I Owe You Blogs

Agh. It's Saturday night and I know I owe you a pre-pub post (and I have just the book in mind). I'm going to try to get to it tonight, but we're having company over for seafood gumbo.

Being from Louisiana, it's really tough to get through some of the homesickness that comes from being away. It's Mardi Gras weekend down there right now and since LA is part of my territory for work, I spend a lot of time researching different events and local history groups and such. So I found out that my hometown was having a gumbo cookoff today as part of the Mardi Gras festivities and I decided that I had to make one too.

Well the gumbo is fine, but I decided to stick to my Louisiana theme and make a Louisiana Syrup Cake, which uses Steens Cane Syrup. If you have never had Steens, you really don't know what you're missing. It's this amazing, thick syrup -- kind of like molasses but it has a flavor all it's own. I've never made this cake before, but I thought it would go well with the gumbo and would be a nice thing to make for Mike since tomorrow is V-Day.

I had one bottle of Steens brought that we brought back with our haul last summer. It wasn't opened. Man I was really anticipating this cake. I mean my mouth was watering! Well, the bottle was stuck to the shelf, but I couldn't figure out why. After pulling for a couple of seconds, I heard it come loose with a sucking sound. And then Steens went pouring everywhere! The bottom of the bottle broke off, still attached to the shelf. Even now, hours later, we're still finding pools of syrup.

So this has been my day. Steens syrup disaster. Followed by a replacement cake that suffered from high altitude disease (exploding and then imploding), which also caused a mess.

But the gumbo is ready and we're just waiting for our company to arrive. So like I said, I owe you some blogs. If I'm not totally beat, I'll make 'em up tonight. If not, I'll get 'em done in the morning.

And excuse my no doubt blatantly present typos here. I'm hurrying a bit.