Pineapple upside down cake

Right at this very moment I have this in the oven.  I feel like such a phoney. 

It's... it's... (I can barely bring myself to admit this...) from a box.  [GASP!]  Not only that, but the pineapples are from a can (the cats twined around my legs upon hearing that sound, despite the rarity of them actually getting tuna fish), the cake is covered with imported coconut, and the unnaturally red cherries sweetened with HFCS are from a jar. 

At least the eggs are from our own hens.

Why would I make such a thing?  One of my coworkers got a new job in another department and tomorrow we're having a going away potluck for her.  I offered to make her favorite dessert, thinking it would be a chocolate something-or-other that I could make lovingly from scratch with local ingredients (save the chocolate).

Wrong.  She picked the kitschy-ist, impossible-to-make-local dessert that I could imagine!

I started looking for recipes, which piqued my curiousity and led me to the history of upside down cakes.  I found out that Nigella Lawson loves pineapple upside down cake.  I unearthed a hoity toity recipe over at epicurious.com.  I found out that the fruit-festooned upside down cakes were originally made in cast iron skillets and probably originated in the Middle Ages. 

Knowing that I'd be making said cake on a Sunday night and that I tend to exhaust myself over weekends with projects, I decided to go old school and just make it from a box.

It's a good thing I did, too.  On Saturday I sat around and knitted all day while watching Seasons 3 & 4 of 30 Rock.  It was raining and we really couldn't do anything outside.  I am working on an afghan for my dad for Christmas and have about 20 hours of work left.  I may finish this week! 

Today was a beautiful fall day, a relative rarity for a weekend.  After going to meet Lisa to pick up a 5.5-pound pork belly I went back home, pulled out the ladder and loppers, and trimmed the massive lilac so that it's no longer touching the house and power lines. 

While I was out there I trimmed the apple tree.  I saved some branches for some applewood-smoked bacon I'm going to make with the pork belly.

Then I raked the chicken run and put down some lime to curb the poo odors.

Then I raked the dirt off the concrete walkway that's been covered by dirt by our 9 feathered excavators.

Then I cleared the yard of the dog and chicken poop I could find.

Then I swept up the dozens of chicken feathers that the newly molting Dozer is dropping everywhere.  It's like she's leaking feathers.

Then I went to my 92-year-old grandma's house to take her dinner, visit for a bit, and do a general check-in.

Then we came home to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.  (An aside: holy shiznit, what's the deal with the slutty costumes for girls who can't be older than 15?  And a note to the boys: wearing a mask with your normal clothes does not a costume make.)

Whew.  That was a good call making that cake from a box but I'm still feeling rather sheepish about it.