I have to mention that I was in the hospital for a fluke incident. I went on a trip to NYC and started feeling my heartbeat for the first time in my life. I thought it was stress related to the nightmare trip. I chose not to run down 19 flights when I could not hear the elevator per my thumping heart. Anyway, the easier a recipe for those like me recovering from heart, cancer or any other serious illness, or even working parents who would rather spend time with their children than bake, the better. However, do not deprive your children of coming home to something baked in the oven -- the smell will stay with them the rest of their life. My sisters and I often talk about my Mom's recipes and I am sure some of you talk about recipes your grandparents made.
Meds do NOT appear to be working as I hoped and we need to make some adjustments. I have to be on meds the rest of my life. Wow, do I wish I had not gone on that trip -- not that it would not have happened anyway.
Then again, maybe the trip saved my life?
My Texas sister, Cecile, knowing I am writing a cookbook, sent me something easy to follow, a cookbook of dump cakes -- the cakes take the time it takes to open the can. Thanks Cecile for your thoughtfulness. The stamina, energy, zest for life that I had are gone, lets hope temporarily. I would rather not have an invasive procedure, but this too may be on the agenda. Hard to believe I was walking 5 miles per day, eating the best I could and "whammo," this happened out of the blue. I was one of the very lucky ones, my spleen took the hit. Did I know much about my spleen before this, "No," but now I eat what apleen's like as am not about to lose this million dollar organ. Thanks so much Cecile for giving me something easy to do while I work out a few complicated recipes. Guess, I am lucky I can calculate anything. If I went to dinner with someone and something like this happened to them, I would send them a get well card. I tried to send a person who went to dinner with us in NYC a Christmas thank you card, and it came back. I did not have the energy to send it a second time. A few days confined to bed in a cardiac unit can take its toll. Nothing like taking 45 minutes to walk one mile, when I used to walk 5 in and hour and a half. Life has surprises and one never knows what is around the corner? All I can say is I am lucky to be here making dump cakes and writing a cookbook that I hope will be useful to those on special diets.
Fascinating, I had not planned to put gluten-free recipes in my cookbook, but now that I read the spleen does not like wheat, I am including alternatives to wheat. Yes, gluten-free will be included, at least in theory, in the cookbook with some ideas.
I have to fool with any recipe. Instead of using peach pie filling, I used two cans of peach slices in real juice, no sugar added. To the liquid portion of the peach juice, I added dried cranberries, hoping they might soften up and absorb some of the liquid. I put a yellow cake mix, over all, and sprinkled cinnamon over the top after doting with about half the butter suggested. Please be careful as this makes part of the mixture dry and one can easily start coughing --- coughing not something I want to start doing as this would mean additional problems. Cinnamon sometimes gives one the illusion of sweetness and it adds color to the dump cake. The dump cake kind of reminds me of a more solid type, wonderful cobbler I had at a restaurant at Cape Code once. The only thing missing is the warm whipped cream (not on my diet plan these days). My husband says this dump cake would go great with ice cream too or even nonfat coolwhip!
I dotted it with about 1/2 to 3/4 stick of real butter, sliced really thin. The recipe calls for the entire stick, but I fear putting that much fat into anything as we have been fat free for a very long time. Next time I might freeze the butter a bit to shave it thinner.
Here is the picture of the dump cake in the oven and I will include a photo when I serve it. Unfortunately, I can not eat anything cold and have much work yet to do here on earth -- I am not allowed to fly for at least one year as my lungs and spleen can not go up yet, guess I am not an angel yet. I baked it at 350 F for 45 minutes in a 9 x 14' pan sprayed with Pam
I have lots of people to forgive and help before I become and angel, but had I had the energy to get out my hand mixer, I would have made pineapple angel food cake for sure!
It has 5 minutes to go in the oven and when I walked toward the kitchen it smelled heavenly!
Has anyone tried dump cake cupcakes? That is my next project!
