My plan for a Year of the Cake petered out pitifully until last week, when I managed to get it back up and limping along by baking a Dark Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake for my friend Katherine’s belated birthday get together.

The recipe is from Serving up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman. You’d never know there was any form of vegetable in there, it’s the densest, darkest chocolate cake I’ve ever made. The leftovers were approved of and consumed by M, who is no fan of the green, but a dark chocolate aficionado.

Noola was considerably less approving, as you can see in this picture taken by Katherine.

“What the blank are you doing?! Where’s my cat food?!”

It’s getting chilly. I picked a load of parsley and pulled up all the basil plants yesterday, and spent the evening processing them and stocking the freezer with pesto.

I’m still in squirrel mode. I have half-ripe tomatoes sitting around the house and they continue to ripen on the vine as well, where the zinnias compete for the most colorful award, poking their heads out above what has become the tomato hedge.

According to my journal, last year’s first recorded frost was on October 19th. I can feel it creeping closer…

Last time I was in the city M and I went to the Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science, where once upon a time the World’s Fair was held.

I’m having trouble describing quite what it was. Sort of nerdy school science fair meets etsy meets Cirque du Soleil.

There were large groups of people milling around, talking to the inventors of weird, cool, technical stuff.

That turned out to be one of the highlights, talking to earnest, excited entrepreneurs. We met the inventor of the egg-bot, and talked to one of the guys behind the book liberator, an accessible book scanner.

There were also crazy crafters.

I love crazy crafters, they are my people.

And of course there was lightning!

The insane group Arcattack performed with their Tesla coils which produce lightning in time with music. Nuts! (I did not take pictures during the performance. Too busy keeping mouth closed.)

We had a wacky, fun time, and if you get a chance to attend a Maker Faire, you should go.