4 xii 10

Yes, I faltered out of the blocks. But here I am, back to paying attention to my diet, after resolving once again to be more disciplined in my posting.

In the morning, before hopping on the Red Line north, a few handfuls of Cap'n Crunch Crunch Berry cereal. Dry. Out of the bag. Neat.

At the South Street Diner, we had a late breakfast. Feeling sluggish, I ordered a 6 oz sirloin steak with two eggs over-easy; the red meat to refresh my hungry hemes. The consumption of mammals makes me uncomfortable. Also two pieces of raisin cinnamon toast with butter, and a hearty helping of thick-cut hom fries with ketchup. Two glasses of diet cola, one and a half of ice water. I also between a third and a half of Jenna's meal, an egg white omelette with American cheese, bell pepper, onions, and spinach. A mouthful of her raisin cinnamon toast, and some of her home fries. And, sigh, a brownie sundae. The brownies had nuts; the sundae had a scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Chocolate sauce and whipped cream were present and consumed. She had some; I had most.

I don't like my tendency to turn this blog into a record of my guilt. It isn't a confessional -- what's the confess? That I have impulsive eating habits, sometimes? I'm not the worst.

Dinner I made with Ellen Adair, a dear friend who is visiting from New York City, where she is an actress and, when she finds the time, a writer for her own pleasure. We fried crab cakes, made with claw meat, wheat crackers crushed on the spot, mayo and eggs for binder, tumeric for color and flavor, and bell pepper and onion for texture. Also a nice handful of finely chopped herbs leftover from the Thanksgiving preparations last week: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. And black pepper. I ate one cake, with a sauce made from brown mustard, mayo, and chopped parsley. Also on the plate were: a spring mix salad with saltanas and grape tomatoes with light Italian dressing; a scoop of last Thursday's cranberry-apple-orange peel relish; and a hash made from leftover ham, mushrooms, potatoes, and onions. I also had two pieces of very nice bread with oleo. Three (!) cans of Coke Zero, and a glass of Martinelli's apple cider with a splash of pinot grigot.

Dessert was a ginger shortbreat, made with light brown sugar, almond oil, ground ginger, butter, flour, and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I had, oh, about half of the one-sixth slice I brought upstairs to Jenna the Studious, when I also gave her the framed print I made for her for her birthday. Cake and art: am I not the best? Confession, I am the best.

Resumption

I regret not having kept up with this. There have been some good meals recently, which I should have liked to record. One day's lunch, when S.T. shared his leftovers from the previous evening's classroom dinner, was Persian: flat bread, salad-e shirazi, khoreshteh bamieh, roast chicken, and polo, or boiled rice, though with none of the tasty crusty rice from the bottom of the pan, tah-deeg -- I suspect Sassan ate all of it, leaving none for me. Then there was Thanksgiving: a starter course of crab cake and msclun salad with Caesar dressing; a corn chowder with haddock; then the Big Show, roast turkey and apple-cranberry stuffing, boiled corn, sweet and sour stewed cabbage, whipped squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry-orange relish, french bread, Durkee green bean casserole, spiral-cut ham. And of course the days before and after of holiday eating: snacks and pie and pudding and so on to excess.

So, back on track, with today's consumption to be detailed tonight after the last meal is eaten. 

Hunger knows no friend but its feeder.

Breakfast on the train: two pieces of toast with peanut butter and banana. I also had another bottle of Hannaford Kiwi Strawberry Sparkling Water. A bite of blueberry muffin left over from the Sunday evening's dinner at Cracker Barrel, and one stale leftover pancake.

A lukewarm Snapple, light green flavor.

I felt nauseated before my optometrist appointment, so I stopped a Starbucks at Copley Place to pick up a sandwich (tarragon chicken salad) and an Izze (clementine).

Lunch was a windfall sourced by J.: a cup of diet Coke, a slice of cheese pizza from Bertucci's, and a room-temperature dipped in salad dressing.

Dinner was leftovers from the office fridge: two chicken wings from the Chinese-American menu; a cup and a half of pork fried rice; a few spoonfuls of vegetable jambalaya; the rind of that slice of blueberry pie from the day before. Not a terrific lot of food, but with all that rice it felt like a big meal. All with a bottle of water, and another of diet Mtn Dew., And a honeybun from the Campus Convenience store across the street, since I was feeling low and wanted a pick-me-up.

But the story doesn't stop there! At nine I went to the House of Blues to see my friend play with East Coast Soul. I thought it was acceptable to have a snack, so I ordered a pan of their rosemary cornbread. It was great when warm -- fragrant and light. We put some Cholula chipotle hot sauce on it.I also ordered a diet cola.

When J. arrived, she hadn't eaten, so I ordered her some items from the cheap game day menu: a cheese panini with fries, a half-dozen oysters for the table, and at her request, an order of buffalo wings. I ended up eating three-quarters of the sandwich muself, and a third of the fries, and half the buffalo wings, and three of the oysters. Three refills of cola.

I am discouraged by the impulsiveness I showed today.

A day

Breakfast was waiting on the friendly counter when I managed to rouse myself downstairs. I ate on the drive to Boston: two pieces of toast with peanut butter and banana. A bite of fresh strawberry (no me gusto las fresas). A bottle of a unique and pleasant beverage, Hannaford Kiwi Strawberry Sparkling Water.

At eleven, a coffee break with scientist-friend Martha: a bottle of Ethos water at Starbucks, and a slide of pumpkin bread.

Lunch was leftover Chinese-American food with J. at the office conference room table:  a nibbled chicken wing, some spoonfuls of cold pork fried rice, a good cup of vegetables (me gusto el bróculi). A few bites of a rather confused slice of blueberry pie.

A cup of water at work. A bottle of Coke Zero on the way to my medical appointment at Tufts (me requieren orinar).

Dinner was eaten on the car: a foot-long wheat sandwich from Subway, with buffalo chicken and some gunk on it I couldn't identify. Also a chocolate chip cookie shared with J., and a bag of Sun Chips. Diet cola in a waxed cup. At the Green Day concert, I had a Magner's cider in the parking lot, whose cap I had to wrench off with a key. Brute strength solves many, though not all, problems. Inside the Comcast Center, I bought and ate half of a bag of $5 Cracker Jack.

In retrospect, an underhydrated day. Also a green day. A Cracker Jack day.

A meal of unexcusability

The morning started off optimistically: without any urge to binge. Good.

I split J.'s portion of iced coffee. We thought we were going to brunch at the Asgard in Central Square with  our friendly neighborhood atheists, but the Red Line suffered great delays (over an hour with no train, and no announcements!) so we missed out. We disembarked, after finally catching a ride, at Downtown Crossing, and decided to seek out a meal in that area.

We ran into my old friend Emily Small from Isle au Haut; small world. She was munching a panini from UFood Grill; being highly suggestible, J. and I elected to follow her lead. Subsequently I enjoyed my Southwest Turkey sandwich: turkey, sliced; turkey, baconed; tomato; some kind of sauce; flat hot crispy chewy bread. And an order of baked sweet potato fries, a diet cola (two cupfuls), and my half of a chocolate-peanut butter smoothie. Health food! But probably too much of it.

At North Station, wanting not to be left on the train to Lunenburg without sustenance, we got a small vanilla Coolatta and a chocolate chip chunk cookie. We split the drink evenly, but the cookie was mostly my responsibility.

A can of Coke Zero in the car on the way to dinner.

Dinner at Cracker Barrel in Sturbridge was not a proud moment. In retrospect, I believe I wanted to avoid seeming finicky in front of my two old high school friends Kim and Jeff. So I went whole hog (cf.: "pigbelly") and ordered Grandpa's Country Fried Breakfast, consisting of two eggs cooked to order (over easy, mine), with grits (I mix in an egg with broken yolk, and salt and pepper), buttermilk biscuits, a spadeful of "hashbrown casserole," and a portion of friend fried chicken with more gravy. J. gave me her bacon, probably just to marvel at my ever-moving maw. I drank diet cola, since irony is a good condiment.

The spirit is willing; but the stomach is weak.

A bowl of Fruity Pebbles and Frosted Toasters, mixed in roughly equal portions, with 2% milk. Incongruously, I also ate two leftover pork ribs before leaving the house. I suppose I didn't want to seem like a pigbelly at the picnic later that afternoon. Or, on some thrifty impulse, I wanted to eat them before they went bad. Bizarre.

Camilo drove over to pick us up, so J. and he and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I had half of a vanilla kreme [sic] doughnut, and a sip of her iced latte.

At the picnic, I kicked things off with a plate of pasta salad, turkey kielbasa, our potato salad, and a cracker with goat cheese. A bit later, I snatched up a chicken patty from the grill, and made a sandwich of it on a generic white bun with a smear of boursin cheese spread. After the desserts were brought out, I had two chocolate chip cookies and a half-cup of rainbow sherbet. I drank three cans of Fresca during the afternoon. Let's not forget the half of a black-and-white cookie which J. bequeathed me in a show of appreciably unconventional baked good largesse. Also a plastic cup's worth of white wine mixed with apple cider.

Unexpectedly, we felt peckish before meeting Julie at the movies that night. I ate perhaps three generic wheat Ritz-type crackers on the way to the train. And before we stepped into the cinema, the three of us stopped at McDonald's. I had a Southern-style chicken sandwich and a small diet cola. This sandwich is as close to pure candy as I can think of in non-confectionary form. To be more accurate, I really had five-eights of the sandwich; the girls each had a bite or two. And murmurs of gladness were heard.

During the movie, I finished not more than half of a large bag of popcorn, and a bucket of Coke Zero. It could have been a gallon. Certainly it felt that way. "Eat, Pray, Love, Pee."

It doesn't stop there. In high spirits we stumbled over to Peach Tree on Tyler Street in Chinatown. From all we ordered, I ate perhaps half again as much as I should, maybe more -- chicken and corn soup; a really fine sweet-and-sour chicken; shrimp with cashew nut; pork fried rice (I had none of this); and scallion pancake. This, with hot tea and diet cola.

I want to bed contrite, overfed, and a bit despairing. It is normal to eat more than one's appetite demands at social occasions, sure; but I really have to learn to push back against this tendency, when I have a day like today stacked with such events.

My reheated life

Two slices of wheat bread, toasted, with oleo and grape jelly. Can you believe it? I can't hardly.

An entire half-serving of coffee with Splenda and fat-free half-and-half. Usually I just get the leftovers.

For lunch, a tureenful (volume impossible to estimate) of leftover "drunken lobster" noodle dish, from J.'s lunch the day before at Tavern on the Water: artichokes, tomato concasse, Parmesan, lobster meat, and cavatappi. A bottle of diet Mtn Dew. A few bite of J.'s leftover vegetable jambalaya from the previous evening's dinner. A third of a bag, and not more, truly, of Cape Cod Five Cheese potato chips. These were oversalty and underdelicious.

A bottle of water during the afternoon.

Dinner at Panera: low-calorie chicken noodle soup, a hunk of baguette, half of their Sierra Turkey sandwich. Tabasco in the soup, and lemon in the diet cola. I admit that the clerk convinced me to take her up on their $0.99 deal for a bakery item. I am helpless before the chocolatine. I refilled the soda cup twice. Why did I need so much? Because I felt a strange compulsion, and obeyed it, to share a slice of coffee cake and a blondie with J. I had half of each. We are complicit in the crime.