Day One-hundred-and-four: Vegan cupcakes that take over the world

Since I had some Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting left over from a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make another double batch of vegan Basic Chocolate Cupcakes. This time I was smart and took the frosting out of the refrigerator to let it get to room temperature before I needed to frost. The frosting went a lot better.

So, I packed the car with 20 cupcakes, 14 of them "frosted," and drove to San Carlos. As I was turning on El Camino, I noticed the Street Fair and thought to myself, "I wonder what this is going to do to parking." Two or three large city blocks and several minutes later I found out. I had just given up finding a spot driving down the alley parallel to El Camino after the parking lot I had used previously was full. After all, I had already driven beyond the end of the street fair. So, I decided to go north of Holly to see if I could find some parking in that direction. I turned on to El Camino to do just that and there it was, a sign that read no parking 2 to 6, but there were a lot of spots and it was only 1:00. I parked and before I grabbed anything out of my car I walked back to take another look at the sign. When I read it more closely, it was 2 AM to 6 AM.

I grabbed the cupcakes, my journal, and my water, and crossed the busy El Camino without the benefit of a crosswalk. Once across I quickly recrossed to grab my cell phone. Then back across the street. After few steps down the sidewalk I was looking for the first flat place to sit something down, which occurred quickly when I knocked my Baja Fresh water cup over. It was full so a little water did seep out around the straw hole. I took this opportunity to put my heavy journal in my waistband and carried the cupcake containers in my left hand and my water glass in my right. Even the cupcakes got heavy by the time I got to the phone bank office. (I thought my "perfect pushup" exercises was giving me more upper body strength.)

The cupcakes were a hit and were gone by the time I left. I was greeted with "the vegan cupcake guy" when I walked in. A person asked for the recipe as I was walking out. I got halfway to my car and realized that I had left my journal. The walk was good. The weather was great.

The calling was so so. Out of 117 calls that I made, 92 were not home. Only one specifically said that they were voting for someone other than Obama, however, 12 refused to say. (The 12 also includes the people who hung up.) There were seven calls made to Obama supporting households. I learned later that a record number of 3,245 calls were made from that location today. There were a lot of people there. While most of them were younger than me, there were a surprising number that were truly young, but older than 18.

I talked with one Obama supporter who said that he has received over 20 phone calls. Even though I was one of them, and don't regret it, I'm glad that I don't live in a battleground state in my Life after Layoff.

On my way home I stopped in at Whole Foods. Among other things that are good for me, I bought some more Tortilla Chips, a flavored variety. This would ordinarily be bad news but I've already tried them. I guess they are edible but they aren't entirely to my taste. This means that I'm not in any rush to eat them, which is really good news.

I must like paper, blank paper. I just looked out over the table at which I am writing this and I count two leather bound journals, three pads of paper, a notebook calendar, and an address book.

Day Forty-five: Baking sweets

Today I really made a mess of the kitchen. I made two kinds of cupcakes, at the same time. The vanilla cupcakes had a cup and a quarter of flour. The chocolate only had a cup of flour. This was made up by the 1/3 cup of cacao powder. So, the very first thing I did was put the chocolate in the bowl with the cup and a quarter of flour. After salvaging as much as I could of the chocolate and putting it the right bowl, I finally figured out that all I had to do was set the flour laced with chocolate aside and start the vanilla cupcakes over.

That wasn't the only faux pas. When I was placing the chocolate cupcake batter into the papers, I got my scoop too close the paper. It touched. Thus, when I pulled the scoop back up to shake the right amount of batter into the paper, I pulled one side of the paper up. This dumped the batter into the pan and left me with 11, not 12 cupcakes. So with the chocolate cupcakes I didn't eat from my earlier experiment with coffee, I have 20 chocolate cupcakes and 12 vanilla cupcakes. Tomorrow I make bread and the cupcake topping.

I also made my Food for Life Ginger Bread. The oven was going for over an hour. Thank goodness I live in Pacifica. I think the high today was 73.

Many of these entries are being written the following day. Even so, I haven't written why, until now. I've been staying up watching the Olympics. Since I'm getting up at the same time, or close to it, I'm tired. This has led to a nap in the afternoon for a couple of the days, unfortunately not long enough. I can't wait until I don't have anything to do, like watch the Olympics, and can get a normal night's sleep. It will have to be that way tomorrow night as I will be driving on Saturday and certainly don't want to do that tired.

I must admit that as good as this break has been, so far, I'm beginning to look forward to doing something. Right now, it still is not trading time for money but I can't wait to get to the defining of my business and actually getting into doing it, the business of Life after Layoff.

Day Forty-three: Cooking for one

I don't know how to cook for one. I may have already said this in an earlier entry but it bears repeating because I still haven't learned. Besides, cooking takes so much time, even when I don't do the cleanup right away. Since I'm not cooking for one, I'm eating for more than one.

For example, I made the basic vegan chocolate cupcakes again. I left out a portion of the oil and added instant coffee in a heaping teaspoon, about the coffee recommended for one cup. The cupcakes were quite good. So good in fact that I snacked all afternoon on three of them. Only on the first one did I have the soy yogurt and raspberries accompaniment I picked up for them. The coffee really does enhance the chocolate flavor. It also helps keep me awake.

But the real point is that except for truly large portions designed for multiple meals, I tend to fix one dish meals, not that they all are a dietary variety in one dish. My lunch was the rest of the Mango Black Bean salad. My dinner is one butternut squash, cooked with green onions, raisins, and fresh ground black pepper. I would have added some orange juice, if I had had any but it was fairly good.

With my turning to steel cut (Irish) oats for breakfast, I let my normal oat supply drop below some recipes' requirements. So, when I went out for my instant coffee, I got some Old Fashion Oats as well. Now I can make the Spicy Mole Oatmeal Chili.

Cooking for one, eating for two (or more) is really the Life after Layoff. Eating more means I need to exercise more, which after a two day break, I did again this morning.

It hit me yesterday, but I didn't say anything about it when I wrote about yesterday. Yesterday was the end of six weeks of not working. It has passed very quickly and I don't have nearly as much done for all that time as I would have liked. I keep telling myself that I'll get better. In fact, I am looking forward to September for a couple of reasons: The big one is my son's wedding and seeing everyone who is coming out for it. Next in line to that is starting to work on my longer term making money to continue the better Life after Layoff.