CJ, College Graduate

 

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE:  Not necessarily bright, but very early on June 9, we piled into the car and headed south on I-5 toward the Tacoma Dome, site of CJ's graduation from the University of Washington - Tacoma. 

He had to be there at 8, so we dropped him off, scored nearby street parking, and then went and stood in line in a light rain for a half hour before they opened Dome doors to guests.

About 9:30 a.m. the graduates began to file in. It took a full half hour for the seating to happen. Can you spot CJ in the middle of the photo below, holding up his program?

Here's a cell phone closeup of the graduate.

Before the ceremony, there were rotating photos on the big screens. CJ had texted me a "backstage" photo of Harry the Husky and him, so I posted it to social media with the hashtag #UWTgrad and it made it into the rotation.

Here's an 'action shot' of CJ getting scanned in to cross the stage. Each grad had a QR code that they scanned, and then a pre-recorded voice announced their name.

All of my shots of CJ actually crossing the stage are blurry. :/ It was very dark in the Dome, and my camera wasn't up to the task. Case in point: Here's a shot of him walking in front of us, after he came off the stage.

After about three hours, all the grads had crossed the stage (some 1,400, I think), and they were told to move their tassels to the other side of their caps.

After commencement, we headed back to our place, checked in on the dogs and picked up G&G. We then headed to the Seattle Waterfront - specifically Wing Dome, for a little celebratory lunch. (We had gone to this same Wing Dome when CJ graduated from South Seattle College with his AA a couple years back.)

Back at home, CJ enjoyed both of his cakes, including this one from Bundt Cakes. 

We took the cap off the cake and donned it on CJ's merpug for fun.

Speaking of dogs, on our daily  'to do' whiteboard, Annabelle drew CJ a special cartoon. It marked the re-emergence of a series she used to do years ago, Shar-pei a Day. As always, the aloof Shar-pei wasn't exactly effusive in his praise.

All in all a long day, the culmination of a lot of years of hard work and stick-to-it-iveness. Congrats to CJ for crossing this particular finish line. We all look forward to what is next.

Kitchen Adventures

LET JIMI TAKE OVER: February 25th was the fourth Saturday of the month, which meant that we were busy with our monthly Teen Feed meal service.

February is Black History Month, and it also marks the month rock icon Jimi Hendrix, a Seattle area native, bought his first guitar. To celebrate, we turned to Jimi's songs for some culinary inspiration for our February Teen Feed!  Annabelle drew up an artsy, awesome menu sign for the service, and CJ was the DJ, spinning Hendrix tunes for three hours straight.

"Oh my gosh, they're gonna love this!" said a Teen Feed staffer surveying the buffet line right before service

"Hey Joe" showed up in many forms. The main entrée was sloppy joes and we dished up savory jojos on the side.

Team members combined to make plentiful amounts of pretty "Purple Haze" coleslaw. (Side note: Interestingly, the purple slaw was more popular than green slaw we've served in the past.) 

"Hey Joe" popped up again at the dessert end of the buffet, with yummy Trader Joe's Joe-Joe's cookies.

Inspired by Jimi's "(Let Me Stand Next to Your) Fire," the service was spiced up with bunch of Atomic Fireballs brought by Beth. 

We had some Jimi-inspired fun with the evening's beverages.  A bright, shining star of the service was the "Purple Haze" mocktail. Both beautiful and refreshing, it was the perfect blend of lemonade, butterfly pea flower tea, and lavender syrup. "It's really herbal. The lavender really finishes it," said one fan.

And, of course, "Hey Joe" obviously meant we had to offer some coffee-flavored drinks

All in all it was a memorable meal service. 

"I love the Jimi Hendrix-inspired menu!" declared one appreciative dinner guest.

LEFTOVERS: I over bought when it came to cabbage for our Teen Feed coleslaw. Rather than letting it go to waste, I decided it had been way too long since we made some sauerkraut. 

To refresh my memory, I looked back at an old blog post where we'd made sauerkraut in the past. These two videos were very helpful.

Then, it was time to chop up the cabbage, smash it with our hands and salt it, and put it in jars to ferment. 

On Repeat

TIMES TWO: Last time I popped on here was to share some good news and a cake we'd recently finished. 

From the history repeating itself file, here we go again.

Annabelle was recently accepted by UW Bothell, one of the three places she applied to continue her college. We'll have to visit the campus, as we've never been there. A couple of weeks ago, she was also accepted by UW Tacoma. She's just waiting to hear from one more school, which lets people know the first couple of weeks of March, I do believe. 

CAKE WRECKS: A few weeks back a friend asked if we did cakes by request. I told him we're not in the cake business, but had been known to make cakes for friends if they then, in turn, make a donation to Birthday Dreams, the non-profit we often back cakes for. He agreed to that, so I asked him what kind of cake he wanted. He responded that he wanted it to feature a Dumpster fire, a mushroom cloud and the "Everything is Fine" dog meme by artist KC Green.

(You can read a story about it on NRP here: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/16/1149232763/this-is-fine-meme-anniversary-gunshow-web-comic )

"Well that sounds like fun," we thought. 

The first order of business was making some flames from fondant mixed with some tylose to make it set up stiff.

Annabelle crafted this cute dog and his chair from modeling chocolate.

We built a Dumpster fire by making the 'body' from a big Rice Krispies treat, covered that in buttercream and then blue fondant. Annabelle put a cute face on it, and we topped it with flames.
Then we added a border/lip and some 'coal' (chocolate 'rocks').

Next up, it was time to build a mushroom cloud. We used a column we had, put a tiny cake board on that and then a Hostess Snoball atop that. Then we added mini marshmallows and draped the whole thing in fondant.

The last thing Annabelle made was the banner, per the friend's request.

He was pretty pleased with the cake. He donated $250 to Birthday Dreams and gave Annabelle a healthy tip, as well. 

Sweet Stuff

 

BOW WOW: On January 16, we received some very happy news. There's going to be another Dawg in this house. Annabelle was offered admission to the University of Washington's Tacoma campus.  It's one of just three colleges she applied to for admission.

CJ has been enrolled at UW Tacoma for his junior and senior college years, and it has been a mostly wonderful experience. It's a nice, urban campus that isn't too enormous, and the class sizes are nice and small compared to many other colleges. The campus is in the museum district of Tacoma, with lots of interesting things to see and do.

It's nice to have at least one really solid college option on the horizon.

The photo above is about 13 or so years old, I'm guessing. It was no doubt taken on a Saturday when the Ducks were playing the Huskies in college football. 

CAKING IT: I'm behind on posting our Birthday Dreams cakes (along with everything else, ha ha).

Our most recent creation was for a 10-year old who loves space and STEM (science, math, engineering and technology). We made a galaxy cake (airbrushed by Annabelle) with a rocket on it and a big ol' robot on top.

His name was on the body of the rocket, but I've obscured it for anonymity. 

We hope he enjoyed the custom creation.

Our December Birthday Dreams cake was a first for us. The teenager wanted something related to her love of Shopkins. 

To be honest, we'd not delved into the world of "Shopkins" until we signed up for this cake.  It turns out it's a world where cartoon versions of "micro scales of real brands from the supermarket" live, according to Shopkins' website. 

After poking around a bit, it seemed like their character "Cupcake Queen" was a good cake topper candidate. Annabelle made an adorable, edible version.

We put the teen's name front and center, in the Shopkins style/font. (As always, the child's name is changed in this photo to protect anonymity.)

We had a bit of a disaster when delivering the cake. On about the second turn from our house, the Cupcake Queen took a nasty tumble. We had to return home, fix her up as best we could, and then set out again. 

Truth be told, delivery is always a hold-your-breath endeavor. So many hours go into these cakes, and so much could go so wrong in a split second during transport. 

Dreamers

 

CAKING IT: Last week, we cooked up another Birthday Dreams donation. The 12-year old girl loves to play video games on her Nintendo Switch, so we decided to make a life-sized edible Switch atop her chocolate brownie cake with white chocolate filling and vanilla buttercream. 

The handheld console is a big cookie covered in fondant, modeling chocolate and sugar sheet. We used CJ and Annabelle's Switch as our model.

Below, Annabelle is cutting homemade marshmallow fondant to cover the controllers. We were very careful to try to match the exact color of the Switch's red and blue.

The cookie was carefully tilted against a corn dog stick stuck down into the two-layer, quarter sheet cake.

We hope she liked it! (The name in the photo above has been changed for anonymity.)

Our previous project for Birthday Dreams was for a child who wanted a tie-dyed themed party. We wanted to do something more than just ice the cake in a tie-dyed theme, so we finally thought to make little tie-dyed t-shirt cookies to help decorate the cake.

The child's favorite colors were red, purple, and blue, so we used those to decorate the cookies. 

It was a swirled, sugary mess during the process!

And, of course, we didn't just want to leave the cookies plain - they needed graphics on them. So, Annabelle fired up her Cricut and cut out peace signs, happy faces, and other groovy objects.

We put the child's age on the front-and-center cookie. And our cake topper was an over-sized tie-dyed t-shirt with their name on it. (The name has been changed to protect anonymity in the photo below.)

With these out the door, it's time to pick a cake for our December project.

Teen Feed Times Two

LOCALS ONLY: 

Washington state is home to so many delectable edibles, and that fact was on display at our Teen Feed dinner service in July. 

The main attraction was Seattle dogs. We served jumbo Costco dinner franks and Field Roast vegan stadium dogs on big' ol Franz Pioneer rolls (all three companies are founded in Seattle). 

It wouldn't be a Seattle dog without a copious amount of cream cheese, plus genuine Walla Walla sweet caramelized onions. Would you believe we went through about 10 pounds of them!? And would you believe we here at Mag Prep made all of those. (I have learned from previous Teen Feeds to do that outside, so our house doesn't smell like onions for a month.)

Other Seattle dog topping choices included jalapenos, shredded cheddar cheese, and seven (!) types of condiments - everything from the standard ketchup and mustard to sriracha and sweet Thai chili.

There were four varieties of Tim's Cascade Chips to choose from, and many people were back for seconds (or more) on these. (Jalapeno and Sea Salt & Vinegar were the favorites, if you're wondering.) 

We were fortunate to receive a generous donation from Seattle's DRY Botanical Bubbly for our beverage for the "locals only" meal. Rainier Cherry, Vanilla, Ginger, Cucumber and Lavender sparkling water were *such* a refreshing treat for the teens (and the Teen Feed staff loved it, too). 

Dessert was nothing short of spectacular. I'm serious! The morning of Teen Feed I picked up a flat of the most delicious raspberries I've ever tasted from the Carpinito Brothers' produce market down in Kent. The berries were harvested that same morning! (If you haven't been to Carpinito's  before, it's worth a field trip some time!) To go with, Annabelle harvested huge stalks for rhubarb from our garden. The very-local rhubarb and raspberries were expertly mixed with strawberries and the delightful combo was served with beautifully baked Krusteaz shortcake/scones. Add a little Darigold whipped cream, also local, and it was a stunningly wonderful treat. Definitely a dessert to remember!

Ice, napkins, to go containers and a festive tablecloth ... there are so many pieces to the Teen Feed puzzle. We try to remember all of the little things along with the big things each month.

Multiple teens voiced deep appreciation for the array of food and drink they had to choose from to build a special dinner customized to their personal preferences.

In addition to the 30 meals we box up for ROOTS, the in-person Teen Feed guest count is on the rise, and boy are they a hungry bunch! For example, our very first guest requested TWO huge franks on his bun (that's a half pound of hot dog!), and another young man had at least four bags of chips. I was glad I went ahead and bought an extra 14-pack of hot dogs and bonus buns ahead of our service, or we would have been down to our last dog at closing time. The meager leftovers we did have went to the nearby Community Fridge.

After the service, I made sure to send a customized thank you card to the DRY Soda folks for their generous donation

GONE VIRAL: Our Teen Feed menu in August was a fun one. Hoping that millions of viral video viewers couldn't be wrong, we turned to TikTok for recipe ideas for our Teen Feed service. Upon learning the inspiration for the evening's menu, the Teen Feed lead exclaimed, "Your team brings it every time! I can't wait to tell the kids the theme tonight!"

So that diners could learn more about what inspired what they were eating, I printed little signs with QR codes that would take them to the viral videos for each menu item.

Our main entree was the wildly-viral and super hearty feta pasta bake. When it went viral, it was so popular, an entire country (Finland) experienced a feta cheese shortage. There are many versions of this recipe online. I favor the New York Times' version, with just one alteration: Right before the final bake, I add one pound of browned Italian sausage to up the protein and flavor. This recipe became an instant family favorite when we test drove it!   

As a side, we served a super healthy, beautiful Green Goddess salad. It's kind of a like a pesto coleslaw, in my opinion. It's so good! We served it with tortilla chips in case people wanted to treat it like a dip. 

Just look at how fresh and healthy these ingredients look as we prepped the Green Goddess at home. 

Here's the finished product.

Ranch pickles were a fun and tasty treat. Plus, they're so easy to make (one packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dip poured into a jar of pickles; shake and refrigerate for a day or so). "Pickles and ranch are two of my favorite things. I can't wait to try them together!" one guest exclaimed.

The pickles were gobbled up with gusto!

Creamy Lemonade was our special beverage for the service. Served in little mason jars with colorful paper straws and a slice of lemon on the rim, it was a pretty as it was tasty - almost like liquid lemon meringue pie. "This lemonade is awesome!" raved one teen.  

Our leftover pasta bake went to the Tiny Home Village near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and the balance of the leftovers went to the Community Fridge a couple of blocks away from Teen Feed.

Of course, we're already planning the September menu. Since fall and football are in the air, we're going with a tailgating party theme. Steak nachos supreme and more!