Unbearable

This is Salisbeary. (Pronounced "Saulsbeary") He is Pookie's best friend and has been for almost a year (we have three of them, in case something unfortunate should happen). She calls him "Slaglagl," and this is also what she calls every bear, stuffed or real. She is so steadfast and loyal and forceful about her love that Slaglagl goes with her to school daily, and all the other kids there now also refer to bears as "slaglagls." I'm sure there are some confused parents.

Williams-Sonoma has this bear cake pan. I'd seen it, but it seemed a silly thing to buy. But then they enticed me with the words "clearance" and "free shipping," and I whipped out the ol' debit card.

Even the PAN is cute. It's adorable, really. And it looks exactly like Slaglagl. It's even the same size as he is. If Jabba the Hutt ever put a bounty on a teddy bear, it is surely what the carbonite freeze would look like.

I decided to do a test run, me-style. Which means I don't read the instructions quite closely enough, but forge ahead anyway. The cake recipe I used didn't make quite enough cake, the leveling didn't quite match up perfectly, but all in all it looked cute enough. The fancy Williams-Sonoma buttercream icing recipe seemed like kind of a pain, so I used a tub of cream cheese icing I had in the cabinet to hold the bear's halves together. Seemed to work fine.

Pookie was enchanted by the cake. "Slaglaglaglagl!" she screeched, running across the kitchen to get a closer look. She examined him, then looked at me with questions in her eyes. "....cake?" Yes, I told her. A bear cake. This was what I'd worried about: what if the thought of eating her best friend was traumatic? (Hey, to my credit I made a spice cake, not red velvet. "Deadie Bear" is for Halloween.)
After a few moments she nodded to herself and said "EAT? NOM NOM NOM!"
Guess that answers that.

Sadly, the icing didn't set up enough, and the halves pulled apart for each other, not only splitting the bear bilaterally, but also decapitating him due to the force of gravity on his neck. Brutal.

Pooks didn't seem to mind much. She even said "Nom nom nom," Cookie Monster style after she'd eaten his nose.

Oh well, I'll try again. All of the things that went wrong were undeniably my fault. So I'll regroup and take another stab at it. I'm considering making "Bearack Obearma" to take to work Tuesday. I'll even make that little logo out of fondant and everything (provided that I can keep the cake in one piece).

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Irishy Song(s) of the Day:
The way I figure it, it should be one song a day since I said I'd do this. So here are today's five songs.

The Green Fields of France - Dropkick Murphys version. Like most songs on my list, this isn't an original, it's just my favorite version of it. Warning: this video has war photos in it, it's a fan video. The song is really depressing, too. But it's a beautiful song. Just a heads-up.

Galway Girl - Sharon Shannon and Steve Earle. I grew up listening to Thistle & Shamrock every Sunday with my dad, so I'm a Sharon Shannon fan, and I love the folksy/celticy/country-ness of this song.

The Snake with Eyes of Garnet - Shane MacGowan. I love the Pogues, but I also really like a lot of MacGowan's post thrown-out-of-the-Pogues-for-spewing-on-the-first-three-rows-like-it-was-a-Gwar-show work. Inebriated, toothless and sullen may not be any way to go through life for most, but it works pretty well for an Irish folk singer.

If I Should Fall From Grace with God - Sweet Colleens version. hey, speaking of the Pogues, this is one of theirs. But I prefer the amped-up Sweet Colleens version. I keep meaning to video Pookie dancing to it, she just goes wild. (Sorry for the amazon link. You can listen to a part of this version. If you prefer the Pogues or Young Dubliners, those are on Youtube)

Big Strong Man - Carbon Leaf. I couldn't decide which Carbon Leaf song to include. It could be any of them, really, they're all very Irishy-sounding tunes from this band hailing from ... Virgina. This is My Song is also a favorite of mine.

Comments

[geoff]

Thanks for the cool tunes, keep'em coming!