This Week in the Cupcake Kingdom and a Drought PSA

First, no dangerous cupcakes.

Sad face. I know.

We rarely get sick, but the cold bug hit the house and has settled in. Three out of four of us have it and now DD is getting it, but we’re all plugging along. Little Dude missed a couple of days of school for a 101 fever, but he’s been back since Wednesday and caught up on his work. Score for Little Dude, he has more energy and persistence (and dedication to getting his work done) than many adults I know! Proud mama here. Husband and I still worked all week long, though we did leave early one day to pay our respects to a loved one who lost his battle with cancer last week. We are so in need of the weekend to just relax and recuperate. So many big things coming up in the next month, no time for a stupid cold to get in the way!

Sinus issues aren’t any better, but we are on track for getting them taken care of. Kaiser, I see you far too often, to the point where the pharmacist and I chat. For reals. But they have been great about taking care of us all and not messing around. I actually have hope of being able to get back into the regular swing of things (and fully taste and smell all my food and beverages) before too much longer.

Our weekend plans are zip. Sweats, my laptop, hot cocoa, tea, coffee and family time. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?

I will be doing some baking and product testing. I’ve got a really cool Valentine’s day challenge for an online dessert challenge next week, and I’m also partway through a new cupcake creation for Valentine’s day. (I’ll share more on that later!) Over the weekend, I’ll be posting about our #Pretzelbowl and the restaurant that hosted a blogger event last Saturday, where my whole family as invited to try their fantastic food. Yum.

Hmmm, what other useless information do you want to know?  Oh, yeah, we’re picking up fast food tonight. Do not tell the food police.

Here in gorgeous “sunny” Southern California, we’ve finally had a few days of winter. (Remember — our bodies out here are used to 70-80 degrees as a ‘normal’ temp. We’re used to getting up to 120 in August, so our range of ‘normal’ is a lot higher than people who live on the East Coast, so what’s cold to us is a lot higher than most of the country, while what’s hot to others is nothing to us. We also pay $4k or $6k or higher in taxes a year, we call it our ‘heat tax.’ ) We’ve got a couple more days in the 50s-60s, with 30s at night, before it gets back into the 70s.

We WANT the cooler weather, and we desperately need the rain or our drought is going to get to the point of several cities literally running out of water. You take it for granted, then it’s suddenly no longer there, a natural resource. Scary, isn’t it? We don’t have wells out here, the properties are too small so we rely on city water supplies and everyone’s already under a voluntarily restriction. What happens when we’re on mandatory restriction? No washing our cars. No watering our grass daily. After that? It goes way beyond just my cars and my garden and into what’s available for YOU to buy. Huge job loss, high prices for many of our favorite produce items and huge losses in state revenues. It’s going to have a much bigger impact and it’s pretty scary! (The first person who tells me at least we don’t have snow? Guess what, we want it! Seriously.)  Here’s just one part of the big picture, courtesy of the California Farm Water Coalition.)

What are you doing this weekend?