Sweet Delights

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...