Hard day at work, husband out of town, dogs bouncing off the ceiling, cat being a dick.

You know, the typical stuff.

While I have been almost boastful of my resistance to eating my emotions lately, I folded like a seven-two-offsuit hand of Texas Hold ‘Em last night.

I totally grabbed a spoon and went face first into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Cream Pie ice cream.

One bazillion calories later, I was still stressed. But damn. That was some very good ice cream.

This has been the most enjoyable weekend we’ve had in a long time, despite the fact that we were incredible dumb asses who attempted to tailgate in 106 degree heat.

The good diet news about that day was my husband and I barely ate anything at all because the heat crushed both our spirits and our appetites, and we ended up snacking on a veggie tray when we got back to our rooms. Between the exercise of wandering Lucas Oil Stadium (who I swear used the same architect as Hogwarts)  and the sweat of our three-hour sauna, we were probably at a calorie-negative on Saturday.

Good food, good friends.

So far, my husband and I have made reasonable choices with food, opting to split appetizers and not over-indulging in booze. Yesterday we went to lunch at Buca di Beppo with a group of friends. Let the carb-fest begin.

In case you are unfamiliar with this chain of restaurants, it specializes in serving Americanized Italian food family-style. So you order bowls of pasta or plates of entrees that feed the entire table. The food is very good and the portions are more than generous and, if you are counting calories and carbs, I would avoid this place at all costs.

I did my best make the good choices — skip the lasagna, stick to the chicken pasta, take only half of a stuffed chicken breast, go for seconds only on the salad, do not attack the cheese garlic bread like PacMan devours the dots.

I stopped eating when I was full.

So far, so good. Proud of myself, actually.

Then the waiter brings by the dessert tray, which features my Kryptonite — cannoli.

In case you weren’t aware, I’d cut a bitch for a chocolate chip cannoli.

Other than a few bites of my husband’s tiramasu (the bottom layer was so booze-soaked it tasted like a shot of amaretto — not that there’s anything wrong with that) the only dessert I indulged in was the cannoli.

But hey, it’s vacation. And if just make the best choices I can while still enjoying myself, then I call this a win.

I declare to the Internet that I am fighting a powerful internal demon: my insatiable and insane craving for chocolate.

Totally cliche that the fat girl loves chocolate, but this fat girl does indeed love chocolate. Always have, always will.

And my craving is so intense that I had to send my husband to pick up prescriptions for me at the store yesterday because I did not trust myself to be near chocolate.

I would have come home with an entire cake and eaten every fucking bite.

Everyone has their Kryptonite, and rich, creamy, delicious chocolate is mine.

Yesterday, we got one.

Two ovens, the bigger one convection, five burners including a bridge burner perfect for grill pans.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

In kind of an ironic turn of events, the stove was delivered on my daughter’s birthday and we already had plans to go out to dinner. So, no cooking last night. I woke up this morning and made my grocery list so I could bring home all kinds of wonderful food to cook…and I have a terrible stomach ache. Can’t leave the house long enough to go shop for food, nothing sounds good anyway.

{{{SHAKES FIST AT THE CRUEL BITCH THAT IS FATE}}}

So I just scarfed down a couple of Pepto Bismol tablets and plan to hit the store as soon as they solve whatever is wrong in my gut.

I plan to make a dish tonight that will require using as many burners and ovens as possible: A deconstructed lasagna made with penne pasta, roasted veggies, a little seasoned meat and baked with Italian cheeses. Not only is this little macaroni bake da bomb, it will let me fire up the stove and at least one oven.

Then maybe I will bake some cookies or a cake in the convection oven JUST BECAUSE I CAN!

Bwhahahaha!

Not only does this help with portion control, the presentation is so lovely you feel like you are eating something special. To me, that makes even lean and healthy food seem more satisfying.

She made me this bento, which includes tuna, quinoa, strawberries, carrots, corn and pickles. It’s like eating the rainbow. And it’s almost as fragrant as it is pretty.

But what about the taste?

Delicious. Much better than any frozen meal, for sure.

I scarfed down the pickles as an appetizer. The tuna and quinoa, mixed with peas and rice wine vinegar, was slightly spicy and filling (think of it as an Asian tuna salad.)  The corn and carrots were a nice side dish and the strawberries – although out of season – were summer-like sweet and a great treat for a finish.

She even included nutrition info that indicates this entire lunch is 350 calories and only 4 grams of fat.

It’s good to have good friends.

The idea was to artfully stage this event and use all the techniques I taught myself learned in class this semester. This would include use of light, motion, reflection, depth of field, etc.

I never realized how many batches of cookies I would have to make to get a cohesive narrative out of the process.

I love me some chocolate chip cookies, but it’s gonna be a good long while before I ever want to eat them again.

To view the narrative, click here.

By the way, moments after this photo was taken, I began to download the images from my camera. Then I hear this slurping sound. I look down the table at the plate full of cookies to find my cat licking everyone of them in a “this one’s mine and this one’s mine and that one too” sort of way.

Good thing for him I have lost my appetite.

But dessert? That makes me happy everywhere else.

Yesterday I had to test drive a recipe for a pumpkin cake for work. (Really long story, but basically I got to work from home baking a cake while writing a column. Pretty much the best day of work in the history of employment.)

The cake was a partial success. The batter contained meringue, and as careful as I thought I was in folding and handling the cake, it fell when I got it out of the oven. No matter. It tasted great.

But I digress really, because yesterday’s cake doesn’t matter. I took it to work and the vultures co-workers devoured it in minutes.

Tonight, I am making chocolate cherry bread pudding.

Chocolate.

Cherry.

Bread pudding.

FTMFW!!!!1!1!

Recipe to follow. Photos too. It just makes me joyful to create something this wonderful.

Seriously, it’s slap-your-grandma good. Which is a weird phrase because, really, what could make you so happy that you’d want to act violently toward your grandmother?

But there it is. Creamy, sweet but still light, and very, very tasty.

However, this is an old family recipe. And not my family, I am afraid. The friend who gave to me made me SWEAR it would never be on the Internet.

So I must abide by that promise.

So this is a banana pudding tease.

I swooned.

Of course, I had to try it out with my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The recipe is:

1 1/2 cups of flour (the foundation of baking)

1/2 tsp baking soda (the riser)

1/2 tsp salt (for flavor enhancement)

1 stick of softened buttah (not margarine or any crappy substitute. Real artery-clogging, Paula-Deen-loving BUTTAH)

1/2 cup brown sugar (how come you taste so good?)

1/4 sugar (the Caucasian variety, granulated, not powdered)

1 egg

3/4 cups chocolate chips

The buttah needs to be soft. If it must be microwaved, just nuke it a little. Hot buttah could end up cooking the egg when its added and that is a good thing at breakfast, but so not a good thing in cookies. Put the sugars and the soft, room temp buttah in the spiffy new mixer and whip them into a cream.

Now pour in the egg and BEAT IT.

Add the soda and salt to the flour, give it a wicked good stir and pour it into the spiffy new fabulous mixer. It even comes with a fantastic removable spout guide that helps you stuff while the beater is in motion. This helps prevent the flour from flying back at the pourer. I didn’t use it here. I just poured the dry ingredient in very slowly.

Once the dough is mixed, fold in the chips by hand because they are sensitive and may be traumatized in the mixer. I use a teaspoon to dole out the cookies and I get about three dozen out of this recipe. I always use AirBake aerated cookie sheets. The are a layered sheet that allows air to pass under the cookies and it keeps them from getting burned on the bottom. They cost a few more dollars than a regular cookie sheet, but seriously, they sheets are worth the investment.

Now, the official recipe says to leave them in the oven for 10 t0 12 minutes. I say pshaw. That is far too long. I like my cookies soft, so I pull them at no more than eight minutes,  often at the seven minute make, just when the very edges are barely brown. They still look like they are mostly dough but that’s OK. They will firm up as they cool, but they will be perfectly moist and soft.

This is what they looked like minutes before we poured a glass of milk and devoured them.