comfort food

After all the excitement on Friday, it turned out to be a pretty dreary, drizzly, grey weekend, which is unusual for this area. One of the (few) things I really like about this area is the normally sunny weather, the bright skies. Contrary to Belgium, the fall and winter here are usually filled with blue skies, albeit equally cold often. And it is true that sunlight helps with your disposition, at least for me. 't was not to be this weekend though.

But we made the most of it. And cold, gloomy weather is perfect for baking, so Kevin and I set out to bake a cake. From scratch of course. He (and I) loved it. It takes three times as long to bake a cake with a 2 year old, but it's well worth it. The simplest things like melting butter, separating egg whites from egg yolks, beating egg whites and weighing flour and sugar all become an opportunity for exploration and adventure, and put a huge smile on his face. And it's truly remarkable how good cake batter tastes when you eat it with your fingers :-).

Ever since we made the cake yesterday afternoon, Kevin's been making pretend cake for his dolls, his cars and his dad...too funny. I've also noticed that the words of the cake ingredients (bloem, suiker, boter...) and kitchen utensils (weegschaal, mixer, bakvorm...) are ones he now consistently uses Dutch for, instead of English....maybe that's the trick to speed up his Dutch language development..do it while cooking...I could think of worse things :-)