More Cheney and then I'll stop, I promise.

I caught just a few minutes on Saturday of Left, Right and Center on NPR as I was frantically running errands in very heavy traffic on the coldest day of the year (here, anyway) to date.

I had a party Saturday night, and typical of me, I left the grocery-storing and other errand running I needed to do until that day. But with my ridiculously busy week last week, I didn’t have a second to do it before then. And I was determined to have some friends over, adding to the stress level of a crazy week but that’s life sometimes. It certainly was something to look forward to all week when things were nuts.

My local NPR affiliate plays a very diverse set of programs on the weekends, and just when I think I’ve got the schedule down, they move it around. Left, Right, and Center used to be aired on Sunday afternoons, and Justice Talking was early early Sunday morning, so I was a bit kerflummoxed when I turned on the radio at 3 on Saturday afternoon and heard Arianna Huffington’s very distinctive voice. They were of course discussing the Cheney shooting and said some of the same things I did last week; great minds, eh? I know she’s a conservative, but she’s anti-Bush and I really like her. And then Justice Talking was on right after that, so confusion was had by all. I wish I’d been able to hear all of Justice Talking, they were talking about the process of Supreme Court nominations and I am a junkie of all things Supreme Court.

I made wonderful food for the party and my favorite thing was a very twisted and very loose interpretation of English trifle that I came up with all by myself, which made me happy. Trifle purists may be a trifle put out, (oh, I entertain myself!) as there was no liqueur, but I’m not a purist. I bought two angel food cakes, and cut them into roughly 1-inch cubes. I would normally have baked them myself, but two things prevented this. One, time limitations and two, when my diet started on January 2, my sister came and cleaned out my kitchen cabinets and she tossed everything I’m not allowed to be eating, which included every single cake mix I had. Anyway, I zested a lemon and a blood orange that I was using in another recipe, and sprinkled the zest over the cubes of angel food cake, with a little bit reserved for garnish. Then I sliced fresh strawberries very thinly and completely covered the angel food cake bits with lots of strawberries. Finally, I topped it with fat free cool whip, and selected a pretty and large strawberry, and fanned it out by leaving the top intact and slicing vertical slashes in the body of the berry. A sprinkle of the remaining zest, and presto, a lovely dessert. I really like the texture of angel food cake as is, with no tampering, but if I did feel inclined to tamper, I might sprinkle some wonderfully flavored liqueur such as Frangelico over the angel food bits. Which might mollify the purists somewhat. But soggy angel food cake is bad.

I finally got some longed-for winter weather. It was sooo cold on Saturday…the temp went down to around 4 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be roughly –16 in the much more sensible Celsius scale. Why, oh, why, can’t the US use the metric system??? It makes so much SENSE!! Seriously, live with it for a while (why yes, I am completely suggesting that you live somewhere other than the US) and you’ll see. It makes such sense because it is a base 10 system. In standard measurements, there’s no sense. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard; then there’s 4 tablespoons to ¼ cup, 2 cups to a pint, and 4 quarts to a gallon. In the metric system, 10 millimeters = 1 centimeter, 1000 centimeters=1 meter, 1000 meters = 1 kilometer…and if I remember right, a liter of water equals 1 kilogram in weight. Really, though, that's a rant for another day. But it all just WORKS…sigh.

Gotta run, kiddos…