After much fanfare, today I finally went to the doctor to have my cholesterol checked. An inept nurse weighed me first and told me I weighed 140 lbs which was shocking because I don’t weigh 140 lbs. Then I realized she had the marker in between 100 and 150 and the small marker on really high. I fixed it and revealed my true weight: 450 lbs. I prayed this woman wouldn’t administer the needle.
She didn’t. A nice much more competent nurse drew blood and caused me little to no pain. The results will be in on Wednesday. Stay tuned for that!
The hardest part of the ordeal came the night before (last night, to be precise). I was told not to eat after 10 pm in anticipation of the cholesterol test. That would be 12 hours of not eating. How might I endure this hardship?
I decided to race the clock and throw together a pound cake at 7 pm. If I could have the cake out of the oven by 9, I would have one hour to consume as much of it as I wanted. Plus, I had a nifty new tube pan that I bought at the Broadway Panhandlers near Union Square. I used a recipe from “The Gift of Southern Cooking” but you can use any old recipe. As Giada de Laurentis on TV taught me: the term pound cake comes from the old formula for it–a pound of butter, a pound of flour and a pound of sugar. Perfect right before a cholesterol test!
So there’s the batter in the tube pan. It goes into a cold oven (this is Scott Peacock’s method) and the temperature is first raised to 225 then, after 20 minutes, up to 300 and finally, after another 20 minutes, up to 325. This lets the inside cook before the outside. Here it is out of the oven:
I then prepared Scott’s lemon butter glaze which I spooned on to the warm cake after flipping it over.
As you can see, I’d alreay cut myself a slice since–by the time everything was done–it was 9:40. I had 20 minutes to eat it.
The reason I made pound cake, really, is because it’s a great vehicle for various toppings. I saw Giada toast pound cake and then spread with marscapone, apricot preserves and amaretto. I decided to top mine with fresh raspberries:
A delicious treat, just in the nick of time. And then 12 hours of pure deprivation: I barely made it through the night. But made it I did and the results will be in soon. Who’s betting it’ll be too high? Or who thinks I’m just fine? Wagers are encouraged.
