my very stressed and hard working husband asked if i could help him out by baking his mentor a tasty treat. of coooourse! i enjoy baking, using my semi-new kitchen aid and having a reason to buy fun things at the grocery store! i asked my friend alison for the amazing blackberry jam almond bar recipe (she made this for us almost 2 years ago for a gingerbread house making party and i knew i had to be her friend forever). so she sent me the recipe and i got super excited just by the pictures and the fact that my first ingredients were sugar and butter! then a terrible, sinking, horrible sadness sank in… i’m on the stupid-no-good-annoying 50 day challenge! crap.
so i stuck two pieces of gum in my mouth and pretended not to have depression-by-food. i even sniffed both of these extracts for 47 seconds each to try and stave off the intense craving to stick my face in the butter/sugar mixture. i’ve also been on a strange country music kick lately so i blasted my favorite pandora station and tried to drown out that voice in my head/stomach/taste buds that i wasn’t going to be allowed to eat one of these. i felt like i had a pretty solid grasp as i was mixing in the eggs and extract and salt…until that darn bonding agent of flour came along. it created the most beautiful dough i’ve ever laid eyes on. ever.
glorious batter
in fact, i think i’m setting the batter picture as our new desktop background. so, by this time, all the cinnamon had fled the gum and it was turning into a strange, plastic consistency so i chucked it out. and that’s where the trouble started. i’m embarrassed and ashamed to say i caved and ate probably a tablespoon of that glorious, tempting, almond flavored, sugary, buttery goodness (i can’t even figure out where all the commas even remotely go with all those tasty words).
my willpower wavered and i wasn’t strong enough to withstand this. i started to think i might as well throw in the towel and eat whatever the heck i wanted now because i’d already screwed up. i started dreaming about hot fudge, french fries and brownies and got really excited! then i remembered that i not only publicly said what i was going to give up but that other people joined in to give up some of their favorite things as well. and i decided to get back on track (and not eat an entire cup of batter).
ravery says “you’re like a real baker!”
just because i messed up a little doesn’t mean i’m allowed to go completely crazy.
i could have also kept this a secret and not told you that i ate the batter but in reality we all make mistakes (and hopefully you’ll forgive me). i resolved that while on this challenge i will either have to buy tasty store-bought things for people or everyone will get my bean cookies. i cannot be trusted around buttery/sugary goodness and that is a fact. so i won’t tempt myself by putting myself in that situation because my will power is not currently strong enough.
(now with an almond glaze on them)
i wrapped up the left over bars tightly and took them straight to ravery’s work for his coworkers indulgence. no more blackberry almond bar temptation for moi.
life lesson: sometimes we make mistakes. sometimes our willpower isn’t quite as strong as we’d like it to be. this does not give us permission to completely succumb to temptation or failure. learn from your mistakes and do what it takes so they don’t happen again.
how’s your 50 day challenge going? if you aren’t participating-what is something you would potentially give up for 50 days?
July 3, 2012 - 5:25 pm
We all fall sometimes. Ya just have to pick yourself up, wipe that better from your mouth and move on.
July 3, 2012 - 5:28 pm
ha! well said ben. thank you :)
July 5, 2012 - 3:10 pm
They look delicious! Good on you for only eating a tablespoon of the sweet stuff.
July 8, 2012 - 9:56 am
actually i just looked at how much a tablespoon actually is…it may have been closer to 2-5 tablespoons. but still less than normal :)
August 7, 2012 - 11:01 am
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December 16, 2012 - 10:14 am
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