My garden of Eden

I suspect I veer a bit too heavily into angst in this blog, so let me tell you about an afternoon that was a little garden of Eden.

Teenage Daughter had taken it into her head to make a very complicated “neapolitan” cake that she saw on the FoodPornDaily web site. There were six layers of cake in three different flavors (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry), plus jam filling and frosting. So she basically had to make three separate cakes plus frosting from scratch. She did all the grocery shopping herself — thanks to her newly-won driver’s license — yesterday afternoon and made one cake last night. She made another this morning while I was at work.

Friday is my half-day at Audubon, so I was home by 1 pm, in time to watch the completion of cake # 2. Daughter’s Boyfriend also came over to help.

Meanwhile, the Wild Turkey family that has been hanging out on our street showed up. For about the past ten days, a mama turkey and eight or nine little ones have been strutting and pecking their way through everyone’s backyards. The chicks are adorable and the mother is quite devoted, standing constant guard and looking around for threatening cats, humans etc.

So I hung out in the kitchen watching the turkeys strolling in and out of my zucchini bushes while Daughter and Boyfriend baked.

The turkeys were undisturbed by my presence. Daughter and Boyfriend were undisturbed by my presence. Everyone was happy in their respective pecking and stirring. The lion lay down with the lamb.

(Almost literally — our cat came to the back door but didn’t seem to perceive the turkeys through the glass and just sat there washing himself.) All was right with the world.

This is the way life should be all the time.

Oh… the cake turned out amazing too.

Without even the slightest little taste of apple.

Photos by Ilana DeBare

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Tags: baking, Neapolitan cake, parenting a teenager, urban wildlife, Wild Turkeys