This cake is a family tradition. For a very long time I firmly believed it was a SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, the release of which would be punishable by death and disownment. My grandmother had it printed on an index card, which has yellowed and faded with age. A couple of years ago I asked her where she got the recipe from, and it turned out that she got it from the local newspaper, and while cleaning out her kitchen I found the original clipping from the paper stuck in a recipe box. Everyone loves it, even those people who initially balk at the combination of pumpkin and chocolate chips. So no, I’m sharing it with others in hopes that you all will enjoy it with your families the way that we enjoy it in ours (I’m talking about you, BluePaintRed!).

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake
Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 small can of pumpkin
• 1 tsp nutmeg (optional)

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350F (because everything cooks at 350F) and grease and flour a bundt* pan. If you let your husband do this task, be sure to verify that he has done both. Let him use some nonstick spray shit, he’ll feel manly and you won’t waste a stick of butter.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer for 3 minutes. You’ll want a decent mixer. One of those $5 jobbers from Walmart will do the job, but this batter is heavy as hell and you might want something with some power to it. Maybe even something with a pull-start.

Add in 1 12oz bag of chocolate chips and blend with a spoon (give your beater a rest). If your bag is bigger than 12oz, you should use about 2 cups of chips. My cousin once made it with double chips; we all ate it even though it was insanely sweet. Her fiance was obligated to eat two slices.

Bake it for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let it sit for about 15 minutes in the pan. At that point, providing that the pan was sufficiently greased (because everything’s better with lube) pop it out onto a cooling rack and let it cool for another 2 hours. At that point you can serve it or put it in the fridge. We prefer it with topped Cool Whip. Whipped cream is fine as well, but be prepared for my uncles to call you a heathen and try to take your slice away because the whipped cream is for the pie.

* Being cooked in a bundt pan has one advantage in our family - the pan we use is shaped so that it forms distinct slices, a big slice and a smaller slice. We tried to make it in a castle-shaped pan and it just wasn’t the same at all.

It’s another fun-filled afternoon at Casa McBride. We slept in a little bit, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, and had a positively orgasmic lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches made with pepper-jack cheese and tomato soup to go with them. We picked up some food for dinner and dealt with the two old ladies working the register at Stop & Shop.

After lunch we logged into WoW for a little while for an instance run, only to discover that the person who had invited us to it was nowhere to be found. However, since we’re no longer the lowbies of the guild we were able to get enough guildies together to make an attempt at it, getting two quests completed and upgrading a couple of pieces of gear in the process. It’s nice being at level 70 because now Eddie and I can do our own things without worrying about one of us getting ahead of the other one. The only thing we’ve got to figure out is a way for us to both be logged into Ventrilo with out headsets and both of us be able to listen to music, since when I’ve got iTunes running with Vent only I can hear the music.

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Listening to: The Vandals - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Nanny used to make cranberry relish every year for Thanksgiving. She did it the old-fashioned way with the heavy food grinder screwed onto the table. This year I’m taking over the tradition.

Last night Pickle painstakingly moved a pile of her food piece by piece to a spot under the bed. This morning I went into the bedroom and found Chaucer chowing down like he’d just found the greatest thing in the world. He’ll be happy to know that she’s started the pile again tonight.

Well, it’s the holiday weekend, that’s for sure. The frequent-flyers are trying to get as many drugs as possible for their festivities. Such as this women:

her: I lost my whole bottle of Seroquel (an antipsychotic/mood stabilizer known for hallucinations) that I just got filled last Thursday, and I need more.
me: [looks up her info, discovers she's one of our regular frequent-flyer, talks to the RPh about her, finds out a replacement script will be about $500 because her insurance won't cover lost drugs]
RPh: Tell her she’s going to have to sell a lot of her ocycontin to be able to afford to replace her script.
me: We could refill it for you, but you’d need to pay cash because you’re insurance won’t cover lost prescriptions.
her: I can’t afford to pay cash! [much whining] Is my oxycontin ready to be filled yet?

She wasn’t happy when I told her that her oxycontin couldn’t be filled until Thursday at the earliest, either, and she sounded like she’d taken more than he prescribed dosage of her Percocet too.

While I was at work, Eddie made a shopping list, and so I came home, checked emails and feeds, and we headed out to pick up some food. In addition to most of the stuff he had on the list (I crossed off “snacks” and “chips” because we’ve got plenty of snacky things here, and skipped the bread and sliced meats because I rarely make sandwiches for lunch), we got hamburgers and rolls, some bottled water for me, canned peaches and a bunch of those 100 calorie snack packs for me to bring to work for lunch. Then we came home, and Eddie cooked up some cheeseburgers with bacon.

Tomorrow we both get to go to work early. Eddie starts his new schedule, going back in at 7am, and I go in for 9am because the other Monday tech has the day off. At 6pm I get to go down to Coventry, we have dinner at Mom’s, then come home and pick up Pickle and bring her down to Mom’s house for the night, so she’s not stuck in her cage in the heat for 2 days straight.

Tuesday is the Bristol parade, where we will undoubtedly take a lot of pictures between the two cameras, possibly get sunburnt (depending on how well the super-sunscreen we bought will work), and cook something on the grill when we get back to Mom’s. Sounds like fun, eh?