Easiest Dessert Ever

I often see bloggers post pictures of dishes they have made that look oh so very elegant! And, even better, sometimes they accompany the post with pictures - a step by step guide so you too can create this marvelous dish.

Well, I made something the other day that was pretty darn good. I had to wait until I was alone in the house because the night before I had watched an Oprah show I had recorded about people who weighed over 500 pounds and along with that I had watched the Biggest Loser so I was supposed to be feeling motivated about my diet. In light of those television choices, I'm not sure why I couldn't resist making this but I am weak. It really was Ex-Marine's fault because he did the grocery shopping and he bought a big tub of real Cool Whip.

But he didn't buy anything that goes with the Cool Whip - no pudding, no angel food cake, no ice cream, nothing! And the Cool Whip just called to me from the fridge driving me to distraction. The idea of just eating Cool Whip straight out of the container without anything else is not foreign to me but, again, it's one of those things that will get me a look from the family with all my professions of dieting going on.

So I searched the cupboards until I found this.

We buy these chemical filled concoctions for Tween's lunch and there are always a few leftover after lunches have been made for the week. I could save them for the next week, I could probably save them for next month, or even next year, I have a feeling there are no perishable ingredients in them whatsoever - but I decided not to.

The result of that decision was this, the easiest dessert recipe ever...

Unwrap the Hostess Cup Cake....

Place it in a bowl....

Cover it with Cool whip...

Enjoy!


I had so much fun eating my dessert creation that I decided to make another and blog about it - spread the joy to all who have Cool Whip calling to them. I didn't have the patience to wait until I was alone (a very rare occurence in the Round File home) so I just waited until Youngest was busy with a TV show. Unfortunately, that boy has a sixth sense about any food preparation and he was in the kitchen like a rocket. So I made him one too - and he liked it!

I'm not sure this post is going to give Fancy Fast Food any competition but I had fun eating blogging it.

French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

From the dust jacket: Stylish, convincing, wise, funny - and just in time: the ultimate non-diet book, which could radically change the way you think and live.
French women don't get fat, but they do enjoy bread and pastry, wine, and regular three-course meals. Unlocking the simple secrets of this "French paradox" - how they enjoy food while staying slim and healthy - Mireille Guiliano gives us a charming, empowering take on health and eating for our times.
I think I gained three pounds this week while reading this book. You see the part about 'indulge in what you really want instead of the imitation chemical filled diet foods' really took. The rest of the advice - not so much. Here are the bullet points and my resolutions...

*I did look around the produce department when I went grocery shopping at the commissary to see what a leek might look like but they didn't appear to have any so Magical Leek Soup didn't happen. I'll try to check out the fancier grocery store and see what they have.

*I nodded along to the 'drink more water' admonishments, that really does help me but I am addicted to my diet colas and didn't make any progress on that front. I'll try to add a cup of water every night before dinner this week. In fact, I'll try putting a glass of water at each person's place next to their initial glass of milk. We go through five-six gallons of milk a week so I know these three children are getting plenty of calcium but water I'm not so sure about.

*I wore my pedometer one day only to discover that despite working all day long, I had only logged 1200 steps. My job is apparently even more sedentary than I thought! I'm going to try adding walking back to my day and I did walk last night!

*I'm certainly not making any homemade yogurt no matter how easy she says it is. I will try to buy yogurt and eat one a day, I mean, I do listen to the news, I've heard about how important dairy is to weight loss.

The other idea that I would like to try is not putting all the food on the plate all at once. Dinner for our family is a together time but it does go by quickly. I am always amazed at how much longer it takes me to get the meal on the table than it does for the family to eat the meal. So I'm going to try to sneak in a "salad course" or a "soup course" rather than having soup (as we sometimes do) in bowls right there beside our plates or salad in a big bowl in the table to take as you like. Slowing us down would be good for health and for extending that family time allowing for more bickering between the children conversation.

She talks a lot about balance and equilibrium and compensation...so those indulgences I've been enjoying are supposed to be balanced with a "corresponding reduction". Aha, even the non-diet can't get around that sticking point...EATING LESS FOOD!


This is one of the books on my list for the Spring Reading Thing 2009. Click on the logo to see the rest of my list.

And he does it again...

We had a lovely Memorial Day dinner.. brats from the grill with sauerkraut, my famous potato salad (the homemade kind that takes all day to prepare!), steamed broccoli, and a red, white, and blue layered fruit trifle. Served promptly at 5;00pm; we all ate until we were stuffed. Then as we were cleaning, Ex-Marine looks at me and says, "So that was dinner , right?" Yeah, honey, that was dinner.

Is that better or worse than this?

Time to stuff the bunny

Once again, cream cheese rules in our holiday meal. This time I needed eight bricks of cream cheese to get through the weekend. When you consider there are only seven of us eating, that means we will each have consumed more than an entire brick of cream cheese by Sunday at midnight. There must be something wrong with our family - some cream cheese satiation gene deletion. Here's what's on the menu....

Saturday afternoon we'll start off with our family's favorite appetizer.. shrimp dip (brick 1 and brick 2) and Ruffles potato chips (we are sooo classy!)sometimes instead of the Ruffles, we dip with pertzels, and one time at band camp...oh, never mind.

Saturday dinner is porterhouse steaks, salad with strawberries and walnuts, baked sweet potatoes (and some regular baking potatoes for my party poopers who can't stand FLAVOR), green beans with caramelized onions, garlic bread, and a blueberry "cheesecake" pie (brick 3 and brick 4) for dessert.

Sunday morning brunch is baked strawberry french toast (brick 5), eggs, grits, sausage, and OJ. And, of course, M&M's, Cadbury eggs, and Hershey's kisses. And if I get over to our local sweet shop, white chocolate covered popcorn and milk chocolate bunnies! I do love Easter!

Sunday dinner is leg of lamb (the hunk of lamb leg cost me $40 and I don't even have a recipe yet....this better be easy to cook!), blue cheese salads (brick 6), asparagus/snap pea salad, make ahead mashed potatoes (brick 7), tomato/okra pie, fruit pizza (brick 8), Granny's rolls, and an applesauce cake.

My MIL is bringing the rolls and the applesauce cake. You may think it sounds like she is getting off easy but she's not! Those are the two most labor intensive dishes on the menu. Particularly the applesauce cake, it's an old family recipe and it must have thirty different ingredients at a teaspoon each. It was obviously devised way before the advent of boxed mixes which is what I consider "home made".

If I get my act together, perhaps I'll post recipes. But for now, I am off to clean and start food prep.

Binging and Purging

I have been on a baking binge recently. In the past week or so I've made a three layer lemon cake, two pans of brownies, and a large batch of chocolate chip cookies. I've also done a few loaves of bread in the bread machine and a dozen blueberry muffins. All this baking is because I am trying to purge enough stuff from my pantry that I can actually see what is in the pantry. This is my road to hell right here - my good intentions as I shop...no need to buy the Otis Spunkmeyer muffins in all that excessive wrapping (even the ungreen me knows that is not good for our planet!), I'll just whip up a batch. I can walk by the bakery with it's pre-made cakes for sale, I'll make my own. Chips Ahoy?! No way - I can make chocolate chip cookies. (They don't compare to my mothers but that's another blog post)

The pantry is starting to look a little better except that now it would seem that I need to go on a pasta binge as I must have two boxes of every kind of noodle that Mueller's manufactures. But I (me, myself!)am looking a little worse. Just a pound so far but it's a pound in the wrong direction! I want the scale to move down - not up! When it comes to eating, I'm all for the binging, but not at all interested in the purging. I'd rather just let it settle and then binge again.

This turkey is stuffed!

It's not even Thanksgiving yet and this turkey (me!) is stuffed. Any day that begins with a bowl of Frosted Flakes instead of my usual Fiber One has the makings of a bad diet day. Forget the fact that the diet has been pretty non-existent for some time now. Today was a little more over the top. And now I am filled to the top. It's past midnight and I'm headed for bed only to know I will get up tomorrow and eat EVEN MORE! So how did my day go so far astray? The Frosted Flakes got me started, followed by a banana, and a couple of chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies?! At breakfast?! Why yes. You see I am visiting my mother's house and she has left her world famous chocolate chip cookies for my enjoyment so pretty much I feel the need to have a few with each and every meal and snack. She's not here at the moment having left town for a pre-Thanksgiving gambling junket with my father. I'm here getting our Thanksgiving dinner ready for tomorrow. That would be the second thing has led me astray today. I discovered as I cooked that it is not turkey that anchors our family Thanksgiving meal but cream cheese. There's cream cheese in the grape salad, and in the jello salad, and even in the mashed potatoes. If you came to our house for Thanksgiving and had some sort of cream cheese aversion, you would be hard pressed to fill your plate because it seems to be a key ingredient in all our favorite dishes. So the BLT's (bites, licks, and tastes in WW jargon) have been adding up all day.   But the thing that really did me in was dinner with 'the gang". Visiting mom and dad's house means I am back to my old childhood friends so we got together over pizza and beer and cheesecake (more cream cheese!) and ate and ate and ate. We ate so much because we st around the table talking so long. So cookies and cooking and conversation were my downfall today.   And just for posterity's sake, I'll review the menu for tomorrow... I'm updating with the post-Thanksgiving critique of the menu! turkey recipe from Southern Living This was very good. I think it's just the act of cooking the bird breast side down and then flipping at the end that makes it so juicy. I don't know that you actually need the full stick of butter rubbed all over. Did decide that although I couldn't taste the bacon as a flavor, the layer of bacon kept the cheesecloth from sticking to the breast and pulling the skin off when the cheesecloth was removed - which would have been VERY sad! Green bean casserole also from Southern Living This was great! I didn't think the buttermilk sauce was worth the effort. I'll probably just use a can of cream of mushroom soup next year and save myself the time of preparing it and the trouble of having to buy buttermilk and figure out what to do with the rest of the half gallon! corn casserole Family favorite - always good. Pepperidge Farm stuffing with sausage, onion, and celery added Recipe calls for apples but we don't add those. We like the salty more than the sweet when it comes to stuffing. make ahead mashed potatoes Another family favorite that alwasy turns out well. cranberry jello mold Yuck. I used cranberry jello and a can of the berries. It was not sweet enough for me. strawberry jello pretzel salad This was wonderful. Could have eaten the whole pan solo. Sister Shubert's rolls Why does anyone make rolls frm scratch anymore? These are delicious!