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People have responded to emails I sent out about this blog, and I want to make sure their comments or stories are acknowledged.

First, the baker of the cakes, my friend Katie:
Once, I went to a friend's house to cook for him after he fell off of a motorcycle. When I arrived, he was all hopped up on painkillers and watching VH1 or some nonsense, so I decided just to get to work.

3 Cheese Tortellini with a basil pesto cream sauce, with chicken. Easy enough, right? I made the sauce up myself, and I learned to substitute soy milk for real milk in making it, because real milk makes me gassy. Teehee. Anyway, for whatever reason, I had managed to concoct it without having to thicken it with corn starch on the first few attempts. Of course, when I finally had to make it for someone else, it was watery and terrible.

But I had come prepared! I had my corn starch at the ready, and I measured it out into the appropriate amount of ice cold water. I mixed. I poured it into the sauce.

It remained watery, so I kept adding more corn starch. I was panicked. Here I was, trying to do a good deed for my (good-looking, extremely talented) injured friend, and I was about to feed him absolute crap. More corn starch. Then more flour. Okay, maybe a little bit more garlic to cover the taste of the flour. Maybe some salt. Crap crap crap. It was still liquid.

I peeked around the corner at my friend, who had been woozily asking, "Is it ready yet?" for about twenty minutes. He was passed out. Thank God. I hid in the corner of his kitchen and Googled the whole corn starch thickening process on my phone. I simply had to add it while the sauce was still over heat. I had just been adding it after I already cooked the sauce.

So, I reheated the sauce on the stove, mixed and mixed, finally glad to be doing it the right way. However, I had added about 4x the recommended amount of corn starch, plus about sixteen pounds of flour, so what ensued was a lumpy, sort of dry mess.

I woke my friend up and apologized in advance for what I was about to feed him. It didn't taste terrible, but it wasn't particularly good, either. Maybe it was just the pain killers, but he wasn't very enthusiastic about thanking me. I'm pretty sure I shed a tear or two on the drive home.