Peanut Butter Cream Pie for Mikey (and Low Fat for Jeremy)

I truly enjoy writing my blog(s), in spite of the fact that I've been MIA quite a bit in the last year or so (I promise that's over). I love to write, but even more than writing, I love to read. I had my nose in a book throughout my entire childhood (much to Dad's chagrin since he thought a farm girl should spend more time OUTSIDE). I was such a dorky bookworm that my favorite thing ON EARTH was a trip to the bookstore.  I'd burn through books so fast that I'd be out of reading material before we'd even get home from the bookstore. I had a thirst for knowledge and I wanted to know MORE. More about everything... except science. Everybody knows science sucks and is lame and is boring. Totally. (Editors Note: This opinion has nothing to do with the fact that science is the only class I didn't get As in. No matter how hard I tried. Because science sucks.)

As an adult, blogs have replaced Nancy Drew and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle in my reading repertoire. I have a whole list of blogs that I check on a regular basis: Alinea at Home (the sequal to my all time favorite blog, French Laundry at Home), Bookslut, The Old Hag (I want to be Lizzie Skurnick when I grow up), and then a whole host of food blogs.

You all already know how much I love to cook. One of the blogs I drop by on a regular basis is In Jennie's Kitchen. Jennie is living out the dream I don't have the guts to live - she became a lauded personal chef (by the New York Daily News, CNNf and Time Out New York no less!) in 1999 at only 23 and then entered the New York City restaurant scene and has worked with Tom Colicchio and Alain Ducasse (my fellow foodies will know how impressive that is).

I dropped by her blog Sunday night to find incredibly heart-wreching news. The week before, on August 7 at 5:52 PM, Jennie's husband's heart stopped beating. Mikey suddenly collapsed to the floor and died of a sudden heart attack. He was Jeremy's age. I gasped and then started sobbing immediately. I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them and cried with the ugly face. I was struggling for big gulps of air and starting to feel my lips go tingly because I was beginning to hyperventilate. This is my greatest fear. This has been my greatest fear for the last 372 days. Thank goodness I was alone. I don't have a pretty or dainty cry, people.

Just three days prior a group of friends gathered with us to celebrate Jeremy's "Heartaversary". On Thursday, August 11, 2011, it had been one full year since Jeremy's heart surgery. I had every intention of writing a blog about that dinner, about what we had, about fnding healthy food choices when dining out and how this experience has changed the dining experience for us. But when I read about Mikey I lost all inspiration for a light-hearted and celebratory blog post. That can come later.

As I clicked back through Jennie's blog, I saw that she had asked her friends and family who kept asking what they could do to help to make a peanut butter cream pie. Peanut butter cream pie was Mikey's favorite and she asked everyone to celebrate Mikey's life by making a peanut butter cream pie for someone you love on Friday, August 12 and then "hug them like there's no tomorrow because today is the only day we can count on".

I then started visiting other blogs I enjoy and saw that many of them had posted about making peanut butter cream pies that Friday for Mikey. The blog world really is a small world, isn't it? So many of these other blogs I read also read one another. But then I googled "peanut butter pie for mikey" just to see who else had done it, and I saw that even CNN's food page Eatocracy made a peanut butter cream pie for Mikey.

I've never met Jennie. She doesn't know me and it's very unlikely that we'll ever meet. But I sobbed for her. I sobbed for her and her kids and for myself.

I'm a week late, and for that I apologize, but here's my peanut butter cream pie for Mikey.

I've made peanut butter cream pie a few times in the past, so I had an old recipe. I did a few searches for low fat peanut butter cream pie and didn't see anything too terribly exciting. So I decided to just use the old one I had in my recipe box (I have no idea where it came from) and try to make it low fat. It's ridiculously easy:

Heather's Low Fat Peanut Butter Cream Pie

9" premade cookie crust (I use chocolate)

4 oz fat free cream cheese

3/4 cup Splenda

1/2 cup Better'n Peanut Butter

1/2 cup skim milk

1/2 tub fat free frozen whipped topping, thawed

Beat together cream cheese and Splenda. Mix in peanut butter and milk. Beat until smooth. Fold in whipped topping. Spoon into pie crust and freeze until firm. I add a dollop of whipped cream and half a sugar free Reese's peanut butter cup. 8 servings

Nutritional Values per serving:

Calories: 198

Total Fat: 5.8g

  Sat Fat: 1 g

Cholesterol: 7.3 mg

Sodium: 328 mg

Potassium: 31 mg

Carbohydrates: 31 g

Protein: 6.3 g

Was it good? Ask Jeremy - he thought so!

Whole Foods

I enjoy food a lot - a whole lot. Not always such a good thing. But I love to cook and I love feeding the people I care about. Going to new restaurants and challenging myself to try new things - it's a passion. I'm addicted to The Food Network and have a list a mile long of culinary things I want to expore - curing my own bacon, learn to sous vide, make duck confit, etc.

With all of that having been said, it's not a passion that Jeremy shares with me. He'll eat anything I make for him, but he'll very rarely get excited about it. When Whole Foods opened it's first location here in St. Louis I was really excited and couldn't wait to go check it out. Jeremy couldn't have cared less. Thank goodness my best friend, Mary Beth, is as dorky a foodie as I am so she went with me (we even took off work and went to see the Top Chef road tour in their parking lot).

So now that Jeremy takes more interest in the food he eats, he has fallen in love with hummus. He'd had it before, but wasn't aware of how healthy is was. Now it's his favorite replacement for bean dip - or really just dip in general. He goes through so much of it so quickly, he decided he wanted to learn how to make it himself. Unfortunately, our local grocery store doesn't carry tahini (one of the main ingredients of hummus). So I suggested we head to Whole Foods and spend a little time going through the whole store.

There are a ton of healthy options at Whole Foods and I knew if he spent a little time there, he'd find a lot of new things to try. And I was right (duh).

It's for a completely different reason now, but Jeremy now has a passion about food and it's something we can share. The challenge to make something healthy and delicious at the same time isn't always easy - but we're working on it together.

I love that it took him longer to get through the store than it took me. I love that he reads the nutritional content of everything he looks at. But even more than that I love how open-minded he is about trying new things now!

See what's in the middle of our cart? It's a TOFURKY PIZZA! Seriously. It is. If I'd tried to get him to try a tofurky pizza before his surgery he may very well have left me. He would definately have laughed or scoffed or called my intelligence into question. And this was all on his own - he picked up a ton of new things to try and picked them all by himself (while I spent some serious time drooling all over the cheese counter).

So we have a LOT of new items to try and I'll let you know about each and every one of them. We plan to go back about once a month and pick up another batch of new things to try. Honestly, in a truly selfish manner, I'm incredibly excited about this. I'm excited about going to Whole Foods together, I'm excited about trying new things and I'm excited that he cares now.