“The best way to complain is to make things.” - James Murphy, LCD Sound System

Found this great quote while listening to a talk by Tina Roth Eisenberg at 99u.

TeuxDeux To Do List App

I’m a list maker, I always have been. For a long time I tried to use various To Do list apps to replace pen and paper, but nothing really worked for me. I was searching for something that was seamless between desktop an mobile devices. Someone mentioned TeuxDeux in on the Facebook groups I belong to and I decided to test it out. To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes. But I signed up for the 30-day free trial and here we are almost a year later and I’m still actually using it!

Check it out: https://teuxdeux.com/

Mint Chocolate Cake

I’ve been on a bit of a Smitten Kitchen kick with regards to cooking recently. I’ve been using a bunch of her baking recipes recently. For my son’s birthday I made a cake and cupcakes using the Party Cake Builder recipes from the book Smitten Kitchen Everyday. Everything came out perfectly and so I decided to use the same recipes as a base for making a birthday cake for my husband this past week.

For the cake part I used her chocolate cake recipe as written (click here for recipe) and divided it between two 6 inch cake pans and baked for 30 minutes.

For the frosting part I tweaked her vanilla frosting recipe as follows:

1 1/2 cups (180 grams) powdered sugar (sifted if lumpy)
1/2 cup (4 ounces or 115 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoons whole milk
3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
Approximately 14 Andes Mints

I peeled half of each Andes Mint with a potato peeler and saved the curls for decoration on top of the cake. I finally chopped the remainder of the mints to add to the finished frosting.

Level cakes, frost and sprinkle mint curls on top.

Things I read this week

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
Michelle McNamara obsessively tracked the man she dubbed the Golden State Killer for years. She unfortunately passed away before a suspect was arrested last year. The book is fascinating and I had to pace myself so that I didn’t stay up to 4 in the morning trying to finish it.

An interview with Cindy Gallop by Power to Fly
I’ve been a fan of Cindy Gallop for a while now, I love her no nonsense approach. Also the reason I decided to revamp this site, which had been languishing for years.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
This beautiful poem was floating around the internet with the news of Mary Oliver’s passing at the age of 83.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver