And the winners are . . .

Today was a big day in reception planning . . . our cake tasting!

Our baker, Roseanne Sherwood, works out of her home in a licensed kitchen and she prepared seven cakes for us to try. We're planning on having six bundt cakes for the reception (a bundt generally serves 10-12 people, and we're still thinking 50-60 guests). You can check Roseanne out on Facebook - her goodies are delicious and very reasonably priced.

The cakes, in no particular order, were:

Carrot - spicy, moist, with a lovely twist of orange, this recipe was converted from my favorite carrot cupcake recipe.

Spicy apple - similar to the carrot cake, but sweeter because of the apples.

Chocolate raspberry - almost a pudding cake it was so moist. Roseanne said that she infused it with raspberry, and it showed.

Lemon Poppyseed - a recipe that Rebecca's sister found for me. Intensely lemony and yet delicate at the same time.

Mocha - The perfect balance of chocolate and espresso in a light, tender, moist cake.

Blueberry - This is one of Roseanne's specialty's, and we could see why! It was lovely with the contrast of blueberries on a white cake, and was the lightest and airiest of the cakes we tasted.

Chocolate orange - You know those chocolate oranges that you smash on the counter and then eat in slices? Yeah, it's like that.

So it was a hard decision . . . in the end, we decided to go with everything except the apple. For a fall wedding, the apple would make sense, but given that it was so similar to the carrot cake, we thought it just didn't fit. That choice was validated when we took some of the cake home for Rebecca's parents to try . . . we've decimated all but the apple. I'm really impressed with how much cake we've managed to eat!

If you're in the Lansing area and want to stop by, there's some of a few of them left, and you're welcome to help us devour them!

Just over a month . . .

And I'm overwhelmed. I said I wasn't going to be, I said I was going to be chill . . . but it's starting to get to me. I feel like there must be things I'm supposed to be doing that I'm forgetting (please let me know if you think of any), and it's not too much longer before we need all of our RSVPs in so we can give a count to our venue.

I just have to remember:

I can do this.

This day is going to be wonderful no matter what.

I have the support of lots of people who are willing to help.

Oops!

It's been more than a month since I posted! Now, what has happened in the last month that would keep me that busy?

I presented a poster at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference in Boston! It was great to network with people and see what's being done in the field. Boston was also a lot of fun to visit.

Other than that, I've been working on papers for class and Rebecca's been studying for classes and trying to prepare for her boards. She had her first dress fitting a couple weeks ago (after a fiasco at the original first fitting where we forgot the dress!) and will have the next one next week. We also registered at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, which was an interesting exercise in balancing thrift and consumerism.

Lastly, we have a cake tasting on Saturday! A few people are going to come out and help us make the tough decisions of which flavors to keep and which to let go. Hopefully, there will be a post about that this weekend.

MI Hate: Bigots

Sorry it's been so long since I posted . . . grad school gets intense. And invitations went out not too long ago. So now it's a waiting game, mostly.

Also, a friend posted this and I had to share: 

MI Gay Friday

It's time for another one of these . . .

11 am - I woke up late this gay morning because I am still very gay sad about my brother's passing and also about the passing of our dear gay friend Sue, one of our most ardent supporters, a valiant crusader for serving the medically underserved, and the coolest grandma I know. (She is not gay, just us.) It may be surprising that gay people can have straight friends, or old friends, or that we would feel sad about things just the way that "normal" people do, but there it is. Sue was so excited to come to our commitment ceremony, and we were so excited to have her there, because she is one of our chosen family members. Someday we will name our gay clinic after her (the clinic will be for gay people and normal people, but we are gay, so it will be a gay clinic).

11:10 am - I start work on gay wiki tasks for the gay module in the gay course I'm working on. As previously discussed, these things are not gay, just me.

11:30 am - My gay, lesbian, homosexual, female partner kisses me goodbye to go to a gay meeting. The meeting is not gay - it is about the medical honors society she's in - just her.

11:45 - I have a gay breakfast of a gay cupcake. This cupcake is gay in the old sense of the word, in that it was confetti with sprinkles (and almond cream cheese frosty, to give it some class). I realize this is not the breakfast of gay champions, but it's what I had in the house that sounded good, and some morning are just sad enough that a cupcake for breakfast is warranted. This is one of those gay days.

12:00 - I return to work on my gay module.

12:50 - My gay, lesbian, homosexual, female partner returns home with a gay surprise - gay Munchkins and gay coffee from Dunkin Donuts. A new DD just opened close to our gay home, which makes us very happy.

1:00 - I return to work on my gay module.

3:00 - I prepare materials for my gay thesis data collection. The thesis is not gay - it's about medical communication between medical students and speakers of English as an additional language - just me. My gay, lesbian, homosexual, female partner has been the medical side of this.

3:20 - We go down to gay campus to meet our gay participants. (The campus is not gay, although East Lansing was the first city in the country to add anti-discrimination policies for sexual orientation and gender expression. The participants are not gay either.) Data collection goes very well.

6:20 - We return home, filling up our gay car with gas on the way. (As previously discussed, the car might be a little gay, given that it is a Jeep and we are lesbians.)

6:45 - I return to my gay work.

7:30 - I eat a gay dinner of leftover black bean tacos and watch Parenthood, a delightfully wholesome show about normal people and their normal lives.

7:45 - I reheat some gay chicken soup for my gay, lesbian, homosexual, female partner so that she can eat while she studies for her gay cardiology examination.

9:00 - I write this gay blog post while contemplating a return to my gay work. I will go to bed in a couple hours and fall into a deep, gay, sad sleep.

Invitations

So you may remember my post about amate, in which I confessed that we had spent more than we intended and created extra work for ourselves.

That consequence has arrived. Tuesday we went to Staples and found an invitation kit for about $35. This doesn't sound too bad until I remind you that we already spent $50 on the paintings.

Now not only do we need to print up the invitations and RSVP cards, we also have to glue in the paintings and tie an accent ribbon. And then of course all of the other things that normally come along with sending invitations.

Fortunately, Rebecca's sister has volunteered to help with assembly, an offer for which we will ever be grateful. We're hoping to get a good start on that this weekend.

I'm hopeful, though, that the invites will be pretty enough to justify all of this work.

MI Love: Bacon

I've come to a realization.

I love bacon.

I used to think that I only love the scent of bacon (and it is perhaps true that I love the smell even more than the taste), but in the past year, I have come to understand that I do in fact like bacon.

My most recent bacon purchase was from Horrock's - we found Kowalski thick cut, which is a meat company out of Hamtramck.

How do we use bacon? One favorite is corn chowder. Apparently, a soup cannot be called a chowder unless it contains bacon, and so we usually do buy bacon for it.

Given that corn chowder doesn't use a whole package of bacon, what else do we do? Another recent use is a facsimile of the Tim Horton's BELT, which is a BLT with egg on a bagel.

Yum!