Update from the Dr’s and Tipsy Baking

Two trips to the Dr’s, two days in a row. The first shot and new prescription seemed to overdo something. I felt awful. The pain meds were useless so I went back and got better ones.

The good news is our blood counts are up .5 points. We are still a ways away from where we want to be but we are moving in the right direction.

The iron has been tripled and the multivitamin supplemented with vitamin C so we all expect to stay on schedule and keep the surgery appt scheduled for Thanksgiving week.

The Dr’s thank you for your collective interest in donating blood to my cause but want to assure you (and me) they are not being mean when they decline to transfuse me. I simply am not strong enough to get through the surgery without my personal counts rising. Putting blood in when it is rushing back out defeats the purpose. My counts must rise or even with fresh blood I will not be self-sustaining during the procedure.

They were curious if I had told my friends that they were not giving me blood ‘just because’. My Dr’s are hyper-sensitive. Or it could be that I am the worst patient ever to walk the face of the earth.

I did apologize for being difficult and surly. The Dr’s indicated they understood. I am tired and I don’t feel well. It is pretty much a given that I would also be a little testy, or a lot testy, irritable, prickly, snappish.

Heck, I am tired of myself,,,

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One day soon I will post about being depressed but not today. Today I will post about one of the things I do to preoccupy myself when I am feeling down. I bake. I used to bake all the time back when I was married but something happened,,,,read the rest of the post, I will get to it.

For the last month or so, every other weekend or so I have been driving out to my girlfriends and we cook and bake away a weekend. She has some things in her life that are making her uneasy, I have my issues — so we plan menus and just go for it.

Now my friend, we shall call Little D on account that her fiance is Big D, is a phenomenal cook as is Big D. So any trip out to their places is laden with culinary delight. At any rate, I packed most all of my kitchen gear except my mixer, it is just to cumbersome to get in a box. When Little D came up with the idea of coking/baking away a weekend I immediately agreed and decided to take the mixer and leave it at her house.

The problem is, when I am depressed, and I am very depressed right now, it is hard for me to actually do anything. I may want to do things, I may need to do things but I won’t actually do them.  It took three dates before I actually showed up at her house. Now Little D has known me since HS, nothing I do bothers her, she has seen it all before. But she pushes me to do things sometimes because it is for my own good. Thus the scheduled and rescheduled dates.

The first weekend I made it we decided to make Lemon Pound cake, Red Velvet cake, smothered chicken, fried catfish, smothered potatoes, corn on the cob, seven-layer salad biscuits. Two other girls dropped by so we had split the work up pretty well and things were moving along. The thing is, Little D also made a HUGE container of sangria.  It’s not that I don’t drink. I don’t have an issue with alcohol. I just don’t drink often, like twice a year, maybe.  So I drank sangria and baked while the girls handled the rest of the menu. The pound cake was divine. It was done first while I was still kinda sober.

The Red Velvet? not so much. the flavor measures were all off Tablespoons became teaspoons and that kinda mess. Ai yi yi,,,,,it was so pretty and the icing was great. The cake tasted like mud. The biscuits were great.

Weekend two, Almond pound cake, (I can’t find my Sour Cream pound cake recipe, must’ve packed it so if any one has a good one I would be eternally grateful), Meow’s Chocolate Cake, Red Velvet again (we learned nothing) and chocolate chip cookies.  Along with skirt steak, roasted chicken, okra and tomatoes,  rice, sauteed spinach and mixed greens with homemade buttermilk dressing.

Sometimes I don’t eat much during the day, then I eat when I get hungry at night. Well, I hadn’t eaten anything when I arrived at her house around 3p. We started with white wine. One glass, I have sparkly-light brain, two glasses, I am plain old tipsy. I made the pound cake first. Again, knocked it out of the park. I got the wrong thing for Meow’s cake so I had to postpone that one. But I whipped up the cookies for her daughter to take to school that week and then we started the Red Velvet. We were feeling kinda confident but then again we had polished off two bottles by then. Ah the folly of it all.

We were so excited when the cake went into the over and proud to, right up until she picked up the leavening and we realized it was not in the cake. Now this is our second weekend ruining the Red Velvet.

Weekend three. Pumpkin Muffins, Praline Muffins, Pound Cake, Red Velvet Cake (we never learn). Pound Cake is now a staple, Big D expects it when he comes in. Apparently it is so good it reminds him of his mothers. It has aver light texture to it, close to angel food and rich flavors. Plus it is easy, I can just knock it out.  The rest of the menu: buttermilk fried chicken, baked short ribs, greens, crowder peas/black eyed peas mixed with okra, rice and corn bread.

I was determined to get some things done sober. So first we raced through the Praline Muffins and then knocked out Big D’s pound cake so it would be ready for dinner. By the time we moved on to the pumpkin muffins we were also through the Merlot. I was dishing them into the muffin time when she held up the eggs. Ahhhh geez, everything back into the bowl to be remixed.

It was around then that the bright idea of adding butter to make it richer came up. That was her idea. My wine soaked brain could not put it together enough to say no, we can’t just add butter without adding dry ingredients, we will ruin them.  Suffice it to say, the tops were great, the centers were soggy and we wont do that again.

Big D came home and we pretended not to be loopy. He was disappointed that the other times we had baked together we never got around to the Red Velvet Cake since it is one of his favorites. I don’t have a poker face under the best of circumstances – tipsy is not the time to try and get it together. I just stared at the mixer and told him we were so busy chatting we let time slip away but we’d make sure he got one this time.

Between the two of us, we managed to get through the recipe this one final time. It over cooked by about seven minutes but otherwise it was perfect. The big guy loved it, although he did mention the over cooking and we redeemed ourselves.

I know – stop getting tipsy and trying to bake.

Back to the baking married thing. I don’t eat all of this stuff. The cakes and what have you I make I take to my aunt’s and my cousins devour it. Yesterday I stopped by the house for no reason, just a pop call and the youngest son was home.

He wanted to know what I’d made and where was it.

Oh,

Really,

Well nothing, I planned on baking tomorrow so I did not have anything.

But the idea that he wanted it made me so excited. I was thrilled that he not only liked the items that had been dropped off – he wanted more. What is it about someone wanting whatever it is that you do that makes you want to do it more? I have seen dom types do that over and over again. Often it is over silly things like seeing you in more pink when you prefer red. Or giving up swearing,lol. Or talking you into skirts when you used to prefer pants. What is it about pleasing people in general and SO dom types in particular that just curls the toes?

And about baking in the past,,,,,

I used to bake when I was married and then I stopped for a long time. I can’t remember the entire situation but I remember some things. I remember my ex liked plain butter pound cakes, with no flavors at all. I know myfamily and friends like anything that falls out of my hand. However, whatever it is, they love intense, rich flavors, rich icings. In particular my BIL likes Sour Cream Pound Cake with Almond flavoring. He likes the denser texture like I do.

For some reason I was only making one cake a weekend or at a time. I remember my ex complaining that he did not like cake with flavors and why did I insist on putting flavors in the cake. I know that I was making cake for Sunday Dinner with the family. I know I did not do what he asked. I know I did not make every cake with no flavors. I know I stopped making cake period. For a long time.

But I don’t know the details of the story. I don’t know why I did not give him what he wanted. I don’t know why I stopped baking completely. He got it sometimes at first, but I think he wanted it all of the time. I did not give that to him. I am not sure what that says about me, but when I remembered it recently – it made me feel like I was not a nice person.

Why wouldn’t I make him the cake or at least make the cakes the way he wanted? I don’t want to make excuses so I wont tell you what I am thinking. But I wonder, question myself, my integrity, my good wife-ness, no matter what I think his motivations or intentions were; should I have just made the cake like he wanted?

Does it matter what I think/thought about his suggestion, motivations, request? Or just do it?

~ by cultivateddiscipline on October 25, 2009.