The Emotion of Food

Turns out food is actually an emotion.

I didn't know this until I started compiling a menu for weight loss.

See, at work we just released a new weight loss product, and on our website we're going to have all these resources for people trying phase 2 of New Year's Resolutions, where you realize it's March and you haven't actually started, and then, motivated by crushing guilt and post-Valentine's chocolate weight, you spend a couple weeks buying weight loss products and thinking about cooking from weight loss menus, before deciding that, Hey! You lost 2 whole pounds! You're doing just fine, and should probably celebrate those 2 pounds with Bavarian cream donuts.

Because you've earned it.

Anyway, the menu I'm compiling comes from a book that lists what you should eat for a 2,000 calorie diet, and then has modifications for 1600 and 1200 calories.

Wow.

So much emotion. I never knew food could rip into my heart like that.

Let me give an example.

My first reaction, as I see strictly proscribed breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner (yes, your snacks are proscribed for you... and you only get one) is a sort of dread. But... what if I want two snacks? What if I get hungry at 10:37 AM, and it's not time for lunch yet? What about second breakfast? Elevensies? Afternoon tea? Supper?

I don't think the guy who wrote this book knew about second breakfast.

My next reaction varies, depending on the menu item. When I get to snack, and it says "Cottage Cheese, Pear, Walnuts," I sort of gag a little in my mouth.

I'm sorry, but a "snack" is a brownie with ice cream on it, followed by a bag of fruit snacks. If you're feeling creative, put the fruit snacks on the ice cream. If you're feeling virtuous, use one of the Fiber One brownies that has enough fiber in it to make you feel like you're eating something healthy, and then confirms your personal health-choice by making you gassy enough to stave off the planet's energy crisis. Don't give me this 4 oz. of no-salt cottage cheese and a tablespoon of walnuts crap.

Then I get to dinner. Roast chicken breast, baked potato, honey glazed carrots, salad, and frozen yogurt.

What happens in my heart? Relief! Oh, the joy! Listen to those menu items! Roast chicken breast? Into my head immediately pops one of those rotisserie chickens from the deli section of the grocery store. Like, a whole chicken. Baked potato? Mmmmmm! Butter and cheeeeeeeese!!!! Honey glazed carrots? You know, I had a roommate who made the most perfect version of those I have ever encountered. Salad... meh. Sure. Have your greens, I guess. But it'd better be a Caesar salad with Parmesan cheese and croutons. Frozen yogurt? Now we're talking! TCBY, baby!

Oh... but I'm not recording the 2,000 calorie version.

No, I start going through the details and portions on the items. You only get 3 oz. of chicken breast, and it's a breast with no... anything. Just chicken. No sauce. No glaze. Not even the skin.
Same with the baked potato. Not even butter. Just potato. Oh, and if you're doing the 1200 calorie version, you only get half a potato.
The carrots still look good. You can have a full cup of those.
The salad... not Caesar. And you only get a single, tiny tablespoon of dressing.
The frozen yogurt? 1/2 a cup. That's it. And if you're on the 1200 diet, nothing.
Seriously, nothing. No dessert at all.

Do you know what emotion this makes? Do you know what I feel?

Sadness.

Crushing, heart-heavy sadness.

The weight of all the food I can't eat sits on my chest, threatening to cave it in as I fight through the pain, reminding myself that I just have to type the menu, not adhere to it.

But food.

Food is heavy stuff.

Amish Guilt Bread

About a week and a half ago I took a little jaunt up to Idaho to visit my little brother (and by little, I mean a good 8-10 inches taller than me, depending on whether or not he's wearing his cowboy boots, and outweighing me by 80 lbs... my absolutely minuscule, tiny brother). It was his daughter's first birthday, and there was no way I was missing that party.

While I was there, little brother introduced me to a phenomenon known as "Amish Friendship Bread." It is a bread that spawns from a starter mixture that only the Amish know!!! I'm pretty sure it consists of nothing more than milk, flour, sugar, and yeast. Anyway, since only the Amish know the recipe, the only way to get your hands on this starter is by receiving it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who got it from a friend... who mugged an Amish woman in Pennsylvania just so he could get the recipe. The Amish woman didn't give him the recipe, but, being Amish, invited her assailant in, fed him a loaf of bread, and sent him away with a starter and a promise to come visit the family next Easter.

So, here's the deal. If you get the starter, you have to wait 10 days before cooking it. It has to ferment. Sounds tasty, right? Sure. Anyway, you just squish the bag a few times, add some more milk, sugar, and flour on day 5 or so, and voila. You have a bunch of bread material right there.

Then comes the tricky part. You have to add more flour, sugar, and milk, divide it up into 4 portions, keep one for yourself, and then you must give 3 portions to your 3 closest friends, or else you don't have any friends, nobody loves you, and you will never get the starter back! If it does come back, you know who your friends are.

Basically, this is Amish chain mail.

Now, for those of us who only bake when we want to, because we want to, this 10 day program has a bit of a hiccup in it. And that's... well... when day 10 rolls around, you'd better hope you're in the baking mood, because there's not much wiggle room for "I don't wanna."

Day 10 hit.

I texted my little brother, asking if I had to bake the bread right then, or if it could maybe ferment for, you know, another month. He responded that I might be able to eek another couple days out of it, but that I'd really better not wait too long.

Day 12 hit.

I started feeling guilty.

I mean, I got this from my brother, and I needed to know who my friends were, because without this friendship bread, I might have to rely on emails I stopped forwarding in 1998, and those have a tendency to curse you with bleeding eye sockets and failure in love for the rest of your life if you don't send them fast enough.

Also, the dough was emitting so much gas that the Ziploc freezer bag it was in was about to explode all over my kitchen.

So, even though I was SO NOT in the baking mood tonight, I sucked up and did it.

I added the extra milk, flour, and sugar.

The directions clearly outlined the next step: "Measure out 4 separate batters.... Keep a starter for yourself and give away the other three to friends."

I snorted. "Ha. Screw that. If I give them to friends I might get one back."

So, rather than give my dearest of friends a bag of something they have to wait 10 days to eat, and can only eat after cooking it themselves, and then risk getting one back and having to do the whole thing all over again, I simply tripled the recipe and decided to make a LOT of bread. If I actually have any friends... which I will never know, since I'm not sending out any starters... I can make them think we're friends by giving them a cooked loaf of this stuff instead.

Then came the most ridiculously complicated bread recipe I could possibly have thought of attempting. Three separate trips to the store and some misread directions later, I finally had my 2 largest mixing bowls filled to the brim with dough. Oh... and let me just include... FOUR HOURS LATER. I feel that, for not being in the baking mood, that alone is quite the monumental accomplishment.

So, I baked the bread. I rid myself of the starter. I stopped the chain mail in its tracks.

"If you send this on, and it comes back to you, you will know who your true friends are. If you do not send this on to at least three friends, you will spend four hours baking bread, and then have to find homes for 3 loaves, 2 coffee cakes, and a pan of cupcakes."

That's right. The chain mail stops here.

Does anybody want some bread?