kitchen fiasco

well i never thought i'd say this, but i did some baking the other day and i regretted it severely. Everything i made tasted like &^%$ Wow, was that ever a waste of time, ingredients and effort. I still feel slightly traumatized. I am trying to eat a more nutritious diet, Rob is doing this with me and everything was going really well until i decided to bake some of the recipes in this book: http://www.gidiet.com/en-ca

While i absolutely recommend the methods and the food choices, etc. for this lifestyle plan, i cannot, in good conscience, recommend baking any of their snacks or desserts. The "peanut butter bars" tasted liked cardboard. The "apple bran muffins" had such a sickly sweet aftertaste, gag me. Oh, man. . . what to do? I have realized that i can't live without baking. . it is like a lifelong form of therapy for me. When i bake, i feel fabulous. I love my tools, my kitchen. . i love beating the butter and sugar together, cracking the eggs, melting the chocolate, assembling a cake, pulling a pan of cookies out of the oven, rolling out a pie crust, working with fruit, spices. The smells, the feel of kneading dough, the sight of shiny, darkly delicious ganache when it cascades in a chocolatey sheet over truffles, cakes. . such a thrill. When i was a little girl there was no food network, in fact there were very few cooking shows, but what few existed, i watched with fascination. The French Chef, The Galloping Gourmet, Ruth Fremes' show on CBC, even the Kraft commercials during the Carol Burnett Show, showing those adept, manicured hands, mixing ingredients in glass bowls *i don't know why they didn't show the whole person, but it was still cool* . . . i loved them all! So, you can see how this ridiculously depressing baking session seemed to threaten an entire lifetime of enjoyment, from my sandbox 'bakery' to mastering a genoise sponge cake. This made me feel like i used to feel when i was 9 years old and my pie crust turned out as tough as shoe leather, or my cookies melted into one thin, brittle mess on the cookie sheet. NOT COOL!!!

So, for 80% of the time I will be a good girl and i will eat well and stick to g.i. index, but when and if i bake anything, it MUST be without splenda, without 'liquid egg product', without enough fibre to choke a horse and i WILL use butter, chocolate, sugar, cream, real eggs and other luxurious goodies! Life is too short to pretend that fibrous gloop can pass for baking. Dear baking, let's never speak of that horrific episode again. . . we'll just have to see a bit less of each other, i love you just the way you are!!!