Food Doof Challenge, Day 7: The Grand Finale!

Well, we made it. We went seven days and seven dinners without hitting the grocery store, and to give you the Cliff's Notes: No one starved, died, or vomited profusely while screaming my name and obscenities, alternately cursing my cooking and begging God for mercy.

In a way it got easier to cook later in the week, because I was no longer paranoid about using up the useful ingredients and not having them later in the week, because obvi, it was already later in the week. Tonight I had two packs of frozen chopped spinach and a package of fresh carrots that I needed to use before they went to the bad, as my dad says, and as usual, I had enough bakery supplies to force-feed both of us pound cake all the way to a diabeetus coma.

I decided to make a crustless spinach quiche, which is one of my favorite quick dinners, the recipe for which I can share with you in three easy-to-read sentences: Buy a box of Bisquik. Find the recipe on the side for "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie." Omit the ground beef, onion, and cheddar cheese, using in their place anything you want (meat and mushrooms have to be cooked first, but that's the only limitation I've found). I like to make this with frozen spinach, cooked and drained, and whatever cheese I have in the house, which is usually around a dozen different varieties. Tonight it was either Parmesan or Gruyere, since that was all we had left.

To go with the quiche, I sliced the carrots lengthwise, tossed them with a little butter, sugar, and spices, and roasted them. I threw together a batch of baking powder biscuits, adding Parmesan and black pepper, and voila! For the last night of the Food Doof Challenge, we had the most nutritionally-balanced meal yet. And it was actually good, which is always a bonus.

Last night I mentioned that I had one last project that I was holding out to try tonight, and it's in the oven right now. I made a cake with the cranberry sauce, and I think it might have actually baked into something other than a big pan of barf. I have a great recipe for pound cake that I make all the time, and I've added jam to it before for random flavor, so I thought, hey, cranberry sauce is like jam! I could add it to the pound cake, and maybe no one would die!

In case the cranberry pound cake turned into a kitchen disaster equal to Rachael Ray, I cut the recipe in half. As usual, halfway through putting the cake together, I forgot that I had halved the recipe, so I used the full amount of baking soda and salt. If I had any sense at all, I would take the advice that cookbooks always give, and I would write out the measurements for a reduced recipe separately, and follow THAT instead of the original recipe. But if I had any sense at all, we probably wouldn't be here.

Before I put the cake in the oven, I tasted the batter, and--yes, I tasted the raw batter. Yes, I know I could get salmonella. Yes, I know how gross raw egg is. But seriously? Cake batter, brownie batter, and cookie dough are too delicious for a little threat like a bacterial hurricane to stop me. Also, it's important to know if your baked good sucks rocks before you bake it, so that you have time to drown your sorrows and disappointment in a quart of ice cream before the terrible finished product comes out of the oven. Or, you can taste it so you can tinker with the seasonings one last time before it's too late. Whatever.

ANYWAY.

I tasted the batter, and the first thing I thought was, "*gasp*! This tastes like Christmas!" I had added the cranberry sauce (all professionally mooshed up), cinnamon, vanilla, and Chinese five-spice to the batter, and in its raw, deliciously contaminated state, it tasted like Yule-y goodness and holiday cheer. Because it takes longer to bake a pound cake than it does to grow a real human baby, I'm still waiting for my pan of Christmas cheer to come out of the oven. Stay tuned!

***ONE HOUR LATER***

CAKEWIN!!! The cranberry sauce cake is delicious. It's a Christmas miracle! It has a nice tart undertone, like Granny Smith apples, which plays nicely against the warm, holiday spiciness of the seasonings. Additionally, it does not suck. I would totally make this cake, blanket it with cream cheese frosting (which, honestly, I would put on anything, including cheesecake, cheese crackers, and actual cream cheese), and take it to a holiday meal. If anyone would like the recipe, just shoot me an email and I'll send it over.

Well, on that happy Christmas note, I declare this week of the Food Doof Challenge closed. I also declare it a success, and I invite you all to try it out, naturally requiring you to email me photos of any particularly disastrous culinary catastrophes immediately. Captions involving four-letter charmers are also welcome.

And if I've learned anything from this week, looking at the goblins that continue to haunt my pantry despite my best efforts, it is that diamonds are not forever. Excess barbecue sauce and brown rice are forever.