Plain Vanilla

As I was sifting through my day here, I sorta read through the last few days of posts and realized there's been a bit of whining about the weather. Sorry about that. I usually love, love, love snow and look forward to a little white stuff with great anticipation. I think it's just the accumulation of so many little hurdles that I'm not used to. It's thrown me out of whack a bit -- all this hibernating indoors and having to delay activities. It's all temporary. And it's all little stuff.

Hey, has anyone tried the Vanilla Cake and Baking Mix from Trader Joe's? I just did today. I've seen it on the shelf for a long time, but it looked so plain, so vanilla. It was just me and all the other old lady shut-ins shopping at TJ's this afternoon. The shuttle van had taken the gals from some nearby retirement living home for their weekly outing. Quite a big day. Maneuvering the aisles was a little trickier than usual, what with all the ladies parked in the middle, idly chatting, and maybe a tad hard of hearing when I was mumbling "excuse me" a hundred times to get through. But they were busy exchanging opinions about some item or another, explaining the complexities of ethnic flavors to their gal pals.

Back to the cake. It's a gorgeous thing. Flecked with real vanilla bean. A charming little dense and buttery breakfast type cake. Not your big, fluffy layer cake. So delightful with a cup of tea, still warm. The perfect antidote to a gray, winter, January day. A day in which another vital and important piece of something in your life breaks down. Today it was the credit card machine. C'est la vie. I've got cake. Mmmm.