Crazy for Coconut

 I think I’ve blogged before about how sometime the little things are the most important things.  Well, sometimes the little things are also the most frustrating.  

I am craving coconut pie.  I have no idea why because it has not been on my top 10 foods that I would want for my last meal  if I were on death row facing exectution.  Those top 10 are as follows in no particular order :

Tippins Chocolate Pie

Maylons (a restaurant in Muskogee) Potato Salad

Stuffing –forget the turkey, I want the stuffing

Pot roast

Texas Roadhouse Sirloin steak

Cheese biscuits from Red Lobster

Potato Skins

Chocolate peanut caramel clusters

Cheesecake factory’s chocolate coconut cream cheesecake

Red beans (but only on the top 10 list if they were made by  my mom cause no one could make red beans like she did)

Of course, you can see from the list that with the exception of the roast and steak I am up a creek because none of these things are not diabetic friendly.  Of course, if I were about to die I wouldn’t care. 

Ok so back to my story…..i have been craving coconut pie like crazy.  I have looked at the carb content on most coconut pie recipes and discovered that even one slice (which is like eating one m&m) would send me to the ER or at the very least use up a weeks supply of insulin.  So….I pulled out the diabetic cookbook and checked recipes, all of which had weird ingredients I didn’t care to eat, like cream of tartar???.  So I googled and found a video of a guy making a lo carb coconut cream pie in a blender. Bingo!!! Easy, huh?  I watched the video, made a mental note to buy some cream which was the only ingredient I didn’t have, went to the store and got the cream after church today and this afternoon set out to make my pie.

One by one I put ingredients into the blender.  Until I got to baking powder.  Which I assume I have because its one of those things that you have in your cabinet for like 20 years and never use.  Alas, I had none.  Joe, I asked…”how important do you think a ¼ teaspoon of baking powder is?  " Pretty important,  he said,  if they put that on the recipe."  " But I don’t have any",  I said.  To which this dear sweet man who obviously has a death wish replied “that’s why when I start a job, I make sure I have all the tools.”.  Choosing to ignore his “insensitivity” I googled “how important is baking powder in a recipe” only to find the answer I didn’t want to hear.  ESSENTIAL.  Crap!  How can ¼ of anything be ESSENTIAL?  

So then I googled substitutes for baking powder.  Substitue one:  baking soda (which I have though I think its in my closet at the moment absorbing shoe odor lol..just kidding, I have a box in the cabinet too!  To that you add molasses.  What the heck is molasses.  Do they even make molasses?  I thought that was like lye soap, something from the 20’s.  Double crap.  OR the site went on to say, you can use baking soda and cream of tartar.  What the heck is that?  I have tartar sauce.  Is that the same thing? Somehow didn’t seem like it would be.  Scatch that.  OR buttermilk and baking soda and citrus juice.

Would plain milk and diet sprite work?  Triple Crap.  Trip to the store.  Joe must be feeling very frisky today because he actually asked if I had examined the whole recipe and made sure I had everything else I needed.  I ignored him, drove to the Dollar Store, Kum and Go AND the Family Dollar only to discover that they don’t have baking powder.  Why would they?  I can’t imagine people needing it that often.  So I had to break down and drive to the grocery store.

I enter the store only to be taunted by the table of coconut pies as you enter. $3.99!!! Begging me to just get it over with and buy one and to heck with baking powder and all that stuff.  I hold it over my head to examine the carbs…because I didn’t think flipping it over to look at the label was a good idea though in my present state of frustration I considered flipping every last one just to irritate the non-diabetics who could eat the fricking pie with a gazillion carbs!!!!

On to the baking aisle where of course the only baking powder they have is the gigantic 16 oz size and one poor pitiful dented store brand 8 oz size but remembering something about dented cans in the recesses of my brain I went with the large size which cost more than the pie! 

At the register, the checkout girl asked what baking powder was and I gave her an earful about how even though most recipes only call for an 1/8 of a teaspoon it is ESSENTIAL to coconut pie.  To which she replied “our coconut pies are on sale today and cheaper too.”  Whatever!  

Side note:  when making last minute trips to the store in the middle of a recipe to get an ingredient you are mad about having to have you don’t necessarily care if your hair is combed, your clothes match or you have bad breath.  And so who do you run into at the store? Not the ex-boyfriend but his non-diabetic skinny wife.  Which required some quick aisle hopping to avoid her directly.  I hate that!  Had to wait 10 minutes for her to get off the aisle I needed before I could make a run for the baking powder and  the register where I looked like an escaped lunatic hiding from the police with my eyes darting around to make sure she wasn’t coming to check out behind me.

Ok, so home again I take a deep breath, walk inside, smile at Joe and proceed to the kitchen which feels like 150 degrees now because the oven has been pre-heating for at least an hour while I have my adventure.  So I strip off my shirt and shorts and proceed with my recipe.  Joe offers a tentative “whatcha doing honey?” I’m sure thinking I have totally flipped out.  I’m hot, I’m cranky and don’t even think about eating any of this pie I said…He backs out of the kitchen nodding….and logs onto a video game.  Good thinking.

One by one I assemble the ingredients into the blender until I come to 1/3 cup splenda.  I have the splenda.  I have a ¼ cup measuring cup, I have a cup, I have a ½ cup measuring cup and I have a 2/3 cup measuring cup.  I don’t however have a 1/3 measuring cup.   A curse word explodes from my mouth.  What’s wrong honey? says Joe from a safe distance.  I don’t have a 1/3 measuring cup and I hate math and if ¼ teaspoon is all important in this pie then I can’t over or under measure.  I think at this point my blood sugar level has dropped to the point I am delirious.  "Yes we do" he says.  "Yes we do what? "I ask.  "Have a 1/3 measuring cup. " " Where? I ask.  Well, GENERALLY, he says you keep it with the others. " What are you saying” I ask."Just that sometimes you put things in strange places…………………No Pie for you I say.  And begin to look for the 1/3 cup which I find in the coffee canister along with the coffee measuring cup.  That’s not THAT Strange is it? 

So now the pie is in the oven.  In 3-4 hours which is a lot more time than I want to wait  I will have a coconut cream pie with 4 net carbs per slice which means if I eat the whole pie which may very well happen I’ll have 32 carbs.  Just kidding!  ER trip is not on my agenda today.  

And now in my cabinet sits a 16 oz. can of baking powder which according to the label is 766 ½ teaspoon servings which means I will be dead before I ever have to buy baking powder again.  

And as for Joe, dear sweet Joe, well he redeemed himself by acting as if a ranting, overheated, stripped down to underwear baking wife in the kitchen was nothing out of the ordinary.  So he can have a slice.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.