Sugar, sugar

I love sugar. It is my drug of choice.  It ruins every healthy eating plan I've ever had.  

I can resist buttery sauces, fried items in vast array, even white bread and pasta.  But don't take my sugar away from me.

I really like Robin McGraw, talk show host Dr. Phil's wife.  She is well-known for her advice on being a wife and mother. However, I do take issue with her on one point: She swears sugar is the white devil.

It's not necessarily that I disagree with her.  It's just that I wish I could.  This very night I ate several too many handfuls (more like bathtubfuls) of Starburst jelly beans, which are definitely my favorite candy.  I know they are filtering through my digestive system, and when I fail to be active this evening they are going to gleefully transform into thigh fat. Because isn't that where all women's fat goes?

One of my resolutions, which is laughably unsuccessful considering my previous paragraph, is to use less of the white stuff.  I have been experimenting with Splenda, and I suppose it is a good substitute, if a substitute is necessary.

One Web site I love is called Hungry Girl,  and I tried this HG recipe for low-sugar Upside-Down Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake out on my sweet friend Abby and her family for dinner last night.  

Hungry Girl is great for healthy recipes and product recommendations. It really rocks and I urge you to go there if you haven't; but sometimes the end result tastes... a little TOO healthy.  I once made my husband a Hungry Girl recipe for pizza with a crust made out of Fiber1 cereal.  It tasted sort of like soggy, inflated dog food.  

So I made this cheesecake I'd never made before for company, which is always a brilliant idea.  Luckily I was able to taste it before they arrived, and I decided I just could not serve it to them without adding a little bit of real sugar.  

When you make desserts using a sugar substitute, you kind of feel like you are trying to put one over on whoever will be eating them.  It's like saying something is real when everyone who takes it in knows it is fake, like an actress trying to deny breast implants.  I just couldn't be that girl, so I added 2 Tbsp. of sugar.  

It really helped. Really.  All parties who ate the cheesecake said they enjoyed it.  Proof that you can make really yummy desserts using Splenda... or perhaps it was due to my secret additive: sugar.