Treats and goodies

My family came to visit me this past weekend "HI FAMILY" and because I never get to host people at the house I was very excited. I baked treats, I planned meals and I cleaned cleaned cleaned. I cooked ahead of time and it was well worth it. It meant that instead of planning a meal I wanted my family to eat and then spending an hour or two in the kitchen making it when they were there, I got to actually spend time with them.

My prep time was spaced out over three days which was the perfect amount of time to get things done without feeling like I was overwhelmed by work and more work. 'Three days?" You query. 'How did you get three days to do this?' Well, let's just say the three days (or really five, two of which my family was doing the visiting part with me) were forced upon me when we had to take furloughs again at work. It's okay because The Courier is actually doing okay, but Lee Inc. (the company that owns The Courier) as a whole took furloughs. I got unemployment, so basically I got a paid extra week of vacation, with just a little more stress and all that fun thrown in due to the lovely economy we all get to live with right now. Anyway, the planning.

You should have seen my starting menu. I was going to do peanut butter balls, chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon sugar muffins, chocolate cheesecake and short cakes, and those were just the snacks.

Oh yeah, in the end I just decided that chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon sugar muffins and short cakes were enough, plenty in fact. I know, three snacks for not quite two days, oh my. But I like people to have options, to have what they want and not to have to worry about running out. The chocolate chip cookies were good for any time, I thought the cinnamon sugar muffins would be a great substitute for breakfast (just like cinnamon rolls!) and the short cakes would make a lovely dessert after one of the evening suppers.

To make it even a little more challenging for myself I wanted my dad to be able to eat any of the snacks or food I made and not even have to worry one little bit about his blood sugar. Why? Diabetes. He found out that he had it a few months ago. Mom has assured me that he's doing really well, he follows the diet pretty well and knows what he can and cannot eat, but that wasn't the point. I didn't really want him to even have to THINK about it.

I had found this diabetic magazine while shopping at Fareway one day and it was full of recipes. Full. Insanely full. Did I mention there were a couple of diabetic recipes in there? There were snacks and desserts and breakfasts and sides and main meals. Meals for two and meals to be made from leftovers. It was incredible. It had all the carbohydrates listed on the recipe as well as calories, fat, protein and all the other fun stuff listed in the nutrients section of a recipe that we normally don't want to read. After finalizing my menu a little bit, I got bakin'.