Wednesday, July 12, 2006

A dessert desert...

So I received my copy of Shape magazine in the mail yesterday – I have a subscription to Shape, and a subscription to Fitness magazine. Oh, and also National Geographic. So after I’m done with the girly “I wish I could lose weight” magazines, then I can move on to stories about pandas and mummies and ancient Rome. Actually, what I like about Shape and Fitness is that they’re not TOO “girly” – they don’t devote half the magazine to shopping, or men, or shopping for men. Although I will admit I was once flattered into buying subscriptions to two trashy magazines by a college student who was selling them outside a Wal-Mart. Somehow he got on the subject of age, and he thought I might be around 23. He also invited me to a frat party. This was a few months after my 30th birthday. (Um, how many magazines do you want me to buy?) Yeah, I ended up buying two subscriptions. (And no, I didn’t go to the frat party. But I was INVITED. Me. Invited to a party by a college guy. And that’s all that matters… Unless he was just doing that to sell the magazines?? Sigh… flattery will get you everywhere.)

But I digress… as I was saying, I received my copy of Shape in the mail yesterday, and flipped through it quickly, looking for interesting articles, and I saw a few recipes for low-fat, low-calorie desserts. One of them was something called a “cherry clafouti.” I glanced over the ingredients list, and realized I had everything I needed to make this particular dessert. I even had a bag of fresh cherries in my fridge, which were a few days old and needed to be eaten, anyway. So after dinner, I turned on the All-Star game so I’d have something to watch while I worked, and pulled the cherries out of the fridge. I washed them, and then spent the first couple innings pitting them, until there was cherry juice splattered all over the counter. And my hands. And, I think, on the blinds covering the window in the kitchen. It looked like some sort of horrible fruit-related crime had taken place there. But I knew, once I’d made my delicious cherry clafouti, it would all be worth it.

I moved on to the rest of the recipe – two eggs and four egg whites (six eggs? Are you sure? Seems like an awful lot of eggs…) a little bit of sugar, some milk, vanilla extract, three-quarters of a cup of flour (that’s it? All those eggs and not even a whole cup of flour? Well, if that’s what the invisible editor of recipes for Shape magazine says, then it must be okay…) a pinch of salt, and a couple tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar to sift over the top of the whole thing when it was baked to perfection. My cherry-stained hands worked to mix everything in a large bowl (this seems awfully runny…) and then I poured the whole thing over the cherries I’d arranged in the bottom of a pie pan (just like the recipe says. Gosh, I’m so good at following directions…). I placed the pie pan on a baking sheet (in case it runs over – sure, I get it) and put the whole thing in my pre-heated oven. Then all I had to do was sit back and wait for the lovely aroma of cherry clafouti to fill the kitchen.

Of course, I’ve never even HEARD of cherry clafouti, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to smell like. At first, it smelled like nothing. But eventually, my kitchen started to smell like, well, like baked eggs. But I was sure that was only temporary. This was DESSERT after all – so eventually the sugar and vanilla (the tiny little bit of sugar and vanilla) would mingle with all that egg and create something sweet, right? I turned the oven light on and ventured a peek through the window. The concoction in the pie pan was bubbling ominously, much of it spilling over onto the baking sheet. I turned the light off and hoped for the best. Maybe if I didn’t watch it bake, it would simply run its course, eventually winding up at the obvious conclusion – a perfectly delicious low-fat dessert. After the 40-minute bake time, I pulled the pan out of the oven and realized it wasn’t even done yet. I had to bake it for another fifteen minutes before the eggy mixture solidified.

I was still optimistic, however. I mean, this was a recipe out of Shape magazine – a very reputable health and fitness publication. Certainly they would know the difference between something that tastes good and something that should be tossed in the garbage. I waited for my dessert to cool, then cut a small piece from the pan. My optimism began to fade as half of the cherries fell away, revealing the slimy, mushy, eggy disaster underneath. I replaced the cherries and took a small, tentative bite. Wow. It was horrible. It was like eating an omelete filled with cherries. If I wanted an omelet filled with cherries, I’d go to Denny’s and ask for a special order. Needless to say, the whole thing WAS sent straight to the garbage…

I learned something last night – dessert is dessert for a reason. It’s not supposed to be “good” for you. I don’t eat dessert to be healthy – that’s what I eat vegetables for. That’s why I buy broccoli and green beans and tomatoes and spinach and mushrooms at the grocery store. That’s why I eat whole-grain bread and brown rice and cook with olive oil. That’s why I’ll choke down an occasional carrot, even thought I think they taste like dirt – because they’re good for me. I eat dessert when I want something that simply tastes good – there’s a REASON most desserts use a certain amount of sugar and butter and flour. Because without those things, your “dessert” runs the risk of ending up in the garbage.

I’d much rather eat a real, regular-fat, regular-calorie brownie and spend a few more minutes on the treadmill, than eat something that belongs in the garbage…


Thank goodness Ghirardelli understands what a dessert should be like...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lisa was VERY emphatic about the poor taste of last nights desert attempt.... VERY.

Anonymous said...

That's what you get for not trying an apple dessert.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I think that's what you get for not trying something with lots of sugar and flour...