I've been so busy that I just can't find the time to think about tending to myself. It doesn't help that I hit that point where cooking came to a standstill. Have you ever hit that place where suddenly you just can't figure out what to cook next when dealing with one who doesn't eat chicken, one who doesn't eat beef, and three out of five who whine at the mere sight of a veggie? I do.
If I had to estimate how often that hits, I'd have to guesstimate that it's maybe every 4 months or so. It can last one week, or around three. Probably weird to some, but it is what it is. Hitting this wall was probably triggered by so much baking.
I spent a great deal of time the last few weeks trying to perfect a royal icing recipe to try out on the designer-style cookies I've been complimented on in the past. This, in itself, is NOT a good thing when trying to eat right. It involves a lot of taste testing. Taste it with/without this ingredient or that ingredient, taste it again a few hours in after applying to cookies, and taste it again the next day and the next to see how it's holding up. The good news is that I finally feel I perfected my recipe and I will henceforth be able to make these cookies as they are ordered without having to taste them! In the past, when making for special occasions and loved ones, I used a raw egg white in my icing, but to sell, you can't use raw egg whites. Turns out meringue powder doesn't taste well to me, so off I went trying to find a new way to make a good-tasting icing for sugar cookies, and one that was neither too hard or too soft. This may explain why you can't find any available for sale that actually taste good.
This is my first crack at a Halloween collection, and it's not as good as they could have been because they aren't very 3-Dish, which is how I like them, but my frosting wasn't drying very well on these, and to layer them into 3-D requires layering the frosting. I therefore just made the best of it for this batch.
Here is the bouquet I made for my son to present to the girl he wished to take to the school formal, which is a masquerade. She accepted his invitation. You can see the layering on these.
And here is one of the 26 Slenderman cookies I made for my other son's school birthday treat, which took literally ALL day long to do. These required the layering, but also spanning out each addition for a space of time to prevent the icing from running together, i.e. to delineate better.
These aren't even ALL of the cookies I made over the past few weeks, but you probably get it at this point, especially if I share that I had 14 different colors of icing made and ready to go for them all and my entire kitchen was covered in all of the supplies--every single surface.
Some people will look at this as an EXCUSE. I do NOT. I look at it as a REASON why I'm fat. You see, I had so many hours a day to try this out, and I did it from the moment my kids went off to school to the moment they came home. I didn't even stop to eat a single bite for myself. If it were an excuse, I'd probably have eaten whatever I could get my hands on, but I have a goal-oriented mind. Unfortunately, some goals prohibit the accomplishment of others. I could have decided to try to perfect my recipe one day a week for the next few weeks, but that would have only dragged out the reason why I would have been unsuccessful for as long as that lasted. I preferred to buckle down and get it over with. Moving on!
So now that this is out of the way and the fridge is stocked, it's back to meal planning. Wish me luck!
If you have a personality like mine, I highly recommend sticking to something and getting it straight out of the way and not dwelling on the minor set back. You have to pick and choose how to make it all work together. Some women like to say they can do it all, but something, somewhere along the line suffers. Some let the house suffer, some the homemade dinners, and people like me, ourselves. No judgment here. We are who we are.
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