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!
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