Yellow jackets

...and I am not referring to a particular piece of clothing. I bought some potted herbs last Saturday, brought them home and decided to park them in a raised bed along our carport. Little did I know -- Yellow Jackets had built a five story condo in the back corner of this structure. If you don't know yellow jackets like to nest underground. You can only tell they are there when you see them flying in or out or you happen to disturb them by running a lawn mower over them or sitting your flower pots over the entrance to their nest. I was lucky to only get stung once which was really enough. The best way to get rid of them is to go back in the dark of night and dig up the nest and burn it. They are inactive at night and I have never had any problems with doing this to them at night. Here's the nest prior to it burning. It was difficult to burn. All I had was Tiki torch fuel. I wonder why they don't make some fireproof building materials as fireproof as this nesting material!

Plums...Plums...Plums

I saw the most beautiful plums at the one of the local Middle Eastern shops, I had to buy some! Then I went home and scanned my cookbooks for ways to showcase them. I finally settled on Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My home to Yours. Dorie's was similar to some dessert recipes by Julia Child and Beatrice Ojakangas, but theirs were for individual cakelets. After work baking does not allow for fussing with individual baking containers.

I actually made this cake twice. First I used purple plums from the big chain store and the second from the locally sourced plums. I made the mistake of using a 9" pan on the first cake. My eyeball was miscalibrated and I had thought it was 8". Needless to say, it baked too quickly and was dry. The second cake I used the correct size pan and it was moist. I wasn't crazy about the flavor of these cakes. Maybe sometime I'll try them using all white sugar or make sure I'm really using light brown as the recipe designated. I some how mixed up the various non-white sugars in my pantry and didn't label them, so who knows what sugar I used and how that effected the flavor.