BulgingButtons

Not bad for a fat girl

Tag Archives: Food


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Who WAS the First Guy to Eat Lobster?

Lobster_whitetablecloth_442Last night my sweetheart took me out for an early birthday dinner date. We went to this funky old seafood restaurant and I indulged. Every few years I have lobster for my birthday dinner, and this was one of those years. No, it’s not exactly on my diet, but it’s been a stressful couple of weeks, I reasoned, so I deserved it. Crazy talk, I know, but I don’t care. It was delicious. It always is. But how would you know that?

How would anyone know that within that weird and somewhat scary exterior a delicious bounty resides? Who took a look at a lobster and said to himself (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a woman), “hmmm, this looks tasty, think I’ll give it a try.” Who? Someone who was either an adventurer, or a lunatic, or on the brink of starvation. It doesn’t look like food, and it’s not exactly easily accessible without a rock or some other tool. It’s not like seals boil lobsters and eat them with drawn butter. Someone had to figure the whole thing out.

Whoever that guy is, I want to think him. As horrifying as I find the whole look of the lobster, I’m able to get past it as soon as the first sweet delicate morsel passes my lips.

I want to be like the guy who figured it out. I want to be able to see opportunities where other people see madness. I want to make a gourmet feast out of a weird and scary looking situation. I want to go beyond what is obvious and take it apart to reveal that which is magnificent. I want to be that explorer, that risk taker. I want to discover the next lobster dinner, but I don’t want to get food poisoning along the way.


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Why I Detest Grocery Shopping

Ok, I lied. I don’t detest the actual shopping part of grocery shopping, at least not most of the time. Pushing the cart around the store and filling it up with tantalizing goodies isn’t really all that awful, if that is, in fact what you’re doing. Most of the time, however, that is not what I’m doing.

Usually I’m carrying on a rather lengthly and somewhat intense inner conversation while I grocery shop. It usually starts within about 30 seconds of hitting the store. The first internal hurdle is which cart to take, and whether wiping it down with one of those stinky wet wipes is worth the potential savings in germs. I’m lazy. I take my chances.

Next I roll over to the produce aisle where I have this stupid little exchange with myself EVERY SINGLE TIME. I tell myself I should be eating more fruits and veggies. I agree with myself, and start to choose delicious fresh fruit and vegetables. grocery-cartNo big deal, right? Until I remember that there are shrivelly grapes in the fridge and I just threw away 3 greasy black bananas. I HATE throwing away food, but not as much as I hate food poisoning, so anything even remotely suspect goes straight into the trash.

Unfortunately most of the stuff that ends up in the trash is way beyond suspect. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, stuff just kind of sits around at our house. We start something, but never seem to finish it. You can find old cereal, ancient tea bags, mummified frozen raviolis, and other strange and terrifying wonders at my house. It’s not that my home is a breeding ground for experiments, it isn’t. It’s just that some things lose their appeal faster than others. Oreos, for example, rarely occupy cupboard space for more than 2 to 3 days max. Often their stay is considerably shorter. But I haven’t been buying Oreos. I’ve been buying fruit and beans and low fat yogurt and sandwich thins. For some reason those items seem to linger.

The trip to the grocery store just underscores the futility of my efforts. I try to buy things that are good for me, but I don’t really enjoy them, so far too often I end up eating out and throwing them away. There’s a great deal of guilt involved with the whole exercise. I waste food, I waste money, and I don’t eat what I know I ought to. Yet, I do it again and again, because you have to buy food, right?

I need to take a step back, plan out meals again (yes, I do have this skill, and I also have months worth of e-meals if I don’t feel like doing it myself), and shop accordingly. But man, that’s a lot of work! And like I said, I’m lazy.

Enough ranting for one night. Time to suck it up and start that grocery list. Tomorrow I go in, and I want to be prepared.


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You Can’t Hide a Sonoran Hot Dog, At Least Not From the Scale

8370380481_1b40089c4b“What’s a Sonoran Hot Dog?” you ask.

It’s pure genius. For those of you who like hot dogs (and I imagine that’s most of you) this is a wonderful South of the Border twist. It’s a hot dog served with chilis, pinto beans, tomato, cheese, and mayo. Mmmmm. I know it may not sound all that great, but trust me, it’s fantastic. Oh, and did I mention that it’s typically wrapped in bacon? Yeah. It is.

Now in my defense, the dog I had yesterday was only based on a Sonoran Hot Dog. It was lacking the bacon. It did, however, have everything else, and it was fabulous. So was the steak dinner complete with baked potato and wine and half a piece of lemon cake, and so was the dinner at the fondue restaurant. Oh, and the drinks from Starbucks and that croissant, and the ice cream cone and the tacos and beer and the oatmeal cookie and the piece of cake at the baby shower. It was all fabulous. And it was all a mistake.

I know I messed up, but for some reason I kept messing up. I needed to go to my Weight Watchers meeting and assess the damage so I could start doing damage control. I knew I gained back some of the 15 pounds I lost, but I didn’t know how much. I braced myself. There was no point in waiting any longer. I wasn’t going to magically change my ways without a kick in the rear. So, steeling myself, I went. I got on the scale expecting the worst, and got the news. Yes, I gained. But here’s the bizarre part… it was less than two pounds!

How did that happen? It must be all the physical activity I’ve been doing recently. That’s all I can think of, because my eating has been way off track (see paragraph two). I dodged a bullet for sure, and now I get to dust myself off and start over. Every day you get to start over. It doesn’t matter if it’s weight loss, addiction, relationships, or exercise. Every day you get to begin again. I love that about life. Even if I mess up today I get to have another crack at it all tomorrow.

I did mess up today. Not just with my eating, but with my friend. We made tentative plans to have lunch together. I knew I might have to do something that would make it impossible to meet her, so I told her I would confirm. I didn’t. I just plain forgot. I forget things so I set reminders in my phone. Well, for some reason my phone decided to do nothing but act as a clock for several hours. I missed the reminder. I missed her text messages. I missed the lunch. I wouldn’t have been able to meet her anyway, but I needed to let her know. I felt like a heel. Lucky for me, she’s a good friend and very forgiving. Now I need to be as forgiving to myself and my dear friends are to me.

Don’t we all deserve to treat ourselves as we would treat our closest friends? We wouldn’t beat them up (verbally I mean) for making a mistake, would we? But we do hold them accountable. We aren’t doormats, but we do forgive and move on. I think I need to remember that as I work to be my own best friend more often than my own worst enemy.