Helping Homeless for the Holidays

PRETTY IN PINK: A busy Christmas weekend included a cake donation to Birthday Dreams.

We were told the 14 year-old spending her Christmas and birthday in a homeless shelter likes art and pink. So those two elements were combined to produce the cake above.

We always start off with a conceptual drawing. Often, the cake doesn't look like the drawing when we're done, but it's a starting point.

CJ baked three layers of vanilla cake on Sunday morning. Meanwhile, Annabelle got busy with design elements. A palette, paint brush, paint tube and easel needed to be constructed out of homemade modeling chocolate. 

I filled and iced this cake, and then Annabelle air brushed it with a vibrant pink.

CJ installed a tidy row of 'pearls' around its base. 

We were really happy with how it all came together. It wasn't the biggest or most complicated cake we've ever done, but it was really pretty, at least to our eyes. (FYI, the birthday girl's name has been obscured or altered in all of our photos to preserve her anonymity.) 

I loved the way Annabelle's cupcake on 'canvas' turned out. And the palette was super cute, too.

BUENO BURRITOS:  The Christmas holiday definitely didn't spill over into Saturday, the day after Christmas, for us. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was a super busy day, readying a huge amount of food for our monthly Teen Feed service.

This month there was a bit of a monkey wrench. I was informed on the night of Christmas Eve eve that Teen Feed's location had been moved. And so, then I had just two days (Christmas Eve and Christmas day) to try to contact a dozen-plus volunteers and let them know about the change. That was fun ... not.

Most every morning I write a 'to do' list on a white board in our kitchen. Here was Saturday's.

On the list was making at least 20 enormous (like three pound) burritos. I had cooked the chicken, beans, and rice on Christmas day, so on the 26th, it was all about assembly. The kids and I got a production line going. First, CJ would toast a tortilla on a griddle. I'd pick that up and put about 3/4 cups of refried beans on. Annabelle would add a cup of Mexican rice, I'd drizzle on some enchilada sauce, and then I'd add two huge handfuls of seasoned, shredded chicken. CJ would sprinkle two handfuls of cheese on top, and the the hard part was rolling all of that into a nice, tight burrito. 

We got better at it as we went along. CJ also tore foil sheets that the burritos were then wrapped in.

Fortunately, I was able to chase down every volunteer and all of the food made it to the new Teen Feed location. We had asked for 80 burritos, and probably wound up with more than a hundred! (At home, the kids and I made 30 instead of 20, because we had the filling to do so. Others clearly did the same - made burritos until they couldn't make any more.)

In the to go bags there was also some fresh fruit, a box of nacho chips with salsa, sour cream, cheese dip, and jalapenos. 

For dessert, volunteers home baked cookies. One friend made vegan Mexican mocha snickerdoodles, which sounded delicious to me. She even wrote "Adios 2020" (the theme for our dinner) on each cookie envelope. 

All in all, a super busy weekend, but a great chance to help some young neighbors in need.