A Visit from Grandma and Grandpa

My parents made the trip down here Friday evening, just barely missing the winter storm that blew through North Carolina over the weekend. Elsa was in bed by the time they arrived, but I was able to keep their cravings for their granddaughter at bay by offering them some of the German chocolate cake I made for my dad's birthday. The cake was intense -- both in terms of the effort to make it and the taste. I am not a big fan of coconut (I think it is mostly a texture thing), and therefore German chocolate cake is not my favorite (really, I am not much of a cake person in general), but even despite the coconut, I thought it was quite good. I especially enjoyed the intensely dark chocolate frosting. I am not an expert cake decorator, so it didn't look perfect -- a little lopsided -- but overall it looked okay. When I was searching for a German chocolate cake recipe online, I came across this one, posted by a pastry chef who used to work at Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkeley that is mentioned in one of my favorite books, Crawling, and one that Jarrett and I are hoping to pay a visit to while out in California in June. Coming across it made it just ironic enough that I had to make it. If you are a fan of this cake, I highly recommend this recipe.

Enough about the cake -- although it was the only thing I seemed to manage to get a photo of this weekend, so I will post that.


It was a rainy Saturday here, so we did not do much except laze around the house. We made hamburgers for lunch, and I got a decent amount of knitting and pre-Olympics television watching done while Elsa napped. We ventured out for a birthday dinner for my dad at Twain's in Decatur. He is a fan of brewpubs, but unfortunately they did not have any of their dark beers on tap, which is what he tends to prefer. Sadly, the food was subpar as well, but the beer we did get was good, and we had a nice time overall, so at least there is that.

My parents braved the task of putting Elsa down for the night for the first time on their own, letting Jarrett and I escape to the movie theater to see Sherlock Holmes. I thought the movie was pretty good, but could have done with some better company sitting beside me. Not Jarrett, of course -- he was lovely. It was the irritating couple on the other side of me that decided to chat with each other through the better part of the movie. We have not had good luck with audiences lately. It was so nice to get out and see a movie together, though, and Elsa went down without a hitch, which bodes well for our upcoming weekend away!

We made it to church on Sunday, out to a quick bite to eat, and then my mom volunteered to put Elsa down for her nap (probably a more difficult task than putting her down for the night) so Jarrett and I could run out to a couple of bookstores to peruse our options in terms of Yosemite/Sequoia/King's Canyon guides before they hit the road to head home. Again, my mom had fairly good luck getting Elsa down, which, again, assures me that Elsa will in fact survive, even in my absence.

Today we start another busy week. Elsa woke up this morning with her hair plastered to much snot on her face (lovely image, I know), so I assumed she had come down with a cold. But so far she seems fairly fine. She has sneezed some, but that is not really abnormal, and her nose is not really running. So who knows what is going on. Time will tell!