Election Day is Coming...

...and with it, Election Cake.

I found this a few years back in my Fannie Farmer cookbook, and we enjoyed it. Since it's supposed to sit and rise for 6 hours, there are no pictures of the cake. But here's the recipe, so you can get started on your own, and be primed to go out tomorrow and vote.

ELECTION CAKE

1 cup warm water
3 tsp yeast
1 tbsp sugar
2-1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp oil

Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let soften. Add the other ingredients, beat together, and set aside to rise for 6 hours or overnight.

1 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp lemon rind
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups raisins
1 cup whiskey*

Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside. Cream the butter with the brown sugar, and add the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the lemon rind and juice, then the dry ingredients. Then beat in the yeast mixture until thoroughly combined. Add the whiskey (if desired) and raisins. Turn into 3 greased loaf pans, and let rise for about an hour, then bake 40 to 50 minutes at 350F.

It can be a real pain to get up early or get home late because you've dragged your sorry behind to the polling place, and it seems even worse during an "off year" election. But let me tell you about why I'm voting in my little corner of the world: My town government is all good. Town taxes are low, plowing is good, police are friendly. No changes needed there. School board? Well, a union leader is running for a seat on the school board, and it is incumbent upon me to stop this. There can be no negotiation if the union has seats on both sides of the table. Plus, with salaries eating up 75% of the school district budget, we need non-union people to try to keep tax increases in check. No one in this school district could possibly be happy with our school taxes, and they're talking 4% to 5% increases next year even without bigger increases in salaries. (Sorry, Pam, I know you're a teacher, but teachers make more money here than average citizens do, and that's just backward) As for the county? Twenty One Million Dollars in debt, facing at least a $3,000,000 shortfall next year, the county commissioners decided not to submit a budget on October 15 as required by law, instead announcing that an "outside committee" was going to advise them after the election of what they should do for the budget shortfall. Oh, by the way, the current commissioners have a 6 part plan to reduce the deficit. Hmmm. I wonder why they didn't implement it in the last 4 years. Curiouser and Curiouser, as Lewis Carroll's characters would say.

We can make a difference at the local level, even if we feel like our vote doesn't amount to much in the national elections. And on that cheery note, how about a lovely picture of our sky yesterday?