Sweet Delights by Robin Janney

Since my surgery and being on medical leave, I've been feeling better and I've been picking up some old hobbies. Like reading. Like blogging. Like trying out different recipes I find online. I have even written a poem or two. I've started rereading my first novel...much to my dismay the number of typos I missed grieves me, along with a couple of continuity errors. Trying to get back into being the me that got lost in depression and exhaustion.

Every time Mr. Janney and I start going through things, trying to organize, we've never agreed on what to do with my cake decorating supplies. I have pans up to you know where! I've always argued that we should just get rid of them because I just don't see myself getting back into it. He was always like, 'you never know.' Well, he turned out to be right. Because the decorating bug hit me right around his birthday.

Years ago, our local Ames (a discount store that is no longer in business) offered Wilton cake decorating classes. Yours truly took all three courses. I made quite a few decorated cakes back then. I did one of my younger brother's graduation cake. I did two wedding cakes. A couple little ones for church functions.

The cake I did for Mr. Janney's birthday was very plain. I didn't have quite enough confectionery sugar for the amount of cake I had. It was still tasty though. I am not going to share that picture here, but I will share a cake I made a while after we'd finished that one. I'm not sure how long after his cake was gone that I made it, but it's the result of watching Wilton YouTube videos. I was watching so many it was keeping me from going to sleep a few nights. "Oh, that is so cool...wait, what are they recommending next? Oh I have to watch that too!" I believe is how the internal dialogue went. I started watching them to remind myself of everything I've forgotten over the years and quickly led to new techniques...seen in the cake pictured. The scraper painting on the bottom border, and the hydrangea flower on top. Not bad for a first attempt.

I want to try sunflowers next. They looked super easy in the video I watched. I'm not sure when I'll try that. I have to start being more careful in my diet because my blood sugar started going up after Easter. I'm not sure why, because I didn't think I was eating that much different than usual, although I had started eating bread and other gluteny things again...it's so hard staying away from gluten. I don't know if I have an actual gluten sensitivity, but I do know that I hurt a lot less when I stay as gluten-free as possible. If I can ever afford the "artificial" powdered sugar I'll give that a try for home cakes. I don't know if I'll ever decorate for others, though I'd love too.

Cakes aren't the only things I've been baking. I've been making cookies and pies as well. I've started using artificial sweeteners for that too. The one chocolate chip cookie recipe I've been using a lot actually came off the back of the sweetener bag. Even Mr. Janney likes them. It doesn't take all of the sugars out of the recipe, but it does help reduce them.

The nutritionist I've been seeing wants me to consider going on the Keto diet, a low carb/ high-fat diet. I'm not sure I want to be that strict, but I'm willing to try to get as close as possible. I like having toast with my eggs, and it's hard to not have at least 2 slices (down from my usual 4). And potato salad! It's summertime and potato salad is my favorite summer salad. I tried swapping the potatoes out for cauliflower and it wasn't bad. Not the same, but not bad.

I know a lot of it is going to come down to portion control. And I've never been very good at that unless I actually measure stuff out and keep a journal of everything I eat. Which is annoying. Very annoying. Especially if I have a food freak out and eat everything I can get my hands on. I did get a little worried today after breakfast. It was very low carb...black coffee with sucralose, eggs and bacon on a cauliflower English muffin I had made myself. Just a few hours later, I was shaky in the legs. I knew it was probably a 'false low' but I took my blood sugar anyway to check and it was down to 82. Not too low, but considering my morning fasting number had been higher, and it was now lower after eating, I thought it best to eat something to give it a little boost. Of course, I now need to make more pretend English muffins, but I'll do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have to put laundry away and try to resist a second piece of strawberry rhubarb pie...

Adventures in Cooking Creatively by Robin Janney

For the past three years, I've been living in a situation where I had no choice but to learn how to cook creatively.  Now, I'm not talking about making centerpieces out of fruits and vegetables...I wish!  I would love to have a talent like that and the need for it!  For the life of me, I can't find a free photo of a cool centerpiece.  Google "carved carrots" sometime and you'll find plenty of "food porn" to look at.

No, what I'm talking about is a lack of cooking fuel, in our case propane, and the need to learn to cook everything on electric appliances.  Stuff like the microwave, slow cooker, deep fryer, and an electric griddle.  One thing I haven't bought yet has been a hot plate, instead relying on an old electric frying pan.

I don't do a lot of soups or stews, instead I make pasta dishes in my slow cooker.  Ever since I went to a Pampered Chef party that had crock pot lasagna as a dish, I've been making my own.  Ok, I only made the lasagna once.  It was pretty good.  But I make a lot of spaghetti and goulash in my slower cooker.  Using both the tomato sauces and Alfredo sauce so we don't get tired of the tomato.  Not to mention that we have to watch our tomato consumption anyway because of our acid reflux! The one dish I seem to have a lot of trouble with is macaroni and cheese.  I haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong there.  I usually end up with paste.  :/

The Great Pumpkin they are not...

And it can get a bit monotonous at times.  I alternate using beef burger, tuna, hot dogs, sausage, in my pasta dishes.

This past month, I had a fit of nostalgia for the time I remember making homemade pumpkin puree with my mom one year.  I just remembered how nice our kitchen smelled while they simmered down, and how good the pies and pumpkin breads that holiday tasted.  I thought maybe I could do the same in my slow cooker.

So what do I do, I go to one of our local farmer's stand (Farmer's Fred - if you live in the area, check them out!!) and bought four smallish pumpkins.

Four.

What was I thinking?

Because I do things in about 5 minute stretches in an effort from tearing my foot tendons any further, it took my 6 hours to cut up and process 1 pumpkin.  Of course, I was overlapping at the end of the first day...cutting up the next pumpkin while the first one cooked.

I had no idea what lay ahead of me...

This is 1 of the two pumpkins
pictured at the start...
I only put in 1/4 of the second one.

The worst part was cutting the pumpkin up.  My butcher knife gave me grief while trying to cut the stem off.  Cutting it in half after that was a bit troublesome too, but I managed it with a bit of seesawing the blade and pumpkin.

It got a bit easier after that.  The halves cut in half a lot quicker.  And scooping out the guts was no problem.  After that, I cut the sections into smaller and smaller pieces before cutting of the rind and the spongy inside where there were a few strings attached from the guts.

As you can see from my picture, I cut them into really small pieces. Probably the biggest reason why it took me so long.  As it was, it took over an hour for the pumpkin to be tender enough for me to drain it.  The third batch I did, pieces slight larger as I was getting tired of pumpkin, took almost an hour and a half!  I still haven't cut up the fourth one yet.  There's always tomorrow!

Because I kept the lid on while this was boiling, it didn't create that house filling aroma I remembered from my youth.  But then are our memories ever accurate?  I could very well be romanticizing this!  But once I drained the pumpkin and smashed it, I sure did get a face full of that steamy goodness.  It was enough to help  me overlook the fact I had lightly scalded the backs of my fingers because I had the pot angled wrong.

Nice!  And yummy!

I used an old potato masher, and then because I don't have a food processor, I pulled out my electric mixer and ran the beaters through the smashed pumpkin.  I'll admit to sampling the pumpkin both before and after mashing it.

And this was the easiest part.  All I did was scoop out a cup of the puree and slap it into a plastic bag.  I laid them flat as I pushed the air out so that they would freeze quickly and stack nicely.

I have about 15 or so of these in my freezer!  :D

 Even though I am about pumpkined out, I'm still going to go ahead and process that last pumpkin.  Because it makes me feel soooo good to have those little baggies in my freezer.  Even though I can't do anything with it right now, it's just a satisfying feeling to know that it's there.  I did this, even though I could have taken the pumpkin to a friend or family members house and shortened the cooking time by using their stove, I was able to do it on my own.  It might have taken me longer using my slow cooker, but that's ok.

I am glad that I have the electric appliances that I do, and that I've learned how to make so many things in them for me and my husband.  Many people don't even have this much!  If I'm feeling crazy enough, I might try applesauce next.  Maybe.

What's the most creative you've had to be to cook a  meal or dish?