play with your food {yes, I included the cake balls in this post}

open-faced asparagus sandwich with parmesan cheese--this one is on my oatmeal bread, mmmm

A while back while I was taking pictures of my open faced asparagus sandwich {a nice, pleasant light lunch} my daughter made fun of me. “You always take pictures of your food,” she mocked me with giggles and rolls of the {beautiful chocolate} eyes.

That’s right. I take great pleasure in my food. {Play-sure}, that is. It looks pretty—like a little piece of art waiting to be enjoyed. It smells wonderful—the olfactory glands telling you, yes, this is good. Then you EAT it and it is sensory overload bringing the senses of smell, touch, taste, and sight together making the process of food delightful to me.

Plus the whole thing about food memory. Take the asparagus sandwich pictured above. I would have never thought to make and eat that, except that my sweet mother-in-law made it for me one happy spring morning. While going out to check out the garden, there are left over asparagus from the previous owner (which is very nice for me) and since there are only a few that pop up, I had been just breaking them off and munching them as I wandered happily around my yard in the springtime sun. One day they were cut lovingly with spry little garden savvy hands and chopped and cut and steamed and put over toast (with butter and a little bit of the water that it was steamed in spooned over the top). It was the loveliest spur of the moment meal with someone I loved. And she had had it prepared for her by someone she loved. And so it goes. Now when ever I have that meal it feels like spring.


i made the easter eggs from this tutorial

So. The cake balls. I thought I had blogged about that before, but whether I did or not, I will share the secrets of cake balls with you right here and now. {they are very yummy} My wicked awesome cousin made about a million of them and blogged about it and I reacted the same way you all did. “What are cake balls? How do you make them? I want to eat one today!” So I will send you to the place I learned about cake balls, *bakerella* and instead of making you read all the millions of comments, I will tell you what I learned the hard way…

*make a cake, any cake. Boxed, homemade, chocolate, yellow, any cake will do.
*let it cool completely and toss it into a big mixing bowl and crumble it all up. Seriously.
*put the frosting you would have frosted the cake with in the bowl and stir it up.
*it will stick together now and you form balls with it. Put them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and freeze them
*if you want to put them on sticks, do it now, but keep them in the freezer
*melt the chocolate.
*take the cake balls out about 5 at a time and dip. The reason this is important is that if they are not frozen-ish, the cake ball won’t hold together and will slide off the stick.
*if you’re going to sprinkle something cute on it, now is the time. Ideas: sprinkles, nuts, coconut…
*push the stick into a sheet of Styrofoam until the chocolate hardens
*enjoy them by looking at them, smelling them arranging them in some cute fashion, sharing them with people you love and of course by EATING them!

This process takes a while. Don’t try to procrastinate with this, you need to do it in steps, but it is worth it in the end. They are a big hit.