I learned something new this week: when you’re violently ill for 24 hours, it’s not a “24 hour thing,” it’s the “stomach flu.” I haven’t gotten the flu very often, okay?
Anyhow. Whatever this thing was, it has completely kicked my ass for the past week. I’ve been lethargic and my stomach has felt queasy for days. I’ve been home a lot.
During this week, I’ve discovered that one way I like to pass the time is by baking. In fact, several times I was itching to get started baking something and felt stymied that I had to do something like, I don’t know, laundry. Or napping.
On Friday I made the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for shortbread. I burned the first batch. So I dumped the entire thing and got to making a second batch. Not that I particularly felt like eating any, and Darin certainly wasn’t in the mood for a cookie. (I’m a little disappointed, because while the CI recipe is good, it’s still not the kind of shortbread I want to make, which is the kind I get at a local coffee house: softish, flaky, very buttery. Maybe I can’t make it at home, but I keep trying.)
I picked up Chocolatier magazine (personally entranced by the “perfect chocolate chip cookie” recipe, just as Ivonne at Paper Palate was, but the deciding factor was the Chocolate Cherry Bread recipe, which I want to make for Darin) and 125 Best Cupcake Recipes by Julie Hasson. Yes, I’m currently into the whole cupcake craze.
I made the honeycomb recipe from Chocolatier, mainly because I had some honey on hand and because I love Violet Crumbles so much. It was fun to make — the part where the sugar-honey goo bubbles up with the baking soda is cool — but the end result screamed, “Extreme dental work will be required if you eat more than one crumb of this!” So I tossed it.
Yesterday, however, was the sine qua non of baking mania: I made a loaf of sandwich bread, I made biscuits for dinner (the best I’ve ever made! and the kids didn’t eat them! what’s up with that?), I made banana chocolate chip cake after dinner.
While I am enjoying some of the fruits of my labors (I am as fond of banana chocolate chip cake as the next person (the next person who likes banana chocolate chip cake, that is)), I’m not especially crazed to eat these things I’m making. I’m just finding that baking is very relaxing for me. The idea of mixing a whole bunch of stuff together and having a new food at the end is just deeply appealing. And very odd. Would never have thought it was possible, but there it is.
If When we remodel the kitchen, I am so asking for a baking area.
I was doing a goggle search on liquid diets and your blog from 1998 popped up. I’m on the 3rd day of a all protein shake diet and I’m looking for encouragement. How did the liquid diet work out for you. Please email me and let me know.
The liquid diet worked out very well for me — I lost the weight I wanted to (I think it was about 25 pounds) and I kept it off for a year and a half, until I got pregnant the first time.
I would never do it again, though. It’s very hard at the beginning (although it does get easier, really) and if you’re like me and a few of my friends, you get a little weird as time goes on. I watched the Food Network like teenaged boys watch porn. I made lists of things I wanted to eat. At the end of the diet, my weight loss stopped because I was bingeing on chocolate malt balls. (When I stopped the diet, I stopped the bingeing, thank goodness.)
I will ask my friend Rob to speak about his experiences with the liquid diet, because he’s done it a couple of times.