Grandma's Baking Adventure With Chloe

This morning Kreed asked me to pick up some treats for his home teachees, if I went to the store.  Well, after entertaining Chloe for a couple of hours, I thought I would take her to the store and we would pick up those treats.  But then I started thinking about all the effort it would take to put her in the car seat, get her out of the car seat and then fight her to stay in the grocery cart, finally giving up and taking her out and then running after her.  I decided baking something at home would be much easier and more time efficient.

Now, you must keep in mind that I have not baked anything from scratch for the past 4 months since starting P90X. 

I decided to make pumpkin bread.  Nope, the pumpkin cans had expired in July.   Okay, how about the mincmeat.  I like mincemeat cookies.  Good…not expired.  But the condensed mincemeat was expiring before the stuff in the jar, so I decided to use that. 

So I got out a pan, broke up the mincemeat, added the water and set the pan to boil. Then I began to gather the remaining ingredients. 

Meanwhile Chloe was walking around the kitchen trying to get her hands on anything higher than her head.  Kreed’s pears tasted good to her as long as she had only one bite per pear.  Numerous toys were brought out by her grandmother, but their interest lasted a total of 60 seconds.

In between removing Chloe from dangerous situations or removing objects I did not want her touching, I was still gathering ingredients.  This is how it went.

Shortening:  expired and rancid.  As I said, haven’t baked in a long time.  Shortening does not keep well in the Las Vegas heat.  This was unused new shortening, a little discouraging.  But then…a light bulb moment…food storage!  I had lots of dehydrated shortening, never been used and now might be a good time to learn how to use it.  So went and found the shortening, then opened the can and read the instructions.   

To the fridge to get the eggs. While on P90X I have used only egg whites in the carton.  You guessed it, the eggs were expired (by only 2 weeks).  Ah, but I have dried eggs in food storage too. Went and dug those out of storage and opened the can.  I now know that 3 eggs are equal to ¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons and 1 ½ teaspoon of dried eggs and equal part water.  You have to whisk this together.  Finally into the mixing bowl with the sugar shortening and eggs. 

Now to get the flour out.  I grind my own.  You guessed it.  There was not enough to make 2 batches of cookies.  I now had to grind more wheat.  In the meantime, the bug man showed up to spray the house.  Are you serious! He is supposed to come on Monday at 9:00!. 

The condensed mincemeat was still too warm and moist when I added it to the cookie mix, so I turned that into a cake.  Tastes very good.  The second batch was made with the canned mincemeat and I did not add all it said to add.  These also turned out wonderful, they are actual cookies. 

Now that the work is done, Chloe is playing quietly with a book in her box house.  I am cleaning up and the baked goods taste pretty good. 

Lesson learned, food storage is not just for financial emergencies or natural disasters but also very helpful when you just don’t have the energy to follow a 20-month-old around the grocery store.  Because it is obvious that going into Albertson’s and picking up a couple of dozen cookies would have been a lot harder than what I just did.