Making Do the Best You Can

Whether in hockey or in life, you strive for the best, but sometimes you must make do with the best you can do.  For example, my son's hockey team doesn't have a full-time goalie--this caused much consternation in our association:  should we then have three teams or two really large teams; if we create a third team how will the goalie situation work; without a full-time goalie will the team be non-competitive and what effects will that have on the team?  These and many other questions were raised at the start of the season.

And like many things in life, we just plugged ahead.  A third team was created so that the players could have better playing time.  There were two boys on the team who had played goalie in the past and were willing to share that responsibility.  And, I think most of the kids on the team have the attitude that they are here to play their hardest and if they lose games because of the goalie situation, well, that's just life.

Kind of like low carb cooking and (for me especially) baking.  Changing to a low carb style of cooking hasn't really affected our meals.  If the boys still want bread or mashed potatoes, well, I make that too and give it to them with dinner.  But the matter of baking and baking treats is something I've really taken quite seriously.  While I've never been a baker, circumstances in my life (including the changeover to low carb) have made me decide I want to control more of the food my family eats.  And that extends to the treats my boys eat.

I've started trying to bake grain-free and sugar-free with little success thus far (NOTE:  Success is defined as it tastes good to both me and my boys.  If it's not a treat then why bother baking treats, right?).  So, I've taken an incremental approach--what's the best I can do right now?  Right now that means dialing back, but not eliminating, the carbs:  cutting the flour in half and replacing the other half with nut or seed flours; and cutting the sugar by half or two-thirds and replacing the rest with sucralose or erythritol.  Is this ideal for my boys?  No.  But it's the best I can do right now and I continue to experiment (like, replacing some of the butter with peanut butter appears to improve the overall texture of the cookies, if a slightly peanuty taste is acceptable and compatible with the other flavors).  Just as I'm sure there will be some changes to our goalie strategy over the course of the season, I'm sure there are going to be more changes in my baking strategies for my boys.  I think the key for me is that I'm doing SOMETHING and I'm moving in the right direction AND the boys are enjoying the results just as much.