- Invite over your best friend and make my faved Granny’s Orange and Pecan Chocolate cake and make one for your friend to take home!
- Order two books for the children to read during the summer months. Go to your library to see what they suggest, or Barnes and Noble’s suggested reading section or even online by grade to find the correct level and interesting book based on the age of your child.
- On my nightside table now…The Blue Zones Solution by Dan Buettner and Dave Sedaris’s latest Theft by Finding Diaries 1977-2002.
- Gather all materials, having now decided what you are making for gifts for the holidays; and set a few days to complete the assembly while the children are still out of school and can help you!
- Pick ten drawers to completely dump and reorganize. If your house is like mine there’s always a drawer or a closet that could use a little tidying up. The whole house is daughnting but doing a little here and there and in no time everything is organized and in its correct place.
- Schedule all children for their annual medical exams. It is best to get in to see the doctor when no one is there and better still …it’s not flu season!
- Go through the children’s closets and order new socks, shoes and uniforms so they are at the house and ready for school to start next month!
- I recommend that all plants, weeds included, be removed except okra, cherry tomatoes and pole beans that are now overgrown from planting this spring and begin prepping areas for the fall garden. Pull overgrown tomato plants and make salsa from all left hanging tomatoes and tomatillos annoying them for the fall.
9. Begin from seeds to future on your porch until ready to plant the fall garden, frost-susceptible vegetables. This include beans, cantaloupes, corn, cucumbers, eggplants, okra, peas, peppers, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes and watermelons. A good resource for seeds is rareseeds.com
10. Watch me on Channel 2 each Friday at midday as I tell you what’s going on in the city to do with the children! If you miss it no worries! Go to askauntiea.com and you’ll find the latest there as well!
Granny’s Orange & Pecan Chocolate Cake
Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake Mix
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup milk
Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate squares
3 cups of powdered sugar
zest of one large orange
all the juice of that orange plus 1/4 cup of orange juice
1 cup of finely chopped pecans
Make the cake as usual according to the package and add 1/4 cup of orange juice to the batter and pour into two round pans
For the Frosting: Melt the butter and chocolate adding in the zest the squeezed orange juice and powdered sugar finally folding in the pecans
Frost first layer and then carefully place second on and third if you like lol and then completely cover the entire cake with the rest of the frosting
