Oh how I wish

I wish I could have found time for the Daring Bakers this month... Dolores hosted along with Alex and Jenny and asked us to make Shuna Fish Lydon's Caramel Cake. I would have loved to make this but I was just asked to make too many darn pies this month! I even asked if I could substitute with this cake but was begged instead to do pies... Well as I mentioned, at least one of those pies paid off in a major way. So I suppose this caramel cake will have to be given a whirl another time.

Hey that's not Caramel Cake!
Nope it's not, it's the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake I made last month

Another wrinkle in my plan to participate in the Daring Bakers this month was a whole lot of travel. Past and future. You all know I went to Carmel last weekend. I just returned home about an hour ago from celebrating Thanksgiving with family in the Central Valley of California. And the mother of all travels is coming up next week: Africa!

Since I have no pictures of either a caramel
cake or Africa you get more chocolate cake

Preparing to go to Africa is much more work than say, preparing to go to Europe. You don't just buy tickets and book a hotel...

To go to Africa:

• You must be sure you have enough pages in your passport depending on the countries you're visiting
• You must have travel visas (also depending on the countries you're visiting)
• You must have appropriate clothing and shoes depending on the religion of the cities you'll be touring
• You must have water purification systems if you worry about finding bottled water
• You must have prescriptions for Malarone and Cipro just in case
• You must have cases of bug repellent
• You must be vaccinated for Yellow Fever, Typhoid and Hepatitis A & B
• You must be up to date on your Polio booster
• You might even want to purchase and travel with a mosquito net
  

And let's just say that I didn't have most of those things crossed off my list until today!! So it's taken up a ridiculous amount of time in my month - including an entire 10 hours spent in San Francisco at the Passport Agency, our travel agents', and a rush visa service. We've leaving on Friday morning for almost 3 weeks. I am looking forward to the trip but not looking forward to 30 hours of travel. At least this time I'll have company. The last time I traveled that far away (India) I was all by my lonesome, going for business.

When bored with just plain frosting - play!

I'll be home a couple days before Christmas so I'll truly miss most of my absolute favorite time of year. So please everyone enjoy and live it up for me! Go to Christmas parties and listen to Christmas music. Put on your scarves and hats and gloves and go caroling. Drink eggnog and spiced cider. Sit by your Christmas tree with only the lights of the tree glowing. Donate money or time to a charity. Bake cookies and fudge. Put thought and time into a gift for a loved one.

All it needs is a big glass of cold milk

I can't promise I'll be blogging again before we leave. There's still so much to be done and so little time in which to do it. But I will be blogging on our travels. So stay tuned!