Am trying to use up the last of a 10 pound bag of carrots before it all rots and had some leftover home-made yogurt hanging around so I tried out this recipe. It turned out rather well, so I thought I'd share.

CARROT, CORNMEAL, SPICE CAKE

2 tbsp. vegetable shortening
3/4 c. finely chopped walnuts
1 1/4 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
2 eggs
1/2 c plain yogurt
1 3/4 c. unbleached flour
3/4 c. stone ground cornmeal
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 1/2 c. shredded carrots
3/4 c. raisins

Generously grease 12 cup bundt pan. Coat pan with nuts. Combine sugar and butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in combined flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt and spices. Add carrots and raisins. Mix well.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes. Immediately remove from pan. Cool at least 30 minutes. Serve warm or cool.

Speaking of the luck o' the Irish, wish me luck! I have two job interviews scheduled for next week. One in the accounting department of a title insurance company and the other for two positions at a property management company, either assistant property manager or admin assistant.

Gawd, I hope I get hired for one of these! I've run out of things to cut back on.

Happy St. Patty's Day to all you Pat's out there!

Thought I'd use the jovial holiday to share excerpts from some of the latest emails from my 76 year old mom. This latest one came in yesterday. I wonder how many people would actually slow down...

I was kind of bored today so I parked my car on a busy street corner, put on my sun glasses, and pointed my hair drier out the window toward on-coming traffic to see if they would slow down.

This one from a few days ago was frightening to read at the time, but rereading it today left me snickering at the mental picture of her gently gunning the motor of the car up the driveway only to miss entrance to the garage by inches and slide back down again. One over-eager move might of shot the car clear through the garage and into her livingroom! Good thing she took archery classes in her youth and is such a good aim!

Well, we had the blizzard of 2005 yesterday and today. I have over a foot of snow in my yard. Yesterday, I left the house at 12:30 to get to class at 1 pm. By the time I left at 3 pm, there was about 2 inches of snow on my car and snowing heavily. The ride home took me over an hour. The snow and wind was so heavy you couldn't see the road lanes. My windshield wipers were barely able clear the snow off and I could only see a few yards of the road ahead. The main roads weren't so bad, but when I turned off Coors on to Ladera, the road was very slick and icy. A pickup truck nearly hit me sliding across the road. When I got to my house, I couldn't make it up my driveway. I had to gun the motor and get as close to the garage door as I could. After 4 tries, I finally made it into the garage. I looked at the garage this morning and the snow has melted all over the floor.

And the funniest one of all needs background music. I think the theme song of the Beverly Hillbillies would be appropriate. It was in response to me asking if my brother and family had arrived at her house yet while enroute to Florida.

Their first two days were the rides from hell... Their van blew a tire yesterday. The van and boat (16-footer being towed by the van) are over loaded and it is rough on the tires. The dogs (two very large dogs) are behaving well. They have a long drive ahead of them...Heidi (cockatoo parrot)is driving them nuts with her constant screeching. I hope Stu makes it through the move without having a breakdown. Maddy and Dolly (my mom's pocket dogs) are getting along fine with Cody and Meagan (Stuart's horses). They've never seen such big dogs before.

The good news is that Stuart and Linda have arrived safely and sanely in Brandon, Florida and so has the moving van with all their stuff. Dogs and bird are both still alive with generous loads of feathers and fur. Humans have a few less hairs and no nerves left and are dead tired.

Love you mom! Keep writing!

This morning I made what I thought was an irreversible mistake in my bread making, but it turned out to be excellent!

I was making my usual bread recipe in the bread machine and ran out of flour in the canister after 3 cups and reached into the pantry for another bag of flour. Without looking closely, I added the remaining two cups of flour before realizing it was buttermilk pancake mix, not flour. I thought for sure I'd have to throw the whole thing out but didn't want to waste the yeast (it's expensive these days!).

I figured I'd experiment and see what happens, so I added 1/4 c baking cocoa powder, cinnamon, extra Splenda, 1/2 c shredded coconut and 1/4 c finely crushed walnuts and let the process go on as usual. (I didn't measure anything so I'm guestimating here.)

The end result was a very fine crumb, light (almost like balloon bread) that tasted a lot more like a Mounds candy bar then plain old white bread. Wonder what is in the pancake mix that made such a difference in texture. Surely, it can't just be the baking powder. Wonder if I'll be able to duplicate it...

That's what I hate about my "hip-pocket" cooking. If I make something absolutely fantastic, I can rarely duplicate it! LOL!

So, here we are, Winter 2005 with 11 days to go until the Spring equinox and I've been wearing shorts and tank tops the last few days and sleeping with the windows wide open. We hit yet another record temperature today. It was 84 and predicted to be even warmer tomorrow. If this keeps up, the snow melt in the Sierras is going to be horrendous.

When we were kids, we used to call unusually warm weather like this "earthquake weather." Something is truly odd about planet earth these days. We must be experiencing a hell of a wobble on the axis to cause this much of a sudden shift in seasonal temps the last few years.

My brother and his wife are enroute to their new home in Florida. I drove out to his house in the Bay Area last week to help with some packing and say goodbyes. It may be quite awhile before I see him again since neither one of us have jobs at the moment.