If I knew you were coming I would bake a cake. . .

ere we go, creaming butter and sugar for the COCONUT CAKE I’m making…. with my new electric mixer I found in an antique store for a mere $13. My arm was very thankful for the "modern" convenience.

n goes the lemon zest for the cake filling — using my trusty and most favorite tool, the Microplane zester…a truly life-changing tool, if you don’t have one, you should get one! No more knuckle bits in your food!

t the same antique store I found these three different-sized, old, square cake pans…they were the inspiration for this cake (I was also inspired by the fact that my girlfriend Lowely was having a birthday!)

o you see my little shadow peeking over the top of the pans?

ere’s the cake, like a giant coconut marshmallow. I love making this old-fashioned boiled frosting, watching the egg whites get thick and shiny while beating in the sugar syrup. It’s like magic.

o it’s all ready…all that’s left to do is put on some candles! To go with the cake, one of the girls is picking up Lobster Rolls at the church on the way over. (We’re lucky, but not every church makes Lobster Rolls, so just click on those words and you’ll get a recipe!) I’ll be sure to give Girl some Birthday Lobster too.

Gotta go, chill the wine, get out the appetizers, cut some lilacs for the coffee table, make a fire…still nippy-ish here, but cozy for girl party in front of fire.
Bye for now…..

i Everyone! We’re home!! So happy to be here, and back to what we would like to call "normal" … we drove into the driveway, after the cross-country trip, culminating on the ferry across the sound, just one week ago today. We’ve been unpacking; I went to a Mother’s Day Tea with my girlfriends (everyone wore hats!); this afternoon we’re going to see the new Jane Eyre at a 4 pm matinee and then dinner in Edgartown to my favorite place for tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, the Atlantic Restaurant. Because it’s blustery and cold here (normal in early May), a movie and grilled cheese sounds perfect. Has anyone seen it yet? I hope it’s good; it’ll take alot to beat the BBC/Public Television edition filmed in 2006 — which I bought after seeing it on Netflix, I loved it so much.

e’ve had some warm days too…on those days I started planting the garden. So far, in the ground, we have lettuce, sweet peas, strawberries, lemon geraniums, and clemetis (Miss Bateman). And lots more to go…

bout five minutes ago, a truck from the local nursery pulled up in our driveway with a new Dogwood tree, to take the place of the old one that finally, after years of beautiful springtime bloom, went to tree heaven. The house didn’t feel the same without it. So Joe’s about to put it back.

es, we made it home alive, despite scary winds across Kansas.

es, scary; was only in the dark for about 4 seconds, and only twice that day, but that was enough, really, for a lifetime, thank you.

hile on the road — somewhere in Pennsylvania — we got up at 4 am to watch The Wedding. Did you love it? I have to say I loved it. Between all the excitement, we managed to shower, pack and get ready to hit the road again, but nobody moved until the second kiss on the balcony!

y English girlfriend Siobhan just sent me an email describing how the shop windows in her Gloucestershire village were decorated for the wedding.
She wrote:
"My favourite was the black Kitchenaid and a white Kitchenaid in the Cookshop, the black one had a top hat and the white one wore a veil!"

t’s a beautiful time of year, the whole island is salt air mixed with fragrance of the gazillion lilac bushes that live here. Traveling is fun, but there’s no place like home.

id you like the art at the top of this page… Click on it and you can print it out to use for a bookmark!

Missed you! Glad to be home…xoxo

P.S. Here’s a wedding dress I designed …