Cake love

"Cake holds a family together. I really believed it did. My father was a different man when there was cake in the house. Warm. The sort of man I wanted to hug rather than shy away from. If he had a plate of cake in his hand I knew it would be all right to climb up onto his lap. There was something about the way my mother put a cake on the table that made me feel that all was well. Safe. Secure. Unshakable."

Nigel Slater, in his memoir "Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger."

Schedule C for cake

I finish taxes and send the suckers off. Hallelujah! This calls for cake. Well, technically, anything can call for cake.

The forms take about three weekends, on and off, and plenty of hair-pulling (even with TurboTax). But, in the end, I complete my taxes and my parents' taxes, and crosscheck returns for a few sisters and brothers.

If the threats of IRS audits don't hang perpetually over their heads, I swear, people would not worry half as much as they do about numbers and calculations, explanation and documentation.

Suffice to say, I am greatly relieved, and look forward to again engaging my creative right brain (leaving the methodical left brain alone until next April). In the meantime, Uncle Sam gets its share; and I, well, I get cake.