Baking

When the corona virus erupted and we were asked to stay at home (for a couple of weeks ha ha ha) I started baking. After several batches of old favorites, I had two thoughts.

The first was, Why am I doing this? I bake at Christmas and maybe two or three times the rest of the year--if I'm hosting a meeting, or want to give a homemade gift. The only explanation I came up with is that baking was an activity I always did with the girls when they had a snow day. This had that same stuck-in-the house, can't-go-anywhere feeling.

My second thought was, Have I lost my mind? Two people can't eat all of this bounty without creating serious health issues. And at that point there was no one to share with. So I stopped.

After a while, I decided to look into a healthier version of baking. I've been trying out gluten-free, low-carb recipes.

I found several recipes that looked tempting. The trouble was, the ingredients didn't include anything already in my baking cabinet. I made the investment and acquired everything I needed to make a couple of them. Some things I didn't recognize. I needed cocoa butter. Isn't that in suntan lotions? The answer is yes, and it's the same thing. I needed unflavored whey protein powder. I searched the organic food aisle and the baking aisle with no luck. My husband found it in the power bar section. It's Muscle Milk. I've heard of that, but it would never have occurred to me to look for it there. A few things I had to order online.

All of these new ingredients necessitated rearranging the pantry shelves so there was room to store them.   

Eventually I got to the actual baking.

Every recipe was described as "Delicious!" "Scrumptious!" "Better than (fill in the name brand)!" Not so much. It's really discouraging when the Fudgy Brownies are just sort of chocolaty. Or when the pizza crust is so awful that neither  of us could get past the first two bites. (Bite 1: This is terrible! Can it really be that bad? Bite 2: Oh yeah.)

But I kept going and came across several recipes that make yummy desserts and keep us from letting our food consumption get out of control.

I'll keep going. I have to. This stuff is too expensive to toss.