the chemist in my kitchen

Yesterday, my favorite chemist had a wonderful birthday suprise for me. He stayed home from church, recovering from a bad cold, and when I came home and walked into the kitchen, the smell was heavenly.
My dear husband had baked a cake from scratch for me. He had never baked anything in his whole life.  A previous attempt at making something had to be thrown out when he used a cup of salt instead of a teaspoon. But, this time, a miracle happened. With the help of a recipe he found online, the cake was edible, and in fact, quite good. He even made a glaze--from scratch-- to go on top.

Besides making this cake, this weekend, my chemist helped with  the rocket science of using a pressure cooker canner. (Steam comes out of a vent as pressure builds up inside and then a little thingy-majiggit on top of the lid starts madly rocking, as the pointer on a guage inches ominously upward -- and all you can imagine is the contents of the canner spewing all over your kitchen and the thingy-majiggit blasting a hole through your ceiling as it takes off for outer space.)
I hadn't used this canner for more than ten years, and was very nervous.  So dear hubby read all the directions, while I made the applesauce. He was in charge of operating the potentially explosive canner, so, as you can see, things turned out great.

This weekend, we also enjoyed the first harvest of broccoli from our garden. I planted it, but my science guy concocted the compost that helped it grow so well.

All this blogging about food has made me hungry.  I think I'll grab a piece of that cake.....