Errands

We decided that we could be good and only run into Kitchen’s Etc without spending loads of time and money and amazingly enough we did. Tirzah has developed an addiction to Lindor truffles so we each grabbed our 3 (hers white, mine dark chocolate) and the 3 cooling racks. They did not have the cake boards I wanted so we went down to Michaels. We found the cake boards, opting to get both the 14” and 16” round ones to be on the safe side. Since I cracked into both packages during the day I was happy. We also called FL and got confirmation that they didn’t have anything really planned for the cake table. They were just going to put a tablecloth on the table so we got some fabric rose petals which were on sale to decorate with. I think they looked very nice on the table. We also got some ribbon so Tirzah could make ribbon bows for the table. She was very surprised to find that when you make a big floppy bow you only get 3 bows out of a spool of ribbon!

By this point it was more than lunchtime but we still had to go to the liquor store, the video store and the Safeway. We had planned on grabbing a quick lunch out but since the Mongolian barbeque was between the liquor store and the Blockbuster it seemed like a cool thing to do. So lunch took a little longer than planned but I think it was worth it. I bought another bottle of Chateau Monet Raspberry Liqueur (only 11 bucks and almost as good as Chamborg), and a bottle of Godiva White Chocolate (got to keep the bakers happy). Then we were off to get videos. PC was having a friend stay the night so we could not rent DVDs but we wanted something. Tirzah had never seen Moulin Rouge before so we got that, Vatel (which I hear is a wonderful foodie movie but I still haven’t managed to watch) and the DVD of Sweet Home Alabama (which I watched Sunday). Then we went to Safeway and got 10 lbs of cake flour, a 5 lb bag of sugar and some Rubbermaid containers to hold my dry ingredients in. Also we got another pound of ground beef for dinner, and a couple other things but I can’t remember what they were. Finally we were done and headed back to the house. We made a stop for a guest parking permit and then back to cooking.

When we got back to the house I put the cakes that had already been baked onto the cake boards and we started thinking about frosting them. Only thinking about it, because first we had to make some more cakes. I poured a squeeze bottle of the Raspberry Liqueur and started drenching the cakes. I remember wondering if we should slice off the tops to obtain a consistent size, which we had talked about doing, and Tirzah saying that she thought we didn’t need to. Mental note: I wish I had gone ahead and sliced the cakes. I think it would have made a better-looking cake. Another round of 6” and 10” went into the oven, then the 12” and finally the 8”. Somewhere – I think between the 12” and the 8” we decided to break for dinner.

Tirzah made “it don’t suck” which is our pet name for Hamburger Helper made from scratch. Last year I experimented with the Atkins diet. I don’t think I lost much weight and I know that whatever I lost I gained back but I did come away with the recipe for IDS, which made the experience worth it. Every time I make IDS lately we do it slightly differently but every time it truly doesn’t suck. First you take hamburger, usually about a pound, and brown it. Then you add veggies. Usually I add onion, broccoli and mushrooms, which were in the original recipe, but lately we’ve been adding more things, like green pepper. This time Tirzah added fresh asparagus. Then you add spices (the recipe calls for IIRC, salt, pepper and onion salt). This is where Tirzah usually has fun. I don’t even know what she added this time, although I do remember wishing she had put more pepper in it. Here is where we truly have been playing with the recipe. After the veggies are added in, we’ve started adding noodles. Of course you need more liquid to cook the noodles than is in the recipe so we add consommé. Add a little Bovril, cook down the liquid until the noodles are cooked and then toss in some cream cheese to finish the dish off. Originally the recipe called for just the cream cheese which, when heated, becomes the sauce. Only this time, once again, we played with the recipe. While Tirzah was making dinner I was working on dessert, a.k.a. Mor’s Cheesecake. When it came time to add the cream cheese we just added some of the cheesecake filling instead. Yum! I don’t think I would do that on a regular basis, just cause I usually don’t have that many different kinds of soft cheese in the house but if I do have uncommitted cheese I now know one of the things I will be doing with it.

I promised more...more will be coming

Gee I really have a lot to write at the moment.

Okay. I really need to write this while it’s still in my mind. First thing first, Thursday night we went to get supplies. As usual I picked up more of some things than I actually need. I got 6 lbs of butter, 3 3lb blocks of cream cheese, a 5 lb tub of marscapone cheese, and either a 3 or 5 lb tub of ricotta. We also got 5 lbs of frozen raspberries, a flat of raspberries, one of blackberries and one of strawberries.

After Tirzah and I split up I went to ABC Sugarart to get some cake boxes. Of course I didn’t get all the right sizes, but I got what I THOUGHT I needed. Someday I’ll learn to plan better. I also got some more disposable icing bags and a 14” separator plate for my new candlelight stand. While I was there I was talking to Keith, one of the head guys at ABC. I told him I was about to embark on another insanity and he asked me what. I told him I was working on the Snowflake cake from the current Wilton catalog and he said he wondered if that cake was the reason that he was getting so many requests for snowflakes. He said lots of people are calling him to get him to make snowflakes because their bakers refuse to. I really need to go by there sometime in the next couple of weeks, show him the pictures of our cake and pick his brain for how he does his.

Then I went to dinner with Mom and Dad, and then drove home. Since we got the strawberries more because they were a good price than because we had plans for them, Tirzah took home half the flat. I gave Mom and Dad 3 pints of them and then Friday morning I gave the biblical couple a pint. It started snowing when we were eating and by the time I got back home the pavement felt like there was snow under the ice (the kind of surface I hate driving on the most). I nearly gave myself a heart attack pulling into the parking space as I kept sliding and I thought for sure I was going to hit PC’s truck. I managed to pull in and decided that everything was refrigerated better than I could do it in the house so I left stuff.

Friday morning I had the unusual experience of staying home while PC went off to work. Of course I barely got to sleep in with him moving around but that was okay. I knew that Tirzah had planned on calling work and telling them she could not come in if it snowed. Thursday night I had told her hubby over IM that she should call me in the morning before she left so that I could give her a shopping list. I had originally planned on going over to the storage area and cleaning out the back of my truck and then going grocery shopping on Friday but after my experience driving I decided that the less anyone was on the roads until it melted the better. I went downstairs and made myself a pot of peppermint-flavored coffee and started making sure the kitchen was clean and organized. Tirzah called at some point and I asked her to get eggs (Safeway had them on sale 99 cents for 18 so I asked her to get 3 packs), milk and cake flour. When she showed up she had forgotten the cake flour but we figured that was okay because we could always run out and get more if we really needed it.

I pulled together the pans I wanted. We were doing 4 cakes, 6”, 8”, 10” and 12”. The 8” was supposed to be done without liquor so we had something for the kids and people who don’t drink alcohol to have. With the exception of the 12” we had 3” high pans for all the sizes. I only had one 3” pan for each size with the exception of the 8” however. So we decided that we would do the 6 and 10 together, both 8’s and then the 12. This was the most efficient use of our time because the 6 and 10 could share a batch of batter, the 8’s would be done with one batch and each 12 inch layer would take a batch on it’s own. We debated adding a 14” but decided against it, which turned out to be a good thing since we never ended up cutting into the 12” cake. After making the first batch which was the first layer of the 6 and 10 set, and the second batch, which turned out to be the first 12 inch layer we discovered that we would indeed need more cake flour. I also decided that I wanted to get some more cooling racks big enough for a 12 inch cake. When we were buying things a week or so ago I had picked up one cooling grid that would work hopefully up to a 14” cake, but I only had one. All my other cooling racks are too small for a 10” cake even so I wanted to have a total of 4 of the bigger racks. We also needed to get some cake circles for the bigger sizes. So a trip to Kitchen’s Etc and Michaels was in order in addition to Safeway.

More to come

We did the cake on Friday and served it on Saturday. We learned things and I have some observations but I need to do the write up still.

No so much the flunking

I went ahead and took the cheesecake into work and people seemed to like it. It was completely gone by the end of lunch. I was told I am encouraged to bring in baked goods whenever I feel like it. :)

I have a good friend who doesn't do any form of sugar so while I was playing with the cheesecake I started thinking about her. She had gone to the Trellis Resturant in Williamsburg for lunch and raved about the savory cheesecake. While I was thinking about the cheesecake and the wedding coming up it occurred to me that it would be cool if my friend could have something while people had cake. So I started researching savory cheesecakes. I worked on one that was okay, but I had added more garlic then the recipe asked for and found to my dismay that it actually possible to use too much garlic. Oh well, PC liked it.

I talked to the wedding couple and Tirzah and we all agreed on making the cheesecakes as well as the cake. I wasn't happy with the recipe I had tried even if it was in part my fault. So now I needed to find another recipe. Tirzah and I went out Tuesday night to buy some supplies, the wedding gift and some groceries. While I had Tirzah with me we looked up some recipes and found one that we wanted to try. It was orginally calling for 3 kinds of cheese including Blue cheese and was supposed to be an appetizer. Instead we used Marscapone, Ricotta and Cream cheese. We put in some spices, used some crackers to make the crust and came out with something that tasted half way decent. I'm still not completely happy with it but at least it was a start. It added a nice touch to the party that people who have problems with sugar were able to have something as well. We ended up taking 5 of the mini cheesecakes with us and I think I brought home 2 of them. The main comment was that they were so big that people only wanted 1/2 pieces which is why we didn't run through them as quickly as we could have.

So I flunk Cheesecake

Today and yesterday Tirzah and I spent some major time working on snowflakes. We went to the mart of walls and got some plastic drawers to keep the snowflakes in to try and keep the stupid cat from going after the snowflakes. I swear that cat is a reincarnated sugar addict. He goes after royal icing and coffee. It doesn't matter where the snowflakes are if he can reach them he goes after them.

When we were in Resturant Depot the other day I got myself a container of Mascarpone cheese. I've been trying to figure out what to do with it without getting around to making Tiramsu. I want to do that at some point but right now is not the time. While I was looking through Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgieri I found a recipe for "Shari's Individual Mascapone Cheesecakes" it sounded really good but I didn't have the cups to make them individual. So I made a nine inch version instead and filled some of the little gharam cracker crust mini tart shells that I had left from when I was going to make pumpkin pies but didn't earlier this fall. The little ones seemed to come out well but the big one never really got solid in the middle. Right now I have it in the fridge to see how it chills but I'm not going to take it into work like I planned. It's too brown on top and I'm not sure it's cooked as well as I want it to be. Maybe the next one. Neil says that I had the oven set too high. That is probably true. I cleaned the oven today to get ready for FL's cake and I'm used to it heating about 50 degrees low. It probably got too hot.


Shair's Individual Mascarpone Cheesecakes
2 lbs cream cheese, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
18 ounches (1 3/4 cups) mascarpone, softened
7 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Eighteen to twenty-one 4-ounce aluminum foil cups, buttered and bottoms lined with buttered parchment or wax paper; a shallow roasting pan large enough to hold the cups

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 300 degrees.
In the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until smooth. Add the mascarpone and beat until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl and beater often. Beat in the vanilla.
Place the prepared molds in the roasting pan and fill the molds to within 1/2 inch of the top. Pour about an inch of warm water into the pan
Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the cakes are no longer liquid in the center
Turn off the oven and leave door ajar. Cool the cheesecakes in the oven for about 30 minutes, then chill the cheesecakes until firm.
To unmold, invert and remove the cups and paper.
Serving: Serve with sliced sugared strawberries or raspberries or a combination.
Storage: Wrap leftovers in plastic and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before serving.

You win some you lose some

Okay, I was bad tonight and didn't do any piping. I need to work on them more tomorrow night and this weekend. However, I did try taking the snowflakes I did yesterday off the wax paper. I learned something useful. I really need to make each snowflake on an individual piece of waxed paper and leave them on the paper until it is time to put them on the cake. This means 1) that I need to make a hell of a lot of snowflakes so that I can have lots of extras for breakage. Considering I broke all but about 3 I pulled off the waxed paper from last night I'm hoping that the indivdual pieces of paper might make life easier. 2) It means I need to set aside a boat load of time for setting up the cake. I think we need to be there right about 3 pm when they get the hall and make sure the cake table is the first thing set up. Once we get the cake set up we can help with the other stuff but we need to make sure that the cake is done first. Otherwise we'll run out of time.

40 done

Written 1/29/03



Goal obtained! I worked out earlier that I have 10 days until the wedding and in a perfect world I would like to have 400 snowflakes to allow plenty for a saftey margin. So, of course, that means 40 snowflakes a night. I'm not sure we're going to make it but at least tonight I got it done. It only took about 2 hours. I took a break for dinner in the middle for about an hour and my hands don't even feel bad. I probably could have done another tray (20 snowflakes) but I decided that I want to be able to pipe tomorrow so it was time to stop.

Snowflake update

Written 1/28/03 11:02 pm



Alan is not home yet and Tirzah left about half an hour ago. After a nice dinner of salad, bread and pork chops we started working on snowflakes. Wilton says use royal icing and a number 2 tip. we tried that and every one of the snowflakes we tried to pick up broke. Tirzah tried one with a number 4 tip and much thinner icing. I'm not sure about the thinner icing. I think that a more medium icing with a number 4 tip might work better,

Icing woes

Written 1/28/03



We went back to Alan's house and started baking. We did an 8 inch cake and a 6 inch. I had a slight problem with the 6 inch cooking all the way through which I will have to work out, but otherwise the cake seemed to go really well. We also made 3 trays of brownies, two for Tirzah's office and one for the party. I need to remember to clean the oven this weekend though. I was not as pleased with the frosting however. Somehow when I think of ganache I think of the cake I made for Havorc's cornoatio and the frosting that guy made. So when Tirzah made the White chocolate Ganache and it never got beyond the pourable consistancy I was disappointed. We managed to save it by adding lots of powdered sugar but it wasn't what I had in mind. We ended up putting a coat of the white chocolate fudge on the outside of the cake (nuke the fudge in the microwave for 30-45 seconds at 50% power to make it spreadable). Then we coated the outside of the fudge with the frosting. Of course all lovely whithe chocolate is not actually white it is Ivory colored. This means that the icing is not nearly as white as I wanted. finally we finished and drove through the snow to the Super Bowl party.


When I tasted the cake I loved the actual cake. The texture and flavor were exactly what I am looking for although I need to find a way to infuse the cake more with the framoise. The cake had a very definate line of demarcation for where the framboise did not sink far enough into the cake. The frosting is another matter. By the time we put the icing on top of the fudge there was almost 1/4 inch of the "frosting" in some places. This is BY FAR too much. I don't really feel that the icing added to the cake and I think I want to propose to Tirzah that we just do the fudge if not find something completely new. The problem with new of course, is a time issue. We have to dgo clean up Alan's house (yes I got a complaint about the way the house was left) and then start the snowflakes tonight.

Ouch!

Written 1/27/03

So I was right, not a cheap weekend. Later on I will try and remember to list my recipets. Friday night Tirzah came over and we went to the movies and then Saturday morning we got up bright and early to go to breakfast with Cameron and Connie. We then went to Resturant Depot where in addition to an 11 lb bar of white chocolate we found a flat of raspberries. We might go back and get those later. We also found qurts of heavy whipping cream. All these things of wonderful...and expensive.


Then on to Michaels picking up a 40% off one item coupon from Mom on the way. We bought the candelight cake stand I've been wanting which might end up having to do with Fl's cake but we're not sure yet. On to Frands cake and candy, actually the cheapest stop of the day as the only thing we needed from there was cake boxes. I forgot to get one of the boxes I will need so I'll need to go at some point and pick up onther one but I will probably go to ABC Sugar Art for that one just for the change. We also showed Fran the pictures of the Max cakes which I have hung in my office this morning.


On to Kitchen's Etc since Fran's didn't have a cake stand we liked. There Tirzah found one that she bought and we will probably used for the cake. Then Tirzah and I split up and I made a stop by Barnes and Noble picking up a new piece of cake porn. Add Safeway and Food Lion on Sunday morning and you can see why I'm feeling poor!

Now which cake am I making?

Written 1/23/03

Last night in addition to making fudge I pulled out my cake bible and found a couple of white chocolate cakes to try. We will see how it goes.


I called Fran's and found out that during the winter they are only open from 10 to 5. Grrr. We will have to go Saturday after Resturant Depot. So it looks like the order of things will be Resturant Depot, Michaels, Frans. Somehow I'm thinking this will not be a cheap weekend for me. Luckily I have cake supply money coming.

Making fudge

Written 1/22/03

Tonight I'm making white chcolate fudge to see what the recipe I have is like. I'm a little concerned that when I licked the bowl it tasted too much like cream cheese. We will see when I get around to having dessert. I might take some to the office tomorrow and get some opinions then.



Recipe

8 oz cream cheese

1 lb (4 cups) confectioner's sugar

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

12 oz white chocolate



Beat cheese, sugar and vanilla. Heat white chocolate and stir until smooth. Fold chocolate into other ingredients. Spread into greased 8X8 dish and chill 1 hour. Cut into squares.

Working on FL's Cake

In an ever increasing effort to become more professional in my insanity I went to both the library and safeway tonight. I got 3 books on baking to look up the recipes I want to try this weekend.

The cake that Tirzah and I made this weekend was basically a dud. We pulled a recipe off the internet and quickly decided we wanted to use a dfifferent white chocolate Mousse recipe. We still wanted to try the cake recipe though. So the first cake was made. Tirzah had pre-heated the oven. What I did not realize when I put the cake in the oven, is that Tirzah turned the oven up to 400 degrees to pre-heat it. We didn't realize this until the cake was well and truly burned. We pulled the cake out, put together another batch and made sure the oven was the right temperture. In the meantime the first batch cooled enough to taste.

We found the texture to be 1/2 spongy and 1/2 rubbery. We figured that the rubbery part was due to the cake cooking too quickly but the 2nd batch, which we managed to bake at the right temp, ended up being almost completely that rubber texture. At that point I pulled out the cake bible and we found a recipe for sponge cake in there. We took that recipe to try next, replacing half of the egg yolks with the white chocolate mix from the bad juju cake. This resulted in a cake with the right texture but it was still not the best. As the cake cooled it deflated so we ended up cutting the top layer off. Then we decided that based on how thin the cake was we could not slice the layers in half. But if we were only baking one layer and not torting the cake where would the white chocolate mousse go? So we ended up baking another layer. Then Tirzah started working on the mousse. She melted the choclate, added in the other ingredients inlcuding eggs that had been seperated (mental note- get Tirzah's recipe) and mixed everything together. It tasted wonderful but was too liquidy to be a filling. Part of that might have been that it was the last thing we did so it did not have enough time to set up. Sometime I would like to try it again but with time to set. We tried adding unflavored gelitan to the mix but that made the mousse grainy. We pulled the last cake from the oven, cleaned up a little, put the 2 layers together complete with framboise and white chocolate mousse filling and went to the Barony meeting. We left the cake outside because it was colder than a refrigerator outside. when Barony meeting was over we served the cake with the remaining (without gelitan) mousse poured over it

The cake got mixed reactions but on the whole neither Tirzah nor I were satisfied. Hanna said I finally made something that she didn't like. Grrr, it is so frustrating. What I am going to try is a white chocolate ganache, a real cake whether white chocolate or just white cake, drenched in chamborg and maybe a white chocolate fudge filling.

Okay, so I suck

I haven't managed to finish the story of the Pennsic cake and look at the time! It's time to ramp up for the October cake. I'm reposting the recipe for the cake because for some reason when I try to get to that page in the archives blogspot coughs and gives me a "can't find this page" error. I'll probably go through and repost all of the entries at some point somewhere else to deal with this.

Ingredients

3 eggs
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups butter
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 teaspoon saffron (1 teaspoon not ground or packed)
2 cups flour
1/2 cup mead
1/2 cup honey

In saucepan heat and reduce mead and honey until mixture totals 1/2 cup. Cool. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and set rack in middle of onion. Prepare cake pan. Cream the butter to a smooth mayo like consistency. Beat eggs, egg yolks, and honey mixture at moderate speed to blend, then increase speed and beat 5 to 6 minutes more until mix is a thick, pale yellow, creamy and the consistency of light whipped cream.


Mix flour and baking powder. Turn flour out onto waxed paper. At slow mixing speed gradually sprinkle the flour into egg mixture, taking 15 to 20 seconds. Do not overmix as this will deflate the eggs. Still at low speed and using one spatula to remove the butter from bowl and another to disloge it from first rapidly incorporate the butter into the egg mixture taking no more than 15 to 20 seconds.


Bake about 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Get your red hot pictures here: Pennsic Cake If this is not clickable the url is http://www.picturetrail.com/orlaith/1055348.

Friday, August 9

Friday morning Tirzah had to be at work by 6 a.m. Since she had no clue how to get back to D.C. I got up with her and led her back to the city. I ended up getting to work at 5:30. This was great except my computer access did not start until 7. I ended up fooling around and doing some things until I could actually log into the computer.

After work Tirzah came to my office and we went out to dinner, filled up the gas tank and went to the grocery store. By the time we got to the Cake house it was after 9 and we didn't really want to do anything. So we unloaded the perishible groceries and went to Alans for sleep. Alan wasn't there so we stayed up long enough to watch some Iron Chef then went to sleep.

Thursday, August 8

I met up with Tirzah at 5 pm and led her to the cake house. First things first, I check on the rondels which looked pretty good. Then we covered them with luster dust. Finally we filled each hole in the colorflow with colored piping gel. I made black for the cats and red, blue and purple for the non cat sections of the rondels. Tirzah decided to make some extra colors and so we had green, orange and a couple of other colors. We started piping the figures and there was much giggling over whether the pieces looked like cats or not. Everything went pretty well although the purple was so dark it looked like black against the gold. Afterward we painted a couple more icons. I, of course, did my usual no patience for anything job while Tirzah took her time. Her cat looked lovely and realistic, although very egyptain and not big enough for the project. I don't remember if I did anything more that night but I know that shortley after that we were pretty tired so went over to Alan's to crash.

Ruby is that you laughing?

Okay I feel a little better (but not much). Here are the pictures of the artwork so far. The first two pictures are the rondels and triptych I am basing this mess on. Last night I finished carving the marzipan images, then put the colorflow on. Tonight I need to make hard candy jewels, make more marzipan to cover the cakes and make the marzipan jewels, and paint the artwork with the luster dust. Then I need to pipe the cat images with piping gel.

Making cats laugh since 1971

Last night I cut out the marzipan for the rondels and icons. I need 12 rondels and 1 icon (plus I'd like one extra icon for another project to be discussed after Pennsic). So I cut out 20 rondels and 3 icon shapes. I figure that way if I screw them up I have extras. The cutting process actually wasn't too bad. It was very similar to making sugar cookies. I rolled out the marzipan using powdered sugar instead of flour. Then I used the rondel cutter I had bought and a piece of tupperware for the icon shapes. Cut out, then remove extra marzipan, then put the rondel on a piece of parchment paper which is on a cake board. When I first visited the kitchen where I'm doing all this work I noticed this wonderful greenhouse window with no plants in it. I always thought that was a shame until I started baking there. It turns out that window is an excellent baker's rack.

I took a paint brush, brushed off any extra powdered sugar and put the pattern for each piece of art on top of the marzipan. Using a toothpick and two knives (still looking for the best way to do this) I pricked the design onto the marzipan. Then I played connect the dots with a knife. This was really starting to bug my wrists so after doing 9 of the rondels I decided to do one of the icons so I could play with it. I pricked the icon which didn't work as well because the outlines were not clear enough. I need to get some tracing paper and trace off clear lines from the artwork instead of working directly from the art.

Since the icon and enamels look significantly difficult on the inspiration piece I decided to use two different techniques for the two pieces. For the icon I am just using straight gel food coloring and painting the marzipan. This would work a who lot better if my painting skills were not enough to make a cat laugh. After getting the piece part way done I decided I was done for the night. I'll pick it up where I left off tonight.

Too cool for Words!

I've been house sitting for a friend who had to go to Germany. When she called and asked me what I charge for my house sitting services I said "something really cool from Germany." Last night when I got to her house to pick up some stuff she gave me my prize. A cuckoo clock! It is too cool! It was made by House of Black Forest Clocks. There is a bio of the guy who makes the clocks on the website that says he can trace his family's clock making heritage back to 1780 (cuckoo clocks were invented in 1730).

I took it over to Alan's house and he helped me put the pieces together (it comes in 5 pieces, 2 weights, the clock, the decorative top piece and the pendulum). We set the clock and he giggled with delight every time it rang. I realized at one point that we both wanted to go to bed but it was 5 minutes to midnight and we were both waiting for the clock to ring before we went upstairs. Yes, it's easy to amuse us. :) I need to check every so often to see how it is keeping time. There are directions on how to make it go faster or slower so the time will be acurate. So once again I prove my housesitting fee is the right one. I get the coolest stuff when I trust my friends to bring me back something I would like. I never would have thought to get one on my own but I am doing the happy dance to have one brought to me.