The Bakery Outlet

For those of you that don't know me well, or don't know my buying habits at all: I do not buy Hostess snack cakes, or Little Debbie or anything else that is generally cake stuffed with some sort of white whipped sugar. In fact, my Mom had to introduce my children to the Ho-Ho and Twinkie during a visit last year. I secretly loved hearing my kids say "Nana, what is a Ho-Ho?!" Of course they loved the Ho-Ho's and twinkies; who doesn't? Thankfully they did not start begging for snack cakes on my next grocery store trip.

Last Friday, Jacob was home from school because he didn't feel well. He slept until noon and then woke up feeling recovered so we went out and got some soup for lunch and headed to a furniture store (one thing better than chocolate snack cakes is new furniture.) Right next to the furniture store was the Hostess bakery outlet. Mmmm...I love me some bakery outlet goodies. I used to buy all of our bread at the outlet and would occasionally pick up the bag of powdered donuts for the kids. Don't bother pointing out that powdered donuts are just as bad a white goo-filled snack cakes; I won't hear of it. So when we pulled into the outlet parking lot Jacob got excited and said "Mom, can we get some powdered donuts here too?"

Well, this bakery outlet was lined with an entire row of every Hostess snack cake made and I was having a particularly sweet tooth day. I stopped myself at 4 boxes and tried to make myself feel better by buying two things that were Lite or Low-fat. I only looked at the nutrition label once and that was on the low-fat crumb cakes; 90 calories per cake. I instantly felt better and stopped looking.Jacob and I shared an individual package of Ding-Dongs in the van before ever leaving the parking lot. I also had to pick up one of the fried fruit pies so the kids could try it; again they had no idea what it was. When J got home we talked about eating them as a kid and how delicious they were with the sugary glaze on the outside and the crunchy shell. Well, there is a reason that kids remember them fondly; it is the one thing that gets left for the kids because they taste nasty to adults!

To make this story even better we went back to the furniture store the next day so I could show J the table I want. He saw the bakery outlet and after hearing my stories of the towering snack cake pillars he needed to see too. We left with two more boxes of snack cakes and a gallon of milk. At least we came away from the bakery store with one healthy thing in two days. I am now soliciting all the neighborhood kids to have snacks at my house so I can clear the closet of these snack cakes injected with whipped high fructose corn syrup goo.