I’ve moved over to my new website at www.JenniferPicicci.com. I hope you’ll come visit!

Today I decided to take it up a notch and followed along with this video:

And here’s how it went:

This is a pretty accurate rendition. The only thing that’s not real is that Nola and Coconut were actually sleeping, not laughing at me. Which is a first.

I loved it. I felt really good. I have taken a few yoga classes but most are inconvenient to get to, and having this right in front of me was great. I pushed myself much more than I do when I’m just practicing by myself, too.

I thought this post would be longer, but you know what? It’s lunchtime and I’m hungry, and my stomach wins pretty much every argument.

Oh, wait. It’s probably just me who hasn’t heard of them. Because I’m stuck in 1997.

Last night we were watching an episode of the HBO show Hung and at the end a song from Weezer’s Blue album was played. My nostalgia level on red, I immediately got on YouTube and started listening to other songs from the album, because somehow my copy got lost between going to college/moving to Vermont/moving to Montana/living in a tent/moving to Virginia/moving to Vermont/moving to North Carolina.

Sigh. Brings me right back.

I’m not entirely stuck in the 90’s, don’t worry. Though I do still wear my Pearl Jam T-shirt and there is a pair of Doc Martens kicking around in my closet, I don’t tight-roll my jeans anymore and I only wear plaid flannel shirts when I’m out of clean clothes and I steal something from Anthony.

And I even know some songs that are from this decade, this year, even!

See? I’m very current.

What decade are you stuck in?

I blended the whole damn cake up and then smooshed it into a pan. Then I tried to cut it into bars. Mostly it just turned into this, though:

Yeah. Fail. We did eat some of it. And I did freeze some of it telling myself, “I’ll eat that later. Someday. When I feel like ingesting chunks of dates and pecans loosely held together by some sugar.” Fail part two. I threw out the rest of it a week or two ago.

I will not make the same mistake again. From now on all date and nut cakes will stolen from a friend’s house/neighbor’s windowsill/grocery store in completely cooked & removed-from-the-pan form.

Hey, guess what? I’m getting married. You may not, in fact, be shocked by this, since about three people read this blog and they all talk to me regularly and are already aware of the impending nuptials. But in case you don’t know me in real life, now you know.

(Not an engagement photo. Just one of the few photos I had available to stick on the page.)

Here’s the dress I’ll be wearing:

Nope, I’m not spending $12,000 on a white wedding dress with real pearls and faux ostrich feathers and miniature crystal snowflakes on it that I will only wear for an hour. I’m going to be 32 this month. And only three people are attending the wedding. No need to go crazy.

I have more things to say, but I’m taking my time easing into blogging again.

See ya.

Earlier in the week Anthony brought home a loaf of raisin & walnut bread made by a local bakery. It was decent, but not outstanding, and he said what he really loved was date and nut bread.

Ding! (That’s an idea making a noise in my brain.)

About 7 years ago at Christmas I enjoyed an absolutely delicious, dense, hearty, not-too-sweet date and nut cake at the house of a relative of the guy I was with at the time. I enjoyed it so much that I asked for the recipe. The relative, Debbie, told me it was basically dates and nuts held together by just a little bit of flour and eggs, and she handed me the recipe card.

I put it in my recipe box and it sat there, untouched, until this morning when I pulled it out to locate the ingredients I would need:

• 1 lb pitted dates
• 4 cups pecan halves
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup sifted whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp salt

That’s it. No problem.

I headed to the grocery store with my ingredient list in hand. First up: dates. I went to the box o’ Medjool dates that are wedged in next to the limes and mangoes and went to town. Do you know how many dates you need to make a whole pound?? I had to make three separate trips to the scale in the bulk section to make sure I had enough. Those bad boys are 6.98 a pound, fyi.

The only other ingredient I didn’t have were the pecans. I headed back to the bulk section to get those. Do you know how much pecans cost!? Over $15.00 a pound. This is when it occurred to me that Debbie and her husband had a large pecan tree in their back yard and the very free nuts she had available for her cake were going to become the death of my retirement savings very expensive nuts I was about to purchase.

Whatever, I thought. No big deal. So, just to recap, the ingredients for this date cake so far had cost me about 22 bucks. Wow. I don’t even want to type that, but hey, when you think about how much you spend for a restaurant meal it’s no big deal, right?

I headed home and got started. Actually, first I took a 75 minute walk with a friend, washed my hands, put away some the other (waaaaaaaay cheaper) groceries, and said goodbye to Anthony as he headed off to work, thinking how lucky he was to have a girl at home baking him a date nut cake.

Yeah.

So, I got started on the cake. Pretty simple directions, beat the oil, sugar and eggs well, mix in the rest of the ingredients. While I was doing this my girlfriend called, so we chatted away and listening to her entertaining stories of dating life got me through the pain and suffering of pitting a pound of dates, actually taking the time to sift the whole wheat flour, and the copious amount of time it took me to meticulously oil and flour the beautiful Bundt pan into which the cake batter would be heading.

So far, so good.

This recipe calls for the whole pan to be placed in a cool oven, then to be cooked for 2 hours at a temperature of just 300 degrees. About an hour into cooking, I noticed the top/bottom of the cake was getting brown, so I grabbed some tin foil to put over the top to prevent further browning.

And that’s when I further reddened my hand.

Okay, so I burned my self. Again I’m telling myself no big deal, this happens frequently when you bake. Or at least when I bake, it does. I sat back down, waiting for my ridiculously expensive and time-consuming cake to be done.

When the timer finally beeped I took the beautiful beast out and put it on a cooling rack, then headed to the bedroom for a much-needed nap. (The nap was needed not because the cake took so much out of me, but because I didn’t sleep well. Though the cake didn’t help matters.)

When I awoke (1.5 hours later! Who am I??) and it was time to deal with the devil cake and the Bundt pan.

Nice, right? Tons of dates and pecans. And see how the sides are all floured up? To help remove it from the pan?

After  I took these pictures I took the cake inside to extract it. And that’s when things got ugly.

I tried using a knife to loosen it, a medium sized spatula, a small spatula, a jack hammer, and the bribe of a nice vacation to the coast of France.

Nada.

Instead, I ended up doing this:

And then this:

Now this is a big deal. Do you see the missing chunk? I thought if I took some out I could get the rest of it out. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This cake things it is stronger than I am, and so far it is right.

But this cake is not going to get the best of me. To punish it, I’ve put it in the freezer. I’m hoping that after I drink a few shots of bourbon it has a chance to freeze a bit I can pop it out of the pan.

I mentioned just the dates and nuts cost me 22 bucks, right?

This damn cake is getting eaten, one way or another. Even if I have to serve the whole pan to Anthony with a fork and knife and bourbon.

I’ll let you know which one of us makes it out alive.