To Cook

So last night I spent a solid hour trying to scrub disgusting residue out of a pot. I love candy corn, and found a recipe online so I tried to make it with all sugar free and fat free ingredients - it did not work. Using stevia instead of sugar (which does sort of work), fat free powdered coffee mate instead of powdered milk (they ran out at the grocery store), and applesauce instead of butter the mixture remained the consistency of corn syrup - which was the only ingredient I couldn't find a replacement for. That being said it tasted like candy corn....just looked like shit and wouldn't harden.

I found myself at Ralphs, then Gelsons, then finally Rite-Aid at close to midnight on the hunt for just one measly bag of my beloved candy. I finally found a crappy bag of those mellowcreme pumpkins, which are sort of like candy corn but much denser and I woke up this morning with a serious sugar hangover. Apparently West Hollywood loves those little morsels of food coloring as much as I do - they are like crack for the gay man and fag hag.

It sent me on a search for make it yourself sugar free recipe's online and I found an awesome one for marshmallows around 2am but crashed from the pumpkin sugar buzz shortly there after. So even though the whole experience was a failure I did learn a few things: 1 teaspoon of stevia = a whole cup of sugar! So when you go to pour those sweet crystals into your coffee, think that just one tiny packet of calorie-free stevia can sweeten an entire 40-ouncer from 7-11! Also, applesauce can actually be used instead of butter when cooking! That is so awesome. You can use it in cookies and cakes and it tastes even gooier and sweeter. As someone who has been perpetually dieting since I was ten, this was like finding out about 5 calorie fro-yo!

One more quick thing about stevia - which is my new designer drug of choice - at whole foods they have stevia soda (cola, sprite, orange and root beer) and the stuff tastes like real soda without all the creepy chemicals in diet ones. It's actually like natural soda (east coasters are not familiar with Hansen's, which is the best soda ever) with no sugar or anything bad for you. Stevia is like a no chemical version of splenda or sweet-n-low but a thousand times sweeter and not chemical tasting. Imagine squeezing lemon and a packet of this into soda water and it magically tasting like sprite - that's this stuff and it's a dream.

I've always been one of those inventive people when it comes to the kitchen - I never follow a recipe exactly and have to add some sort of twist...perhaps that is because I do not know how to cook and when a recipe calls for any form of a complex method I respond with george forman and spray butter. Just throwing this out there - applesauce instead of butter in mashed potatoes could be soooooo good.

I don't know if this helped anyone, but it totally helped me - I'm going to start making ice cream with that 40 calorie almond milk (which is actually kind of good) and stevia - I'll keep you all posted because I may hit a jackpot here.

Now I must stake out Gilt - Catherine Malandrino and Cynthia Rowley are two of my fav's for awesome work -> bar dresses and I need my closet to be prepared for when I actually find a job out here.