Warning: Cookbook Rant Ahead!

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Photo by Allison Beuker.

RANT ALERT:

5 signs that the baking cookbook you are reading is terrible:

1) Comes with an insert from the publisher about all the errors, including inconsistencies in weights of flour and sugar (making every recipe you want to try involve a math problem); AND the recipe yields for no fewer than 5 recipes are incorrect; AND adjustments are required in technique for 2 recipes INCLUDING the basic vanilla buttercream that is a linchpin in most of the frostings.

2) Requiring a 6 x 3 round cake pan when the standard round pan in most all kitchens is 8″ or 9″. That might not be a big deal but the batter recipes are all formulated for 6″ and no notes about what to do volume-wise if you want to make a 9″ layer cake. Arrg.

3) The first step in the recipe is to look at ANOTHER cake recipe in the book and bake that and freeze it. Then the next 18 steps are make simple syrup, lemon curd, lemon buttercream, slice your 6″ cakes into 4 layers….(head spinning now.)

4) Most of the recipes require you to start 2-4 days ahead. (What?!)

5) List of NECESSARY equipment according to the REQUIRED reading in the intro includes: heavy-duty stand mixer w paddle and whisk attachments (check), microwave (check), medium and fine mesh sieves (well, one of of 2 check), bain marie (I can makeshift one, check), double-boiler (nope but could try to makeshift one), several heatproof rubber spatulas (have only 2, check), a supply of disposable cardboard cake boards (WTF!), a spackle blade (WTF!!), and the absolutely essential revolving cake stand with a note from the author that no way, no how will your cake look like the picture unless you have one of these to cut your layers and frost/spackle.

O good God–forget it!

Kiddie Crack

Free slurpee day on 7.11

Free slurpee day on 7.11

I will never forget the time I got the dirtiest look from a mom at preschool when I gave Joe his snack and it was a baggie of the new-on-the-market multi-colored Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers. I guess it was the lurid prospect of purple and red food dyes near her child and in my child’s stomach that caused her alarm.

Goldfish Cracers Colors via darthbitch.tumblr.com 1

It’s been awhile since I’ve struggled with a toddler over food in the grocery store.  Joe is 10 now and I don’t take him to the store with me unless I have to!

But I painfully remember cursing those evil geniuses in food marketing behind the obvious placement ploys in the cereal and snack aisles.  STOP!  MOMMY! THERE ARE TOYS INSIDE!

Fruit Loops and Shrek candy placed right at child-in-cart eye level. Those end caps of potato chips – brightly colored, exploding with exciting graphics.  And the dreaded chocolate-infused, Skittles, Lifesavers, and M&M-fest that is the check-out lane.

(Of course you could queue up in the “No tabloids or candy line”  if your supermarket has one which undoubtedly ALWAYS has the little old lady who can’t find her coupons or checkbook in front of the mom with 3 teenagers with an overflowing cart including  3 12-packs of soda, 2 cases of bottled water and enough Tide to launder a baseball team.)

Remember him?

Remember him?

When Joe was riding in my cart, I sped by the cereal aisle like a Mom at Nascar.  It was just too much.  Joe would be pointedly shouting out that he “LOVES Fruities, Mommy” as we passed the Fruit Loops at exactly kid-eye level.  And there was just no time to try to comparison shop, looking for the box with the “1/3 less sugar than regular Fruit Loops” or  to discern if  Cocoa Puffs were really made with whole grain as they claimed and if so, so what?

Meanwhile your toddler is beside himself with the choices and the prospect of something yummy that he’s never had before and the harried mom is trying to do the math to see if the sugar content calculated by the actual serving size is really below 9 percent of the total….sheesh!

Maybe all moms should take a class on reading nutrition labels at birthing class.

Nutrition label

Help me! I have to do math in my head to figure this out and I have a toddler AND a new baby. I need food and sleep. Not nutrition labels.

I also remember a battle between my husband and I over Trader Joe veggie fries, otherwise known in our household as “kiddie crack.” I thought this was acceptable food, after all they do have vegetable matter in them and lots of air.  However, my husband considered them junk food, and given my son’s unnatural appetite for stuffing his face with these until he explodes, I think my husband was right.

But hey, give a mom a break. Who is in charge of the feeding day after day, mornings, noon, night, snacks? The mom!  (Usually.)

Ten years after Joe was born there are now way more natural, organic, fresh, local, gluten-free, sugar-free, wheat-free, nut-free, corn syrup-free choices out there (not that I make use of them all the time, or any of the time.)

Making good food choices and clashing swords over the junk food battlefield with my budding middle-schooler still happens and I do try to make sure Joe gets in his four food groups (wait, aren’t there 5 now?) over the course of the day.

And what, veggie crack fries are not in one of those food groups?  No worries.  Joe doesn’t break my back for those anymore now that he’s moved on to the barbecue potato chips that the babysitter turned him on to.

Joe with cherries from our neighbors tree.

Joe with cherries from our neighbor’s tree.