Brownies for Lisa (a Charity)

People who give up on their diet three days in deserve congratulations too, don't they? I mean, that was a hellish three days. Sure they may be quitting and showing a serious lack of stick-to-itiveness, but do you realize what that person went through?

For example, she (let's assume it's a girl) may have not had any starchy foods at all that whole time, even when she went to a local bakery and bought a drożdżówka z serem (yeast roll with sweet (cream) cheese) and broke it up and fed it to her little boys. By hand. Not even a crumb! H-E-double-hockey-sticks, I tell you.

She may have made regular dinners for the rest of the family containing things like pasta and homemade bread dough (for pigs in a blanket. Said dieter may not be very strongly opposed to good quality hot dogs (making the resisting of the pigs harder than you might expect). In fact she and her birthday brother may have requested them every year for their birthday dinner growing up.)

She may have been deprived of sweets. Sure she could possibly have used sweetner (ICK!) in more than a few cups of fat-free hot cocoa. And maybe she's allowed diet coke (which she doesn't care for but drinks because it's something resembling something sugar-sweet.)

But if this is a person who has spent years living on baked goods, doing away with starch and sugar and fat is literally HELL. (just kidding. I DO know what hell is and what literally means. I'm using hell as a metaphor so therefore I don't actually mean it literally.)

So, yeah. I totally feel like giving up! But I won't! See, I fooled you into thinking I'd quit, but no. Not me! Especially since I lost half the weight I want to lose in the first three days of the diet. I'd be stupid to stop now!

The thing is, I REALLY need some peanut butter brownies. I absolutely must make these ones, which are good, chewy, brownie textured brownies that are deliciously peanut buttery. Simple but fabulous (if you cook them the right length of time). Or maybe these ones. A bit more involved and with a different texture but completely addicting. I've made them both many times and I need to make them right now.

Unless someone would be so good as to do it for me? Maybe someone who's not on a diet (oh, who am I kidding, it's the week after New Years: everyone is dieting.) Please bake a batch of one or the other and eat it for me, would you?

See, this is exactly my problem. Sure I am excited about getting down to my ideal weight; who doesn't love sweaters to look better on them? And sure I hope to have amazingly beautiful skin like Greg's, but mostly I want to cut back on baked goods.

I am, apparently, incapable of just plain cutting back. I can't bake something and then not snack on it all day. It is lame. (and I can't just not bake, either) Knowing quite a bit about the Dukan diet, and having seen Greg and both his mother and sister benefit greatly from it, I thought it was the perfect way to completely break away from my eating habits. I needed an actual list of foods I cannot eat if I want the diet to work. And brownies had to be on that list.

So here I am, not eating cookies or brownies for three days in a row. And I'm not even dying! Almost, but not all the way. This extreme phase will be very short for me and then I'll be allowed a splurge twice a week (eating a completely regular meal or even a dessert. Of course I will choose dessert). When the diet is over I will only allow myself to bake dessert one night a week and have to make it last two or three nights for dessert. The other nights I'll buy exotic fruits or give the kids chips or some other treat we don't eat a lot of.

I can do this. And I will! Especially if you'll go and bake and eat that batch of peanut butter brownies on my behalf!

P.S. I never thought I would do a "fad diet" like this. I have never dieted, but I feel like this one makes sense, especially for what I need it to do for me. Also, I apologize for all the swear words in this post.

One. No, Two. . . THREE!!

Yesterday Aaron turned three. Just writing that makes me feel inexplicably weepy, so let's move along.

Aaron just LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine, or Tomek, as he's known in Polish. I happened to know this year that my mom would be giving him a Thomas DVD:

so for weeks before his birthday I thought about how great it would be to have a Thomas themed party. When it came time to make his cake, this is what I made:

Because Aaron also loves the color yellow, and I know my limits, which include making a train shaped/decorated cake. (apparently they also include adding enough food coloring to make a cake actually look yellow and cutting the corner of the plastic bag used for piping the right size. Oh and planning the writing so I can write a number three instead of spelling it out) Can I just tell you how light and fluffy this yellow cake. . . wasn't*?Good thing Greg's parents are Polish and are therefore not used to moist, light cake. They enjoyed it plenty.

So did the birthday boy!

To go along with the revised birthday theme Ev and Dave picked out some fancy presents.

Doesn't he look thrilled? He was in real life, though. He opened each of them up and said, "YELLOW!!" (So glad I didn't spend money and stress on Thomas stuff!)

Within five minutes of having opened it, the ball found itself, not on the balcony (or terrace, as Greg's parents call it) where we were, but over here:

See the yellow dot in the middle of the picture? That's the ball, in the neighbor's backyard. The other ball's ours, too. And you might think I based the cake colors on that house, but I swear it's a coincidence.

This is me doing what I do best.

No, not wearing brown in the Spring, closing eyes for pictures OR going six months without having my hair cut (thought I'm good at those things, too). EATING CAKE.

And this little boy is three months old (and a half) when his brother is turning three years old!

Yesterday, when Evie and her friend were going upstairs to play Aaron asked, "Aaron up-up, too?" Evie said he could go with them and he replied, "Oh, thank you! So nice!" He tells me I'm so nice for doing things like getting him juice and turning on a TV show he wants to watch.

Sometimes he answers yes or no questions like this: "Aaron, do you want to go back inside or not?" "Uuuummmm. Not."

He's careful not to offend people and when he wants to reject something he says things like, "How 'bout I don wannit?" Or "Leebeedeet (little bit) yummy, leebeedeet not yummy."

We can't believe he keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. He was never a fit thrower and he sits on the stairs when I give him time out and promptly apologizes when I come to get him out. If I don't go to Spencer soon after he starts crying Aaron gets upset and calls, "Mommy! Beh-doh (Spencer) SAD!"

We are shocked by his sudden explosion in the vocabulary department the last two months (I won't say "finally") and while my in-laws were here from Easter till yesterday he just started speaking Polish as if he'd known it all along.

For the past year, anytime he was asked how old he is in English (granted it was very infrequently) He always answered, "One! No. . . Two!!" Always. (and usually while holding up all five fingers). I had hoped when he turned three we could finally get him to just answer "three" but instead he answers what you see in the title. Oh well. Maybe when he turns four.

*The frosting was great, though. (I added a little extra sugar.)

Have Your Cake and Eat It Tuesday

Man, I haven't done one of these posts in a loooong time (six months?!).  And this one isn't even a real one, as I'm not sharing a recipe.  And a more appropriate title would be Have Your Cake and Eat It The Tuesday After You Get Back From America In June.  Here's why:

I had a dream last night.  I was in America for a very short visit.  I was on my last day or two and I hadn't bought any Reese's Peanut Butter Chips.

Also, I was in Poland and had just found out that they started selling Reese's peanut butter chips in a certain store here.   Greg was the manager/owner of one of them and he "helped" me while I was looking for the chips.  I searched EVERYWHERE, as I knew they'd be on some random shelf in a small pile between two products that weren't remotely related to baking.  After a desperate search (after all, I was leaving America very soon to go back to Poland -- never mind that I was already in Poland in this part of the dream) I realized that I'd have to go to a different store in the same chain.  

That one was in America.  It was about Costco sized and I did a shelf by shelf search and came up with nothing.  I went to the bakery and talked to some people working there about where I could find them.  Sitting at a table there, talking to another lady, was Steve S. from jr. high/high school who used to tease me and who I was a little afraid of, until he got a some self esteem, joined the football team and started being nice to me.  He didn't care too much about my peanut butter chips, but the lady he was talking with helped me (I have no idea why on Earth he was in this dream.  I haven't thought of him in decades, almost).

I don't really know what happened after that.  I don't think I ever found the chips.  It doesn't really matter though.  I know this all sounds very pointless, but it's not.  Not for me at least.  The moral of the story is, buy LOTS of peanut butter chips when you're in America in June.  

www.sweetstall.com

I love how a bag of those can last such a looong time.  I use them as an accent in chocolate chip cookies or brownies.  It only takes a very little bit to transform a recipe.  Good thing, too, because when I have them in the house I want to add them to everything I bake.  Mmmmm.

I really hate that there's a weight limit on luggage.  

www.gabbaideals.com

Have Your Cake and Eat It Tuesday

Okay, so this isn't actually cake, but today is actually Tuesday, and since I came up with the name, I'm taking liberties and allowing myself the postage of recipes for any sweets without my having to change it to Have Your Cookies and Eat Them Tuesday. That really loses something, don't you think?

So these are cookies. I'll tell you all about how much I adore these cookies in a moment, but first I need to tell you about a very unfortunate side effect they have on me. When I eat them, I kick myself. And the more of them I eat, the more I love them and the more I kick myself. It's looks kind of stupid and doesn't feel great either. If you're thinking of making these, read further to see if you might be susceptible to these same side effects.

They are Chocolate Malt Sandwiches from Martha Stewart's website. I don't actually go onto that site looking for recipes, but I often find her recipes recommended on blogs I read. This one I saw at Cookie Madness. They are delicious. But then, I'm a major fan of malt. I make them and keep them in the fridge. They are so rich and sweet that even I can only eat about 4 of them in a sitting (okay, so that's basically 8 cookies, plus the filling, but whatever). Then I have to wait a full 30 minutes before I'm ready for another.

Do you know what it is about these cookies that makes me kick myself? It's not because I'm trying to keep myself from taking in the calories (heaven knows I'm not at a place where I worry about that as much as I should). So why the masochism? I'll tell you why.

When we were staying at my mother's house on our last trip to America, she had picked up a few things that I had requested from the grocery store. See, I try to get as much of the things that you can't get in Poland while we're in the States as I can. But I also have to make sure it will all fit in my luggage and not be too much for me to travel with (especially when I'm doing a marathon run of going back and forth across the country in two weeks, by myself with three children in tow). One of the things I'd requested this time was malt powder.

I love chocolate malts. I love Fuddruckers chocolate malts. I love Dalt's* chocolate malts. With curly cheese fries. After a tri-Stake dance late on a Saturday night. (I love that I wondered why my skin was never clear in High School.) They don't have chocolate malts in Poland. They don't even have malt powder. Oh, they have plenty of MALT. The kind you can drink even, if you know what I mean. But I'm not that kind of girl. So I'm left to make my own chocolate malted milk shakes. I don't do this a lot and they don't require all that much malt powder, so when I saw that my mother had bought 3 containers of malt, I thanked her kindly but was afraid I couldn't/shouldn't bring more than one back with me because of space/weight limitations. Especially considering I was already bringing 8 pounds of brown sugar with me, among other things (guess how long eight pounds of brown sugar lasts at Lisa's house? 2 months? Maybe.).

Did you read the sentence before last? Three containers of malt! I did not accept them! I am an idiot! And now I am an idiot with no malt powder because I found this wonderful recipe, made it twice, and ran out. I could make these cookies 4-5 more times if I had had the foresight to accept what was already purchased for me! Kick, kick, kick!

*I just read that Dalt's closed in 2005!! This is a travesty! I will be in mourning for the next few days. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. I seek the comfort of family and friends who have also loved that place.
If you give these cookies to your kids, they might react this way:

Then they might start in on them like this:

They might realize that there's some filling in there. Mmmmm:

Once they realize what it is they're eating they will continue to partake, now with only a slightly confused expression:

Chomp, chomp chomp:

Remember I said they were really sweet and rich?:

Your kids might really enjoy them, too. If you're nice enough to share!

Have Your Cake and Eat It Tuesday

I don't consider myself a major fan of cake. It doesn't really fall under the category of hard core, like most of the treats I prefer. I do like it sometimes, though. And if they didn't generally require so much work to prepare and top, I'm sure I'd make them more often.

Well, today I'll share with you a cake I love. The recipe came to me through my roommate Andrea, who made all sorts of delicious treats back in the day and still does, only now she makes sure they have ingredients that are unavailable in Poland and makes them, photographs them and then blogs about them. I'm not sure why I still consider her a friend. Oh yes, the recipes I acquired from her that I CAN make in Poland, like this one!

So this treat is cleverly named: Banana Cake! Ooooh, I'm sure you've never heard of anything like that, or baked it many times, either. But this is different! I'm SURE it's different! I've never seen this cake anywhere else. Okay, probably the main thing that sets this one apart is the topping. Somehow the cake and the topping are just a winning combination (I first typed winning conversation because Evie was talking to me while I type this. Evie, out. Brain, ON. There.)

There are so many reasons why people need to make this cake. It's so much healthier than a pan of brownies (or at least it has less fat, anyway). It's as easy to make as a batch of cookies. It's another way, make that a better way, to use up those black bananas. But mostly, it's just so delicious. Okay, for those of you who aren't me (that's probably most of you) and don't like things hyper sweet, you may consider this to be a little on the sweet side, especially with the topping, but just consider it a dessert, and don't eat it like we did; for dessert last night, for breakfast this morning (it has bananas), and another little piece after lunch.
Banana Cake
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup mashed bananas
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Now for the tricky part. Mix it all together (I do it about the same way you do with cookies, mix wet, then add dry) and pour it in a greased 9 by 13" pan. Now mix together:
2 cups chocolate chips (give or take, depending on if you're me or you)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup nuts-or more (I always use chopped or slivered almonds, but that's only because I can't stand walnuts and peanuts just don't sound like the thing, here)
Sprinkle this topping nice and evenly over the cake batter and put it in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes or so.
Or, alternately you can misread the instructions and check on it after 25 minutes and be very confused at how jiggly it still is in the middle, and then get back on the computer while it finishes baking, forget about it, and finally remember and take it out of the oven about 5 minutes after the nick of time. If this happens to you, don't worry. That brown on the edges and bottom of the pan is like some heavenly carmelization. This cake is delicious any way you eat it but I like it best warm. MMMMMMMmmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmMMMMM

And if you're me (gosh, ARE YOU ME already? I'm really getting so confused) and you made it after dinner last night, you should have about this much left after lunch today.