New Bible Denial

So about a week ago, Chavo and I were walking around Lifeway because we were looking for a couples devotional to use. There I was, minding my own business, wondering if “The Love and Respect Experience” was any better than “The Love Dare: a 365 day devotional for couples”. And then Chavo said “We need to look for you a new bible. A Women’s devotional bible.”

My response: “But uh.. uh… I have a bible.”

Chavo: But it’s a student devotional bible. You aren’t a student anymore. You really ought to have a bible more catered to women.

Me: But.. But.. It’s a bible. I like my bible. It’s my bible.

I struggled with this for a little while. Why do I need a new bible? My bible is perfectly good. And it’s MY bible. I have like, stuff written into it. Personal stuff. I have notes and underlines of verses that rock and those that I don’t understand. I’ve had this bible for 3 years, the whole time I’ve been in college. It’s been through 4 Guatemala trips. It got shredded once by my dog, and I bought an exact replica of the bible and copied all of my previous notes and underlines into it (through some major ugly tears). That bible has been with me through crisis after crisis, doubt after doubt, through crazy rebellious faith issues and choosing to become a seminary wife. How can I cast aside my bible for some shiny, new bible?

My friends and I have talked about our bibles. We love them, they are our friends. Your bible isn’t going to walk away from you whenever you do something stupid, it’s going to help you point it out and fix it. It will sometimes even tell you how to fix it! Your bible isn’t going to ask you to come out drinking because you had a fight with your boyfriend, or help you let the air out of your professor’s tires when he gives you a bad grade.

My bible was beautiful and scarred, and though not quite “falling apart”, it was mine and it was clearly used.

But a bible is a bible, and while I had many adventures (and even met my husband) with my old bible, I am in a new segment of my life and will have a ton of new adventures with my new bible. I’ll go on mission trips with the Chavo with my new bible. I’m going to read my bible when we have children. I’m going to have this bible until it falls apart in my hands. Or at least until it gets shredded by my dog, and I have to go buy an exact replica of it and copy all of my junk down into it.

And so, Chavo ordered me a new bible. It came in yesterday. It’s still shiny and new, and the pages make that weird “new bible super-thin pages” noise when you open it. It’s got a ton of pink in it, which at first made me skeptical. But then I remembered, ‘wait, I like pink. It’s just my old bible was blue on the inside. That’s why it’s weird.’ Granted, it’s almost the exact same version of my old bible, I couldn’t deal with much change. My old bible was an Italian duo-tone leather cover (blue and green) student devotional bible by Zondervan. But this one is an Italian duo-tone leather cover (brown and pink) WOMEN’S devotional bible.

I’m trying to not look at it like some weird bible that adults use when they get old and boring. I’m still trying to think of myself as a Woman, not a Girl. It’s weird.  I miss my old bible, I put a lot of investment into that bible. But now, I have to make an investment in this new bible. 

Maybe if it just looks inviting, like an old friend, instead of a new gate. I just need to break it in, make it look loved. I don’t want people to think I never read my bible!

Maybe if I go stick it in the dryer for a few minutes….

The Picaken is BORN!

Yesterday was Chavo's birthday. I responded to said birthday by cooking WHATEVER he wanted to eat. It looks like the kitchen was hit by a dump truck filled with cake batter, condensed milk, colored sugar, marinara sauce, and whatever you find at the bottom of a trashcan left alone for 5 years in a guy's dorm room. Yeah, it's gross. Don't go in there.

But BEFORE the kitchen looked like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film, I make Tres Leches pancakes, Shrimp Pasta, aaaaaand:

A Picaken.
What in the name of all-things-holy-and-covered-in-chocolate is a Picaken, you ask? It is the dessert version of a Turducken (a monstrosity invested by Pharmaceutical companies that consists of a chicken stuffed into a duck, which is all stuffed into a turkey). The picaken is just as equally weird. It is a pie baked into a cake. I made the suggestion two nights ago that I could make a picaken for Chavo's birthday, and he immediately wanted nothing less. And since he's been my husband for around 2 1/2 weeks, and I can't let him know what a big basket of cuckoo I am yet (don't tell him), I couldn't back out on my word.

The next conversation went almost exactly like this:
Me: So what kind of pie do you want in your picaken?
Chavo: Chocolate!
Me: Chocolate? Ooook, what kind of cake?
Chavo: Uhhh... CHOCOLATE!
Me: You want a chocolate pie in a chocolate cake?
Chavo: Yeeeeeeah!
Me: Need I ask what kind of icing you want on it?
Chavo: Chocolate, but can you put Captain America on it?
Me: Uhhh... sure.

So, since this was such a last minute effort, and planning a picaken requires loads of mental preparation (and I'm just a really crappy wife, whatever), I took a few shortcuts. I used a boxed pie and a cake mix. Sue me.

But since there's no recipe for a picaken, and I had to follow Jamie the Very Worst Missionary's blog for the steps to procure such a beast of a dessert, I am going to provide you with instructions on how to give your husband diab-- picaken.

Step 1: Make sure every dish in your house is clean. You will use nearly every one of them. While you're at it, get all your ingredients out. And don't judge yourself if you use all mass-produced ingredients because hey, no one's perfect. And if you're going to royally screw up a recipe you make for the first time, you don't want a lot of effort to go into it. So anyway, get your stuff.

You're going to need a really deep pan for the picaken. Jamie used a springform, and if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. I didn't know what size springform pan I should get, so I got a 3 pack from Walmart and just used the biggest one (11 in diameter).

Step 2: Make/unbox your pie. If you use a frozen cream pie (like mine), you don't need to thaw it or anything, just leave it be. If you use a frozen fruit pie, bake it, because its going to take about a million forevers to bake inside the cake. If you make your own pie from scratch, bake it and stop judging the rest of us. Jamie said that if you make a fruit pie, your filling needs to be really thick or your picaken is going to leak. So to make this step shorter: acquire a pie in some way.

Step 3: Prepare your cake batter and begin panicking for Step 4.

Step 4: Pour a tiny bit of cake batter into your pan, enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Then, plop that pie into the pan! Try not to freak out, even though now you're committed and there's no going back unless you just dump the whole thing in the garbage and start over (which I considered doing several times). After you plop said pie (that sounded disgusting), pour the rest of the batter on top of it and hold in the tears.

 Step 5: Bake the monstrosity in the oven for an amazingly long time. Seriously. Put about 40 minutes on the timer and go take a shower or something. Organize your closet or dust the living room. Or, what the heck, watch Youtube videos until you forget what you were doing and the timer jolts you back into reality.

The first 20 minutes, the Picaken will look like this.

Don't let this fool you. It's not done. It's done when it looks like a bomb went off inside of it. Like this:

Step 6: Let it cool. Now, it's time to use one of your lifelines and phone a friend. Because this cake looks super ugly when it's right-side-up, grab a partner and flip this cake upside down. You may not need the partner for the extra hands, but it's really helpful to have someone nearby to punch in anger if you screw something up.

Step 7: The picaken is born!!! Now, it's time to decorate it. And it doesn't matter if my husband is a grown man, getting his Masters degree, if he wants a Captain America cake, he GETS a Captain America cake. He did have to give in on getting chocolate icing, since I can't make the Captain America symbol in brown icing. But oh well, he got his gigantic chocolate cake-tastrophe.

I like to multitask, so I encourage you to go ahead and rehearse your response for when your husband suggests cake-decorating classes. "Oh yeah? Bite me," is not an acceptable response. This is perfect timing because you have to be up-close-and-personal with this cake for an extended period of time, and you're tired of looking at it, so you'll feel about the same as when your husband says something stupid. (I would like to point out that Chavo is smart enough to know not to criticize my decorating skills and said nothing but nice things about how I decorated his cake, which is good, because I had rehearsed my retort very well and was not afraid to use it by that point.

The picaken is finished!!! Now, while you're eating lunch/dinner, go ahead and panic and start apologizing in advance in case the picaken is screwed up. Go ahead and offer to go out and buy another cake if this one is disgusting. Start to image all the horrible things that are going to happen when you cut into this cake. The picaken could ooze, and no one likes oozing. The picaken could be just totally nasty. You could have overcooked it, like I was 98% sure I had.

Then, cut into it and take a bite. Watch the person you baked the picaken for. And if you get a face like this:

It was a SUCCESS! Seriously, it was actually good! It was rich and gooey on the inside, and we both really really liked it. I fully intend on making another one, as I didn't totally screw up this one. You should try making one, or maybe come eat this one, because it's huge and we really can't eat it all. We sent some to Chavo's work, but we still have a ton left. I should have sent more. Oh well, it's freaking good!

Happy birthday, Chavo! I hope I didn't make you diabetic. :)