I have since discovered that she does sell the oil produced in her Italian home (though I don’t know if its exclusively her olive trees at work for the oil if you read the page). And only $285 including shipping for a CASE (12 bottles in 500 ml size – $23.75 a bottle) of olive oil. Not too bad really. And its a cold press olive oil too. Hard for me to resist. Really it is. And since the deadline is Dec 10 I still have time for this year’s harvest. Hmmm.

Anyway I digress. In her book she had a recipe that I knew I had to make as soon as I read it. I just changed it a bit to suit me since I really rather dislike lemon zest. But my love of lemon is too much. This was an awesome cake. In her book Mayes suggested serving with pears, cherries or strawberries. Any and all of those would have been delicious but it was very good on its own!

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup lemon juice

Glaze – 1/4 cup butter (I used real butter for this)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Cream together the butter and sugar. Beating in slowly 1 egg at a time.
In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Starting with a little bit of the flour mixture and alternating with the buttermilk add a little of each at a time.
Add the lemon juice.
Bake in a greased and floured tube pan at 300 degrees for 50 minutes. I didn’t have a tube pan with me so I just used a plain rectangular cake pan. It was fine I assure you, but the tube pan would have been A LOT better…the glaze would have poured over and coated instead of just pooling onto the cake.
Once the cake is cool mix together the glaze and pour over the cake. Serve.

First read these on On a Bento Frenzy.

As for my new focus, everything I was writing about before stays. I’m still doing recipes, vintage cookbooks and bentos. None of that is leaving. That’s still my life in some ways. But I also have deep interests in design, interior decorating, crafts, scrapbooking, World of Warcraft (thanks to my boyfriend Brad!), books, photos, thrift storing, computer programs, cats, all sorts of things. So from now on, a little more general, a little more me.

Hope you stick around for it!

And since Polaroid is no longer making this type of film, at least I can have the next best thing. It pops up with a camera to which you can drop a photo. It snaps the photo then you have to wait. Just like a real Polaroid. Shake if you want, but that doesn’t seem to hurry it, just like the actual film. And it will “ding” to indicate when it will be done. At that point it can be saved or deleted.

So please support this wicked program!

ETA: Forgot to mention that the pictures come out at 1392 by 1692 pixels.

Lemon baked salmon

Lemon and honey carrots

couscous

Tastykakes chocolate cupcakes

Layer of rice on the bottom topped with squid salad and seaweed salad. The little bottle holds rice vinegar which helped tremendously.

This was packed not in a bento box (as if I lack those!) but in a regular old food storage container by Rubbermaid. Easy peasy.

broccoli and carrots

chicken salad

spinach and romaine salad with italian dressing in the monkey

slab of homemade bread (a bad attempt at a new recipe, but tasted fine)

And that’s ok. No really it is. As lately writing has begun to feel like a chore. I’m still interested in food, but it really has seemed like work which almost no one has been reading. Further my life has changed some, I have more interests than just food…so the theme of this blog will be changing come February 4 (the 1 year anniversary).

The name and url remains the same, its just a slight content change. From now on my new focus includes not just bento or food, recipes or vintage cookbooks. It will also include everything else about my life that makes me…me. My “Pieces of Earth” if you will and the pieces of life that influence me and my experiences. Yes, it will become a personal blog…but I am going to continue to post just bento items, recipes and vintage cookbooks. Now there will just be the other stuff in between.