I am one of those crazy people who continues to slog through books even when they are horrible. Yes, I also finish bad movies and try food a 2^nd time even after I think the first bite or sip is nasty. And yes if I think the food is disgusting I usually look for someone to share in that misery with me and so you may get an offer from me of,”try this its yuck.” Just looking for validation its nothing personal and I am not trying to poison you.

 So you may recall from a while back that I was reading the book The Man Who Ate Everything and low and behold I am still reading that same book, which obviously says a lot about the excitement factor from this particular read. Don’t bother reading it I am telling you about the only interesting parts. In one of the chapters he attends some school for restaurant waiters and this is what he learned:

-You don’t learning anything from smelling a cork. However, I thought that some people were actually trained to tell if a wine was bad or not based on the cork. He says just leave it on the table as it will not do anything for you. Honestly I think I probably will still smell the cork because I love the smell of wine.

-When you set the table and you have multiple forks all of the tines should be in an even line. Hmmm don’t think I have ever set a table with multiple forks on it and if I did I just don’t think I have the type of friends who would be like,”wtf this fork is all wrong.”

-When setting the table the wine glass should be above the point of the knife. Interesting random fact but I think with my friends I could put the wine glass on the floor and as long as there is wine in it they will be happy. Hell if I put the glasses on the floor my dog would be happy.

-When serving a meal women, children and elderly should be served first. All I could think of when I read this was this is not the Titanic…a meal should be a pleasurable experience and more than likely you will not die shortly after. There is not an ice burg in my dining room. 

-Soup and beverages should be served from the right. Seeing as I am left handed I think I serve just about everything from the left, but now I am definitely going to pay attention to this…and honestly I think most of the time I either put the plates together before I bring them to the table or I make my guests serve themselves…wow what a barbarian I am.

-1% of all Americans are waiters…ok interesting fact but what I really want to know is how many waiters are trying to be actors…now that would be interesting.

This morning I made a cake as a gift and I am telling you all it’s a gift as I can’t vouch for the taste but I can tell you it looks pretty cool. I just thought it would be weird if there was a giant bite missing from the cake. I made a Marbelous Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake with Salted Carmel Glaze and I can tell you that I tasted the glaze and the batter before they were cooked and they were good. I especially liked the salted carmel glaze because the contrast of the salt and sugar was seriously yum. I also found the process of making the carmel glaze interesting and a little scary as its made on the stove and you have to boil the butter, sugars and whipping cream and all I could think of was how nasty it would be if I had burned it. I also have to say that I think this cake marks the end of my bundt cake obsession at least for a little while…think its time for me to move on.

This cake is incredibly easy to make as you make one bowl of batter in the mixer and then you separate the batter into 2 bowls. In one bowl you add the melted chocolate and in another bowl you add the peanut butter in order to get the marbling effect in the pan. I also love the fact that it kind of looks like a giant donut when its done and has the glaze on top, so seriously if it amuses me that is an added bonus.

Due to the ingredients I thought this cake would be perfect as the carmel glaze, cinnamon and peanut butter kind of gave me a feeling reminiscent of fall. And as you know this was also the scent I was trying to get throughout my house yesterday instead of Chinese restaurant. So this cake was multi-purpose.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Halloween weekend and I am going to go back to reading my crappy book….the more I read the closer to the end I get.