Why do I always leave finding something to wear to the Christmas Party until two days before the freaking Christmas Party?!
UPDATE: Why does the BIG FAT FREAKING GIANT ZIT always start emerging on my chin two days before the freaking Christmas Party!?
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Sometimes I wish I didn’t like food so much. I get flamingly jealous of successful losers in slimming magazines who say they don’t really have a problem with food. The fat just sort of sneaked up on them, almost by accident; the cumulative effect of too many ready meals or takeaways or pregnancies or extra glasses of wine. Crikey. They just didn’t put the same enthusiasm into getting fat that I did! Ha!
I remember some folk in my Weight Watchers meetings who said they hated fooling around with food, and were more than happy to stick to the suggested meal plans. Some ate the same cereal for brekkie, made the same sandwich for lunch, boiled and grilled the same meat and veggies for dinner every day. They’d puzzle over the WW food lists and ask, "What the hell is this vegetable? What do I with it?". I’d be wriggling in my seat, fighting the urge to spew out fifteen different ways to slice and dice it.
But I’d stay silent, not wanting to reveal my true identity of Obsessive Glutton Girl. I was envious of these so-called Boring Eaters as they tended to be successful at busting the lard. Probably because they could just consistently stick to The Plan like a machine, and not be so easily distracted by every shiny fatty thing that went by.
Variety is the spice of life but a love of variety often leads to trouble, I tells ya. I gorge on food blogs, magazines and cooking programs. I get excited about new ingredients and recipes. I love the sights, smells and goddamn sexiness of it all. I love creaming butter and sugar with a wooden spoon until my arm aches. I love sitting in front of the oven and watching a cake rise. I love bludgeoning soups with my stab blender. I love chopping herbs, hearing their little spines break beneath my knife.
I love wandering through markets, food courts and grocery stores. I love standing in front of bakery windows, slurping whipped cream from hot chocolates, reading online menus of restaurants I could never afford to eat in. Not at the same time, obviously.
I recently spent a whole ten minutes staring at a photograph of a broken-up block of chocolate.
Oddly enough I’m more interested in food living in Scotland, home of the deep-fried pizza, than I ever was back in Australia. Being so far away from home has made me more appreciative of (and nostalgic for) the wholesome fare of my childhood. Which is hilarious because at the time I hated eating meat that had once roamed our farm. I hated the weird, nobbly vegetables from our garden. I hated picking apricots and almonds. I remember sitting in the car absolutely mortified as my mother climbed a fence to raid the fig trees on the old Prisoner of War camp site in our town. I used to long for sausages in styrofoam trays, tinned fruit, and Heinz tomato ketchup instead of homemade relish.
So. I am trying to reconcile this ridiculous love of food with the need to be moderate and lose weight. I know it’s possible – just look at Argy, the Greek goddess of the kitchen. She loves food even more than I do, but her archives are littered with wholesome recipes that she has adapted from the original, less healthy versions. That lady can work wonders with a squeeze of lemon, olive oil and "loadsa herbs".
I’m training myself to be as excited by wholesome food as I am cakes or pies. I cannot make cookies without eating half the raw dough, thus I need to curb the baking until I get to my goal weight. So I’ve found some healthy things to get jazzed about. I have bought all the bits and pieces to make sushi, for example. And the other day I ordered a box of organic fruit and vegetables from a local delivery scheme, for the cheap thrill of not knowing what would be inside it, then having to figure out what to do with it.
The box arrived yesterday and it was hella cool. Clementines with the leaves still intact, sweet potatoes caked with dirt, perfectly imperfect carrots, tiny local apples, etc etc. I stared at it for ages, so overwhelmed by indecision then finally said, "Och, fuck it. I’ll just make soup."
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