foodfluency.com

I can only call this diet cake.

I hate that word… diet. And the way it is sneered about whenever I grab a low-fat version of something,”Oh, are you on a diet?”

I dunno. Sort of?

I’ve lost about 20 pounds since Easter, and the reasons for it vary. A lot of it is just cooking for myself. It hardly even matters what I’m cooking either; it’s all better for me than a steady diet of McDonalds. Cheaper too! I’m kicking myself for not realizing this sooner. Oh well. I’m also on weight watchers, which hasn’t forced me to do anything except track what I’m eating, which keeps my portions under control. But it’s also given me access to a lot of “low-point” recipes, which taste pretty awesome in lots of cases. And frankly, the “diet” differences have taught me a lot about how food works, and that there are many different ways to make a certain sauce, for example.

I prefer to think of the whole thing as re-learning how to eat.

But, I won’t deny that making your weight go backwards is a challenge. You have to learn what you can live with in terms of cutting corners. For me, it’s low-fat mayo instead of the real stuff. I can also let go of french fries. And I think I lost ten pounds alone by substituting my morning breakfast sandwich and doughnut for some cereal.

However, I have a sweet tooth. I refuse to let chocolate go.

So my ears perked up at my ww meeting this week, when the leader said, “You all know about making cake with diet soda instead of oil, right?”

I had never heard of such a thing, but most of the people there had tried it. You just take ordinary cake mix, and dump in a diet soda instead of the water, eggs, and oil. Sounds simple enough, and there are lots of flavor combos you could try. I used a dark chocolate cake mix with a vanilla cream soda, because that sounded safe to me.

And it tasted great!

I was so skeptical, but it just tasted like ordinary, store bought cake. Hardly gourmet, but, excellent for the people who insist on chocolate daily. And the best part is, if I made it the ordinary way, that one piece of cake would have contained an extra 200 calories. I am SOLD!

A few more pointers:

• Use the Waist Watchers brand soda. It doesn’t contain any aspartame which can be weird to cook with because the aspartame breaks down when heated, so I’m told.
• Don’t use an entire can. Dump a little bit out or take a gulp first.
• Top with fat-free whipped cream instead of frosting for additional “diet” goodness.

My next test is to see if my bf likes it. He’s more skeptical than me, but I think he’ll be surprised.

Cake please!

Stay tuned for a food blog unlike any other.

Perhaps I should explain?

All my life, I’ve been a big failure when it came to food.

Consider the mint cake incident of 2002:

FAIL!

And more recently, the ribbon candy that decided it wanted to crystalize into a cucumber.

FAIL!

I know those are both baking, and not cooking examples, but trust me. The cooking pictures are too horrific to share.

I could blame my family, for not teaching me properly when I was growing up, and for interrupting my serious food concentration with shenanigans.

But that would be petty. And I might have to fess up to how my sister got covered in flour in the first place.

Instead, I have been working towards figuring out this cooking thing, step by step. The process can be painful, but I’m light years beyond where I used to be! Check out how excited I was when presented with my very first non-butter knife! I used it to cut bread dough. Watch out world!!!

Seriously though, for me, food fluency is more than just cooking. It’s understanding everything that has to do with food. How it tastes, how it looks, and, yes, how one makes it. This blog is going to chronicle my learning process. I’m kind of a “poke it and see what happens” kind of learner, so it could be really amusing.

Stay tuned!