of a hand mixer until combined; set aside.

3. Punch down dough and turn it out onto a heavily floured surface. Using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough into a large circle, about 1/4"-thick. Cut a hole in the center of the circle and pull with your fingers to widen. Place dollops of filling evenly around circle halfway between outer edge and inner hole. Drape outside edges over filling and continue rolling outside inward until filling is covered, widening inner hole as needed, until dough covers the seam. Transfer rolled dough circle to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet; cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour. Heat oven to 350°. Uncover cake and bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely.

4. Make the icing: Whisk together the sugar and buttermilk in a small bowl until smooth. Transfer king cake to a cutting board or serving platter; spread icing evenly over top of cake and sprinkle evenly with sanding sugars. 

Life Spins out of Control

Haven't posted in some time.  Had a bad fall off the new deck end of June and postponed the stomach surgery to August 30; all went well.  It's been a tough six weeks made even more difficult because my Cousin Susu has been diagnosed with lung cancer and my best friend, Pagnol, has died last Tuesday.

We knew Susu had cancer in one lung but the biopsy in the other lung came back negative.  I spent almost a week in Houston with her as we went to various appointments and tests at M.D. Anderson.  The lung doctor told us he thinks the negative lung is actually positive and we got a false negative.  There will be another biopsy tomorrow.  I will go to Beaumont next week.

Tuesday,  was a horrible day.  My little dog, Pagnol, had gotten quite old (he would have been 16 in February) and a couple of weeks ago he was diagnosed with an enlarged heart.  The Vet said to "be prepared".  She put him on two kinds of diuretics to get the fluid off his heart but he just went into such a fast decline.  I guess I thought I could patch him up and keep him forever but the body wears out.  He was almost completely blind from an auto-immune eye condition.  He had a few other problems and then the heart disease put him over the edge.

Tuesday, I tried to walk him.  It was so difficult to get him down the stairs and when I tried to walk him he just stood there and looked at me as if to say, "what am I supposed to do".   I got him back up the stairs and dissolved in tears.

I knew what I had to do but the reality of it made me so sad I would have rather gone to the Vet and be put so sleep myself.  This, however, would not have helped Pagnol one iota.

I gave him chicken breast for breakfast.  Then I gave him two of his favorite treats that look like T-bone steaks.  I called the Vet and made an appointment for 2PM.  I thought I could summon the courage to go with him and be there but in the end my son told me he would take him and I should stay home.  I am a coward.

Now, I can understand that perhaps I should have made this decision earlier but how can you know what to do unless you are faced with the inevitable.

Lost my best friend and constant companion.  Lost another important thread in the fabric of the family life Michel and I established together.  Michel actually chose Pagnol at the Humane Society.  I was less than enthused but we took him out into a little garden and sat with him.  I was in a lawn chair and Pagnol went behind my chair, leaned up against my back, and let out this huge sigh of relief, as if to say, "with you I feel safe at last".  I could not resist him.

We had a lot of fun the three of us.  We went to the beach almost every day.  I adored walking Pagnol and he really enjoyed his walks.

Michel knew I spoiled both him and Pagnol.  I would cook for Pagnol.  He liked best chicken breast (not too spicy) and fettuccine Alfredo.  He relished creamy sauces and he loved cheeses.

So what do I do now the two of the important males of the three important males in my life have gone?  Not sure tune in later............

APPLE PENNY TABLE

In February of this year I turned a big corner and was hit smack in the head with my sixty fifth year.  Being ever practical, I had solicited the advice of my friend, Tina ( a former surgical nurse), to help steer me in the right direction with family healthcare provider(s) because the clinic I had been visiting for several years decided my advanced age and Medicare status made me unacceptable for their services.  Tina suggested I go to her doctor, Dr. Camacho, a fine woman doctor who practices at the UTMB Geriatric Clinic.  Tina and I surmised that once I turned 65 I could be considered "geriatric".

I made an appointment and went for my first physical thereby initiating my first Medicare claim. The ladies at the reception thought I was there for some elderly relative but I insisted I was the one with the clinic appointment - well enough.  The nurse came to do my work-up and informed me I am too young to attend the geriatric clinic.  I told her I fall within the age guidelines and I will be a clinic patient.   So, I was duly tested for blood pressure, weight, etc. and installed in a room to await the doctor.

Soon enough, a bright young woman came into the room and told me she was, Andrea, the physician's assistant and she would do some testing on me, as well.  I like Andrea because she's funny and bright and did not waste time telling me I didn't belong there.

She did immediately launch me into a senility test which is standard procedure for someone who is sixty five years of age.  The first thing they do with the test is give you three simple words and tell you to hang on to those words with your memory because there will be a test later.  So, we did the drawing pictures, the word associations, the mobility, hearing, sight, etc. and eventually we came to the end of the testing game and I was told to divulge my words:  Apple, penny, table.  Then I was told to write a sentence about anything I cared to write about.  I wrote, "this execise seems to be very silly but I suppose it is an effective evaluation tool."  Andrea giggled and I asked if I passed (knowing it's not a pass or fail situation but just being silly again).

Apple, penny, table stuck in my brain.

I got home that day and told the boys my senility words:  Apple, penny, table.  They immediately seized on the words and now, every time I do something silly (which is often) that could be construed as sign of senility; they recite the words to me but with differing words replacing penny and or table.  For instance:  I annoyed Sean about the dog's food.  I was being absent minded about that issue and Sean said, "Mother, apple, penny, kibble" or something of that nature that pertains to the issue at hand with the Apple always in the front of the string of words.  It has become a standing joke at our house and we laugh about the apple-penny-table sequence almost every day with me being the brunt of the jocularity.

I don't mind but I would like to get apple, penny, table off my mind for a few hours a day.

Light My Fire but Don't Burn Down the House

My husband was a brilliant fellow who spoke several languages, had multiple college degrees, wrote several books and was totally devoid of common sense. It's not really his fault that he was lacking in common knowledge, because he came from the sort of French aristocratic bourgeois family that had a maid, nanny and a cook; whose supervision took so much time out of the parental day; it left preciious little time for his parents to give common sense lessons to their children.  In France, aristocratic families have no need of common sense anyway: that's what the "help" is paid to do.

This means that my poor husband did not have the benefit of learning how to camp, make fires, use knives, fish, water safety or any of the other things we girl and boy scouts take for granted. He was once horrified at the presentation of S'mores on a stick until he tasted one and  then he was the gran French afficiando de camp fire cuisine which made him kind of crazy when there was a fire around.

In the beginning I often caught myslef chiding him that we could not burn the milk carton in the fireplace because it would melt and smoke up the house. Several charred milk cartons later I was saying we cannot burn magazines in the fireplace because they make a dark dense smoke......get my drift? The year we owned our first home together; we went through ten smoke alarms from December to March. Every day was another exciting experiment in pyrotechnology at our house and another ruined relentlessly screaming smoke alarm ripped from its perch on the ceiling in true Gallic furor as the squealing offender whined of impending danger. Needless to say all this smoke left our freshly painted yellow walls looking like the inside of a Cro-Magnon cave sans cleverly spray painted figures of bison and uber women.

Quickly, my husband began to resent my motherly suggestions on how to handle fire with safety and caution. I became the scourge of fire making and we finally had to block off the chimney and put an end to fires inside the home or else divorce..... or worse.

Putting an end to fires inside the home did not seem to detach dear hubby from turning over a new leaf in the back yard: and burning all the new leaves he turned over as he also discovered burning the trash was a good thing; even though he was duly informed by me there was a city ordinance against outdoor burning.

Our new deck was the unfortunate recipient of the burn award of the month when my husband threw a lit cigar into a plastic trash can full of papers and when it caught fire, he sat it out on the deck as he went to take a shower. Several minutes later a clean hubby emerged from the shower to see dark black smoke streaming through the windows of the TV room that faced the deck. I was working next door at the Insurance Agency and my boss came in the door with his cell phone saying he was calling 911 because there was a fire in the neighborhood (I barely stopped him in time; I knew it had to be Michel). Dear reader, if you have correctly assumed that the cigar set fire to the papers in the trash can and the plastic trash can set fire to the deck you have got an A plus in deductions. I arrived on the scene just in time to see my dear boy, with hose in hand, had put out the flames but the black smoke still clung in the air for hours after. For many months we had to place a large potted tree over the spot where the circular trash can had branded a dark charred hole right through the deck.

The nadir of my husband's pyrotechnic endeavors came shortly after we purchased a wonderful cedarwood beach house on Bolivar Peninsula. After the great hurricane flood of 1900, the beach houses in this area were all built on wooden pylons at least one story in the air. We had a large wooden staircase in the front of our home but no other entrance or exit existed for the house, the living area was on the second storey and the master suite was on the third storey. We truly felt we owned a piece of paradise with waving palms trees, flowering shrubs and lots of Gulf views with the water smack in front of our house.

To my husband's great chagrin even the wilds of Bolivar also had an outdoor burning ordinance (according to me) but he decided to ignore my warning and set his own bonfire whist I was in the shower one day.

When I emerged from the shower in the third floor bath, I went to the font sliding glass doors to look at the Gulf, but all I saw was smoke billowing all around the house. Quickly I threw on a dress and ran down the stairs to the living room, grabbed the dog and fled out the door. As I walked out the door I noticed the smoke was all coming up around the front stairs, it was thick grey and choked me and the dog. We thought we were taking our lives in our hands as we ran down those stairs only to find my husband smugly underneath the bottom of the stairs with a roaring bonfire he built under the (wooden) house and our next door neighbor standing out between the two houses, cell phone in hand,  transfixed by panic unable to move or speak. Quickly I grabbed the hose and began to turn on the water when Michel began to holler at me not to put his fire out. I lost it this time and we had a huge arguement while I am still trying to water the fire and he is still defended his right at a Free Frenchman to build fires if he wished. Finally, I think he saw the folly of his actions and let me douse the fire with water and we both revived the neighbor. We never spoke about this incident and I supposed we never would because he still thought I was wrong for putting out his lovely fire.

Anyway, sure enough, later on another fine day Michel lit the space heater on the bathroom wall and took a shower. After he got out he hung the towel on the rack....heater still going and M. was shaving,
brushing teeth and so forth....while towel caught fire
and started smoking. I was at the computer and thought
I smelt smoke but not sure (nose stopped up as usual)
then a naked Michel is dancing through the room into
the kitchen (trying to hide the burnt towel so he can
stuff it in the trash without me knowing?) as the
smoke alarms were announcing his folly. I say, "what's going on, what's
burning?". Like a naughty kid who is caught he hisses,
"oh nothing, it is nothing" while the smoke alarm
screams away. So, I say well it's hardly nothing if
the smoke alarm is engaged and squealing. About that
time M. says " oh neighbor is at the gate and I am
naked - you go see what he wants" I storm out, I knew
what he wanted: not to be burnt down when our house
burns up.

Sure enough there is poor John at the gate, cell phone
in hand about to call the fire department and Anne his
mother-in-law hanging over the railing of their
house....wondering if we are going to burn their place
down too (the houses are close together). I thank them nicely
and mutter something about Michel catching a towel on fire
but trying not to be too specific as insurance
companies frown on gas space heaters and seem to want
them disconnected...... so that was another day in Michel's arson infamy . The neighbors barely spoke to us after this fiasco and sold their house within a few months.

There, is still burning scorch smell in bathroom, one
dead towel, Michel might have possibly learned a
lesson but I doubt that fact very much.

The sad thing is that Michel's parents never taught
him anything common or sensible and he knows nothing
about fire or gas or chemicals or anything. They were
French society and the kids had nannies. He actually
had his own nanny to dress him and take care of him
until he was well into upper childhood and then was
sent away to school. So, he knew 6 or so languages
and everything about books but nothing about daily
commmon life. He was not a boy scout or anything of the sort, never went camping or fishing or did any of the fun
outdoor things, and those experiences really help in later life.

As for me, my Adirondack training and the fact I was a
Camp Fire Girl and had a Dad who loved to hike and
liked flora and fuana, gave me a great basis which I
tend to take for granted; not so my dear Husband.

M. was a real pyromaniac too (LOL). He loved fire. He conjured up ways and reasons to make fires. He drove me nuts when we had the house on Crystal Beach because he was
always setting fires with leaves and grass (he raked
up) in the high winds and usually it was too dry to do so. Ditto M. was the reason Sean's house had big burned spots on the side yard (M.'s bonfires).

The sad posting to these little vignettes is that Michel chose to go into the fire at his death. I sat in the funeral mortuary wondering if he enjoyed his fire as we watched his coffin slide hydraulically toward the flames. In France cremation is partially witnessed by the funeral attendees. I wish, more than anything, I had not kept that mental image souvenir but I supposed Michel was looking down giddily clapping his hands as he watched his final fire.

Dating for the Mourning Widow

I had never given any thought at all about my doing anything other than spending the rest of my life treading water and waiting to die.   I keep busy.  I am occupied trying to do things for others and it has kept my mind off myself.

About 8 months ago my next door neighbor came over to watch TV and proceeded to tell me he thought I should try to date again.  My mouth flew open, I started to choke,  and I could not believe my ears.  I had never ever even had a brief thought about my dating anyone - ever.  I was in some way rather insulted that it should be thought I was not properly mourning my husband.

God knows; my husband deserved to be mourned if there ever was a person who is missed on this Earth it is my Michel.  He was so brilliant, so caring, a gentleman at all times, a wonderful husband, very indulgent of me (I am very high maintenance), gave me his purse and did not care what I spent, always complied with my silly whims, called me his "Queen" and he was my rock. No one could ever be all that to me ever again.

I did give my neighbor's advice some thought but I dismissed it and then got on with my grieving.  Later some female friends of mine told me they were on a senior dating site and encouraged me to join because it was free.  After a lot of arguing with my soul; I put a profile and a photo on the site and then promptly forgot to look at it thereafter.

Not long after my profile was on the site I had an email through the system from a 45 year old man.  I wrote to him and told him I thought he had not read my profile and he should pay attention to my age.  He wrote back that he had read my profile and he wished I would read his because he really preferred older women.  I read his profile.  I thought he was looking for a sugar momma.  I tried to discourage him but he persevered.  Eventually, after months of corresponding; we got to be friends and we have been friends for all these months.  I am certain he has a flaming Internet sex addiction but I don't mind and it's fun watching him operate.  Sometimes he's so smooth and other times he's like a child. I am sure he is not who he says he is and at first I was worried he was a minor but finally I was assured he really is 45 and then our interchanges became OK with me. We email or use messenger to communicate.  He is fun and nice and I like him very much.  Would I meet him?  Not sure.  Would he meet me? Not sure of that either but it's fun to chat with him and he never puts any sort of pressure on me about anything; he's just fun. He's slick, he is smooth, and he thinks he's playing cat and mouse but I know we are really playing cat and cat.

I tried to navigate through the mire of online dating disasters: men who lie about their age, men who lie about that and everything else, married men who list themselves as single, single men who are actually living with another women, men who say they have no children and actually have kids, men who say they are looking for a long term relationship who are really just look for a strange piece of stuff and to get laid, and men who are all working for some covert intelligence secret military operation they cannot talk about other than to tell you they are working on it (such lies).  Really! I cannot tell you the number of men who have contacted me that claim they are with the CIA, some sort of intelligence agency, have been to Iraq/Afghanistan, have money, have big cars and motorcycles and have an overabundance of facial hair (yuck). They show photos of themselves beside and astride luxury cars, boats, and motorcycles but then you find out the object in the photo, "belongs to a friend"..... then there are the men in Houston temporarily for business who claim they live here.........  Do they really think I will not Google them?  I do every one.  If you have the true first and last names of the subject:  No one can successfully lie in the electronic world.  If you cannot look the person up:  chances are the names are fake too.

The bottom line on this story is I have been on a couple of online dating sites for some months and I had yet to meet any of the people I was corresponding with until today.  Boy, was I a basket of nerves.  We chose a neutral place for lunch at 1 PM.  We met. He's very nice and a gentleman and retired twice now from two different professions. He was a police chief in his last professional incarnation (I felt comfortable when he told me he's always packing and patted his pocket).   He's some sort of a pillar of our little community and has been recently elected to the International Lions Club Hall of Fame.  His deceased wife was a well known attorney here in town and had escaped East Germany as a teen.  I enjoyed his company but can it be more than friendship for me:  Do not think so.

On the other hand, he reckoned he won the lottery and could not take his eyes off me.  He was not creepy but it was obvious he was impressed with me ( the blonde hair and massive chest do it every time).

I am the Ice Queen and I knew it would be difficult to find someone I wanted to know and so my reaction to this does not surprise me.  I have always been more or less not really impressed with men, especially the ones who like to brag or try to bring sex up in conversations before you have said little more than "hello".  I know lots of women use sex as a tool for getting what they want from men but to me that's the height of
"whoredom". Lots of perfectly "respectable" women can turn tricks for  the sake of encouraging "relationships" but mostly it is whenever they want something from the man. I have never been able to do this. If I am not feeling it; I'm not doing it.

I am just not in a hurry to settle for any man and I am not in any way desperate.  I don't need a man.  My husband has provided for me in his death as he did in life and I am grateful I don't have to go out looking for a man to support me; I just want to meet someone who wants to have a little fun and be friends. You would think men would be thrilled to find a woman who just wants to have fun:  Not so, all they can think about is sex and trying to entice a woman into joining their domestic scene for their convenience.

It seems men over 50 have this burning desire to find a suitable mate for sex (although most of them cannot accomplish the act) and they will do anything to pursue a woman they think will cook their meals and wash their socks.  These are the same men who in their 20's and 30's and 40's spent their time running away from relationships. The worm turns for men after 50.  You cannot ask an older guy any sort of question or have any kind of polite conversation with a man over 50 without him finding some way to inject sexual innuendos into the discussion. At the grocery store you may remark without thinking, " Oh, these are nice melons".  Scores of skulking old guys look up from their sexually provoked stupors and remark about your chest under their breaths. Bend over the vegetable bins and you have provided old guy masturbation fodder for the next two weeks.

Women on the other hand are usually in a good place when they reach my age. They have money, they have possessions, they have peace of mind: they don't need a man. Ladies my age secretly know that men over 50 are pretty much duds in the sack.  Men know this too but they are so delusional about their bodies and their sexual abilities; they lie to themselves and to their buddies about the big "S" and try to proliferate the asinine myth of male sexiness over 50.  They waste a lot of time trying to get laid when they could use that time helping out with some charity or doing volunteer work.

In the past few months, I have had four proposals from men I have known in the distant past.  I was really surprised and nonplussed by this but I think men just become frantic for a spouse when they get older and they wait around until some nice woman they have known becomes a widow and try to pounce on her. I was a good wife and everyone knows this fact.

Cousin Susu has said, "men our age don't want a wife; they want a nurse". I think there is some truth to her statement.  I have been a "nurse" for a long time. I am the best facilitator in the world, as well.   I was happy to tend to my husband and I don't regret spending one minute of my time with him.  I do not, however, want to go through what he and I went through again.

Older men fear loneliness:  Older women fear lonely older men.

Weight Loss Surgery

It took a long time for me to decide I had no other options than to have weight loss surgery.  To that end, for the past six months I have been going to doctors, psychiatrists, nutritionists, physical therapist, etc. in order to get through the process required by insurance companies for the surgery.  I will admit my first reason for going through the procedures was to lose weight in a vanity sense.  In January I filed the paperwork with UTMB for the surgery. The first of February I got a new insurance  I knew would pay for the surgery so I started on the regime required to jump through a lot of hoops for approval.

You read about the stroke I had six years ago and you probably are aware I was told I am diabetic whilst in the hospital recovering from the stroke. I sincerely hope none of my readers will ever have to face diabetes or a stroke. You can manage diabetes but it's inconvenient to say the least.  Type I diabetes can be treated but it never gets better. Type II diabetes is later onset diabetes and it is possible to control Type II by controlling your weight (not always but most of the time).  Problem with this is people who are on medications for Diabetes have all sorts of side effects and one big one is weight gain:  It is Catch 22 for Diabetics in the strictest sense of the phrase.  I did eventually learn my symptoms responded quite well to exercise and diet.  Then,  I injured myself at the gym and I had to stop working out to go through physical therapy. Weight gain and bad hip and knee made more weight gain.  I gained back 30 pounds of the weight I had lost.

For the past six months I have been to appointment after appointment in order to satisfy all the criteria to get the operation approved but at a point last month I changed my mind and tried to renege on the surgery. It was at this point they made appointments for me with the nutritionist and the surgeon.  During the interview with the nutritionist I experienced my epiphany when I told her I do not want to die on the operating table again and she said, "Well you are dying every day and with Diabetes you will die much faster". I went to speak to the surgeon after I got through with the nutritionist interview and I agreed to the surgery.

August 30, 2011, I will have gastric bypass surgery at UTMB.  Please wish me well.  Thanks to you all

I Have Done Too Much.......

Just got off the phone with a relatively new acquaintance.  During the conversation we were discussing The Four Seasons Hotel chain.  I said I remembered being in the Four Seasons in Dallas and Houston but I have been in so many hotels around the world that one pretty much looks like another to me and I get them all confused.  There was a pregnant pause at the other end of the line.  I realized the person to whom I was speaking, who is male, had thought I committed some sort of Freudian slip.  I had to quickly explain I traveled for many years for business all over the world; more or less intimating I was not a world class hooker but a legitimate business executive.

After the conversation I started thinking about the reason he was surprised and somewhat disbelieving that a woman would travel all over the globe in the business world.

It is really true that I have traveled so much and for so many years I do tend to forget where I have been.  Even when I was traveling I would sometimes wake up and shake out the cobwebs to remember what city I was in at the time.

Once my former husband and I were both in Toronto on the same dates.  He was in a hotel across town and I was in a hotel downtown.  He sent me flowers and wanted me to have dinner with him and his colleagues but I had a big bash I had to attend for my own business counterparts and he could not accompany me to my function.  In short we were in the same city for three days and could not get together.  We did manage to carve out some time over the weekend to spend with each other at home.

Places I have lived:  Born in Texas; raised in Washington, D.C. area (Falls Church and Alexandria, Virginia); Maryland; Houston; Beaumont; Atlanta, Great Sacandaga Lake in Upstate New York; East and West Caroga Lakes also in Upstate New York; Kinderhook, NY;  Wallkill, NY; Atlanta; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Bologna, Italy; Paris; Marseille; Sydney, NSW Australia; Moss Vale, NSW, Australia.  I know there are more cities but I cannot recall them at the moment.

By now you get that I was really a rolling stone and those are just the places I lived; not part of my business travel itinerary.

For several years I was in the convention and decorating business and I sold convention services but I would also go in with the crews and stay while they set up the conventions and then my staff and I would do the billing for the convention on the show floor while the show was taking place.  I was in a lot of hotel convention sites as well as some very large convention halls and spent a lot of time in the belly of the huge beastly Georgia World Congress Center.