Eat! You're Wasting Away!

I opened the fridge this morning to find one half of one pomegranate, two pickle jars (one pickle in one, no pickles in the other), a jar of pumpkin butter, an un-opened container of spicy brown mustard (I'm sure I had to have it), half a bag of tortillas, some left-over gravy, one bottle each of both malt vinegar and soy sauce, 6 eggs, and a tub of sourdough starter (which, to the uninitiated, doesn't look like something you'd ever want to eat.  Ever.).

 

And then I felt one of those Parental Fail moments, because that might have been the barest I've ever seen that particular chill chest since we moved in a year ago.  What the hell have I been thinking?  I mean, sure, there was a gallon of milk and some fresh fruit for the children, but....DAMN!  When you look in your fridge and the most prominent thing you see is a month-old 12-pack of Spaten (with only three left in the box), you begin to wonder about yourself, a little.

 

We live to eat another day...so startled was I by the state of my refrigerator that I immediately grabbed the sourdough starter and began making bread dough.  Then I emptied half of the contents of the freezer into the crock pot (chicken and spinach), added some navy beans and onions, and turned it on.

 

Please let the house smell like food when I get home.

 

I'm remembering a time, many years ago, when my mother came to my house to babysit and the cupboards were bare, but when I got home from work, she had concocted a hotdish from a half a bag of egg noodles and a frozen venison steak.  It was probably the most stick-to-your-ribs thing I had eaten in a month.

 

One of the surest things about me when I'm not all coupled up is that I will forget to eat, even though I love to cook.  Eating is the number one social thing to do with a mate.  Maybe you go out to eat together, or maybe, like me, you enjoy cooking for your mate.  Both women and men gain weight when they are married.  You eat.  Me?  Last night I scrounged enough stuff to make one kid a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of green beans, while the other assured me she wasn't hungry, which left me relieved because there was actually only enough cheese for one sandwich.  (Strange abundance of frozen vegetables and peanut butter, however, so, go nuts.  Um...you'll have to build that PB&J with two crusts of bread, however...) 

 

And I did not eat.  I had a cup of cocoa.  With a shot of Vanilla Stoli in it.

 

As a total contrast to that, for lunch today, I cooked.  I cooked AT the office.  True, it was microwave cooking, but cooking none the less.  None of those re-heated leftovers for me!  No cold sandwiches, either!  I started with raw ingredients, and had a delicious salmon fillet and steamed vegetables, and everything was smothered in butter and deliciously seasoned.  Why?  Because there were no leftovers, and that's the other half of what was left in the freezer.  Oh, and I had already put peanut butter on the two bread crusts and ate them while driving to work.  Cuz I forgot to eat breakfast.

 

It would be so much easier if we didn't need to eat at all...I mean, I LIKE eating, but more often than not, I'm "fueling".  Obviously, there are benefits to "fueling", as long as you're eating good food, because the pounds just drop off of you.  If more people ate that way and disregarded the eating ceremonies that our society has come to accept, we'd all be slimmer, because we wouldn't just eat when the clock tells us to.  At the same time, I shudder to think what I'm going to be like when there is nobody but me to cook for around here.  From baby to adulthood, a kid will always let you know that they are hungry, and I've kept up pretty well for the last 16 years.  For the most part, when they ate, I ate.  After they've moved away, it could get downright ugly.  Maybe a better way to look at it is that after my kids move out, I'll revert to my pre-baby weight, without all that pesky exercise.  Whatever I can do to annoy my doctor, I'm all for it.