Tasty World

      On a recent foray to Sur La Table, I picked up a Bundt pan that makes six bunny “cakelets.” The bunnies are quite detailed and differ slightly, one from the next.  We were concerned about whether the delicate details, such as the ears, would come out of the pan intact.  They did, though.  When the time came, the cakelets fell right out of the pan, all bunny parts present and accounted for. 

     The instructions call for carrot cake–as is only right for rabbits–and cream cheese frosting.  But frosting our test bunny was obscured the details.  You couldn’t tell the cake was supposed to look like anything, let alone a rabbit.  So we did frosting on the side.  We had planned on making fondant but decided the cakes were cute enough unadorned.  Our daughter also made a nice batch of green coconut grass, and the bunnies nestled in the grass for presentation.  They were a lot of fun.

     Music for the Easter service at church was spectacular.  It included the adult choir, the two children’s choirs, the adult handbell choir, the children’s handbell choir, vocal soloists, and an instrumental chamber music ensemble.  It included piano.  And it included the church’s magnificent new organ.  So many musicians performed that it was hard to find floor space for all of them, which made it challenging for folks in more than one group to dart back and forth as needed.  Music filled the space and our hearts with Easter praise.  The fact that this is the first Easter we’ve been able to celebrate in the church building since before CoVid made worshipping together all the sweeter.

     My personal praise has continued this week, as I continue to heal.  I’ve started going on longer walks and, for an extra degree of difficulty, walking the dog.  My first effort, with dog, lasted thirty-five minutes.  Yesterday’s walk was fifty minutes.  Today’s covered the full length of one of our established routes from before the accident.  I am ecstatic.  And our neighbors, the steadfast friends who took over Rascal’s long morning walks while I recovered, have chosen to accompany us a while longer.

     At the beginning of the week, I proposed going with them on a sort of apprentice-walker arrangement, whereby I would hold the leash and walk until I reached my limit, then turn back and head home while Tanya and Cory continued with Rascal.  They agreed readily but wouldn’t do it.  When I was ready to turn back, they turned back, too.  “I’m with you all the way,” Cory said, and he was.  Today and yesterday, Tanya was with me all the way.  I’m almost ready to solo, but Cory and Tanya have made it clear that they’ll come along with me as long as I’d like, that I don’t have to do this on my own.  They are extraordinary friends and human beings.  Two of the bunny cakes hopped over to their house.

     Walking outdoors affords you the opportunity to notice things.  The grass, after all the rain we’ve had, is so green it reminds me of Ireland.  A row of not-quite-open daffodils in a bed on Argonne all arc their necks in the same curve, graceful and photo-ready.  Buds on trees are fattening up, and baby leaves are getting born.  Red maples have put out their Dr.-Seuss-style, multilayered flowers.  Magnolias are starting to pop, both white star and pink grandiflora.  The asphalt sidewalk along Traver has been replaced with concrete.  The world smells like spring, damp and earthy.  And the orange hyacinths in our garden do, in fact, smell like hyacinths—Tanya knelt down and gave them a sniff.  She described the scent as on the spicy end of the hyacinth spectrum.

     Robins are practically a hazard to navigation, so busy are they with spring squabbles.  Tanya said she and Cory had to duck out of the way of two robins fighting on the wing.  The birds were throwing punches in the space occupied by the leash between Rascal and our neighbors. 

     Tanya wins the prizes for keen observation today.  She glimpsed a bit of color in the woods and moved leaves aside with a stick to reveal a cluster of cup-shaped mushrooms that were the brightest of bright red orange.  Furthermore, she spied a beak and not much more poking out of a hole in a tree.  While we watched, the rest of the bird appeared–a sparrow, which flew off with its mate.

     I haven’t seen baby bunnies on the hoof this spring, but we don’t always, and cake bunnies filled that gap deliciously.  It’s a tasty, fragrant, colorful, busy, musical world out there.     

22 April 2022