Ode to Cake

 In clearing out extraneous documents from my computer, I came upon this ode written by my grandson when he was 12. It warmed my heart, not to mention the heart of my husband who bakes it. Since I'm very proud of both of them, I knew I wanted to share. This cake is a speciality in our house, made from an old Danish recipe entitled Sand Cake:

Sand Cake (Sandkage)  from Danish Home Baking by Karen Berg

1 cup butter  (2 sticks)
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 2/3 cup wheaten flour
6 eggs, separated, whites beaten until stiff  ( 6 large)
Vanilla

Cream butter & sugar
Stir in egg yolks one at a time
Sift the flour and mix thoroughly
Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites
Line a cake pan with thin paper and fill with batter
Bake in a cool oven (300F) for about 1 hour 20 minutes

Baker's Notes: Not very sweet, but good with coffee. I used a tube pan, it fills about 1/3 and does not raise much at all, not that I expected it to.

This cake can be made gluten free by substituting casava flour mixed 1 to 1 with gluten free oat flour. The photo below is of the gluten free. The wheat version has a finer crumb.

Here's Paul's Poem:

Ode to Marvelous Cake

We love spending time with our grandparents

But surely, you'll have to take

That of our visit cake was the best part

Thus this ode to marvelous cake

Oh, the light, sweet, fluffy interior

The part which is hard to bake

I think you would find superior

To anything but more cake

Sure, the grandparents took us bowling

And will bring us to play in the lake

But really, how does that compare?

To the marvelous, fabulous cake?

 -- P D Eastlund, 2021

With thanks to both my grandson, Paul, and my husband, Chris!  Love you both!!!

The Friday gathering is at Leap of Dave where he's tried an etheree and blogs about finding castles and biking. Thanks for hosting, Dave, and good luck with your year ahead.

Loony

Yesterday I posted about my love of lakes and loons. When we were just starting out as a family, we lived in Minnesota, where loons are the state bird. The more I saw and heard them, the more I became enamored with them. Loony, you might say.

Laura Purdy Salas has written a beautiful book, Secrets of the Loon, which I pulled out yesterday when thinking about loons. No surprise that Laura's poetry is lovely. I especially admire these lines about the unborn chick:

"squeezed inside an olive egg,

bill meets wing meets folded leg"

To learn more about loons, look for Laura's book.  Also, don't miss this great website about loons:  www.loon.org.  

Today I'm sharing some loon poems that I started a few years ago and recently revisited. 

thanks to istockphoto for this image...

Ancient Voices

I listen for loons

For their ancient voices

Eerie and echoing 

Drenching the world with sound

Have you heard them

Wailing in raucous harmony

Shrieking in the moonlight

Yoo-hooing from lake to lake?

Have you heard

Low tender voices

Babbling with spouses

Feeding their young in the morning mist?

Like an earnest chick, I stop to listen

Spellbound, astounded 

I treasure these primal wails --

Surely they bless the north woods

© Karen Eastlund

Image by longacre at Pixabay

You can hear the many calls of loons here:  https://loon.org/the-call-of-the-loon/

Here's a little loon haiku to end the post:

Tuxedoed loons dive

Deep into crystal waters

Sushi bar below

Hooray! It is Poetry Friday...

Many thanks to Molly Hogan for hosting at Nix the Comfort Zone.  She's sharing her own fabulous baseball-related poems. You'll find links to the whole gang at her site.

Enjoy these last weeks of summer!  

Summer Spiritual Journey: Time to Be Still

I'm a lake lover. I love to canoe and watch the wildlife along the shore. Before we had children, my hubby and I would go into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota, camping, portaging and canoeing. I still love lake time, but the days of sleeping in a tent on a 1/2 inch pad, and portaging with a Duluth pack on my back, are over.  Now, when I get the chance, a cabin on a lake is the way to go.  

Sometimes we can finagle the whole family to join us for lake time... then we do some hiking, canoeing, exploring. Here are some bits of natural beauty that we found one day. It was fun to gather and arrange, and then put it all back into the woods. Later we had campfire, walked out on the dock and looked at the Milky Way. It is a memory I cherish.

Collection from a hike in the Adirondacks, 2018

The time spent quietly in nature fills my heart and soul. There is no pressure to be on a schedule, to look a certain way, or to perform a task. No traffic snarls. There is just calm and beauty. For me, lake time is time to "Be still and know that I am God."   - Psalm 46:10

The water was cool in September...

For me, a good lake vacation includes loons. I love their magnificent ruby eyes, their elegant tuxedoed bodies, their dignified profile. But most of all I love their eerie calls. I have heard them in the northern lakes in the fall, calling back and forth, wildly raucous deep into the night. I'm convinced they know how to party. And it is sometimes said, in the north woods, that the loon's call signifies that all is well in the woods. 

When I'm on a lake, listening to loons, I do feel that all is well. 

Check out this wonderful website about loons:  www.loon.org

And don't miss the various calls of the loons   https://loon.org/the-call-of-the-loon/

Who can put this feeling to words better than Mary Oliver?  Here is the beginning and end of her Morning Poem... you can find the rest here.

Morning Poem  by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

...

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

***

I wish you the peace of summer, the joy of burbling water, and the sweetness of laughter.

Thanks to Carol Varsalona for hosting today's Spiritual Journey group and for creating and sharing the beautiful image above.  Join her at her blog for some beautiful summer gratitude, and follow the links to other bloggers in the group.