A Little of This, A Little of That

I'm not a very good cook. Really. Don't try to defend me because it just won't work. I don't know why I'm not although I daresay practice would help. Now there are those who, upon meeting my husband the first time, would say, "Surely this woman must be a great cook!" :) Not so! He's just a big guy and he owes it all to his mother who was a wonderful cook, and to his high school football coach who told him he needed to put on weight so he should eat a peanut butter sandwich and drink a glass of milk every night before going to bed. While he gave up the sandwich and milk he still has a spoon of peanut butter most nights.

I have a point to this story. Usually I have a point but I spend a lot of time getting around to it. Anyway, last week I was doing some hand stitching and turned on the tv to hear a little noise. I was going to watch a rerun of NCIS, the very best television show ever, but I caught a glimpse of Rachel Ray and wondered who was on her show that day. It was "The Hungry Girl." Ever heard of her? Me either. But she had some interesting things to say even if I didn't plan to follow her fat-busting advice. She suggested we bake a chocolate cake by mixing one chocolate cake mix with one can of pumpkin. Period, the end, nothing else. It cuts out the oil and the eggs and adds fiber and tastes good, so she said. I figured that would be easy to remember and easy to cook and besides I had all those cake mixes that I got for $.78 at Walmart on sale so what the heck. Friday was the day I chose to do that because I figured I could take part of it to my son's house when I went because with three kids they'll eat most anything and if it wasn't good it wouldn't matter.

I mixed the cake. I didn't remember if she said to use a mixer or just stir so I decided to treat it like a brownie and stir. And stir. And stir. It took a little while but it mixed. I sprayed a 11 x 13 pan and dumped it in. I spread it out a little, but not enough because little did I know it wouldn't rise and it wouldn't spread when it got hot. Where I put it was where it stayed. Result, thick spots and thin spots. Since it looked a little funny I thought I'd just put some icing on it. After all, I had all that icing I got for $.78 at Walmart on sale. :) Ya'll, you need to go out right this very minute and buy a cake mix and icing and a can of pumpkin. I could have eaten that whole pan by myself. I didn't even want to take any to my son's, that's how good it was. You know it was good if it made a Mama wish she could keep it all for herself. I suppose the can of icing completely negated the whole fat-busting idea The Hungry Girl was advocating but hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

I was so inspired that today I tried a couple of new recipes! Stay tuned, I'll tell you more about those tomorrow.