Checking through the archives, I’ve noticed that food is most likely to get others here to write about their memories.
I just spent 10 weeks on something we called “the Edgar Initiative” because if someone says the word “diet” in front of me I insert my head into a bag of chocolate peanut clusters from Eddie’s and refuse to come up for air.
So here’s what I’ve had since I hung the dress up in the back of my closet. Not that I plan never to fit into it again, just that I plan to have a little fun for a week. Here’s my idea of fun.
Friday: A Wendy’s cheeseburger
Sunday: A poppyseed bagel with cream cheese.
Monday: Pommes frites at Petit Louis. (I believe these to be the greatest french fries available in all of Baltimore.)
Tuesday: Pizza.
Wednesday: A Coca-Cola!
Also, there were some Otterbein cookies in the mix. (Local bakery, makes better chocolate chip cookies than I can make and I bake a pretty good cookie.) I’m pretty much done now and, truth be told, the meals sprinkled among these indulgences have been disgustingly healthy, but I think I’m healthier for having had a few treats.
So, if you’ve been deprived for any reason — an “initiative,” being a “Survivor” competitor, travel to a country that didn’t have your favorite foods, whatever — what’s the very first thing you ate the day the deprivation ended?
And, yes, I know this blog has been a little manic lately, but it’s going to be thin pickings here come June.
Hamburger on a bun as soon as Passover ended! June
I do okay with diets, but I am literally allergic to exercise. I start sweating, get short of breath…
French fry memory:
During the summers when I was maybe 8 or 10 my father would occasionally take me to work with him. He was a salesman that called on people/places all around the Phoenix area. I remember how excited I would get when we’d go to a place called Fountain Hills. It’s what they call a “planned community” meaning a building came in created the thing.
After I’d fidget around while dad called on his customers we’d go to lunch at this place… crap, I can’t remember the name. The “Horny Toad” or some Arizonaish name like that. Anyway, my memory of this place was the french fries.
They were the crinkle cut kind and they’d be delivered in this H-U-G-E bowl. I mean, I could do laps in this thing. More fries than mom would ever let me eat in one sitting.
Years later, like 15 or so, I was in Arizona for a visit and found myself near Fountain Hills. I drove up into the community looking for the restaurant and drooling over the thought of my first H-U-G-E bowl of fries in nearly two decades.
I found the place – still right there where I remembered it, same sign out front, everything. I couldn’t slam my car into park fast enough.
I ran inside, sat down and asked if they still served the crinkle cut fries in the giant bowls. “Yes,” came the reply.
This was going to be one of the greatest meals of my life. I order a bowl of fries and a Coke. The Coke arrived first, and then the fries were presented…
In a standard-sized cereal bowl. “WTF?” I asked. (I’m paraphrasing). “What happened to the H-U-G-E bowls they used to come in?”
The woman, who turned out to be the wife of the late owner, told me they had been serving fries in these very same bowls for twenty-two years.
Apparently, they just seemed bigger at the age of 8.
Or maybe it was just being with my dad?
I never went to summer camp until I was 34 years old. I spent a week at a songwriting workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebck, NY – a fabulous, life-affirming experience, one of those lines of demarcation in my existance for which I am so thankful.
While the food there was good, it was awfully, uh, crunchy granola: carrots prepared six ways, lots of beans, Rice Dream as the beverage of choice, that kind of thing. The last day of the workshop, after the yogurt for breakfast, final song circle, hugs and tears, promises to keep in touch with new friends, I bolted. I booked down the road to a taste of Nirvana: Mickey Ds, where I devoured the best Big Mac, fries and supersized Diet Coke I have ever, ever had in my whole life. I think I had a headache from my 44 oz. return to Aspatrame that lasted the whole rest of the day, but it was sweet.
Sppeking aobut dieting, it;s quite a story that Laura tells in The Cocaine Cronicles. Regarding a cocaine diet. Very well done. She’s one of a number of authors that rose to the ocasion to produce a volume of quite good, surprising edgey stories, all involving cocaine. Hers is the only diet story, that I’ve read.
Food plays an important part in my personal reward system. I don’t think that depriving oneself is a great way to diet. I’ve noticed that I just eat more to try to gain the smae sensation. I think it’s better to eat less of the food I crave.
I do seem to be able to avoid foods, that are easy to eat, that aren’t ones that I crave. Potato chips are in that catagory. It’s hard to eat just one, easy to eat a whole bag for a gazillion calories and mucho grams of saturated fat. Much easier to avoid them and not notice the loss. It’s much harder to avoid nuts, chocolate, good ice cream and great tapioca pudding.
When I don’t eat right (Atkins, essentially), my MS symptoms get a lot worse. My rigor varies, but if I’ve been disciplined for a couple of weeks, I can get away with one cheat. Maybe two.
Any time we travel to Quebec City, there are a few things I look forward to. One is eating at the Caf� du Monde, in the lower city. Steak tartare and fries with garlic mayonnaise, preceded by kir�white wine with a little raspberry syrup. Kir’s a thing in Quebec City. You have to do it, which is fine, because I love it.
Well, it turns out I can no longer combine sugar and alcohol. Two minutes into my kir, my happiness at being at my favorite restaurant, in my favorite North American City, with my favorite wife, is gone. I’m badly depressed, can’t focus, and my face looks like it’s sliding off my skull.
That last kir wasn’t such a wonderful diet-breaker. But the kirs that came before it…those, I’ll never forget.
I now drink single-malt, neat.
After spending two weeks on a forced diet (freeze dried food, granola and stale bagels, while backpacking away 5000 calories a day in the Grand Canyon), the first place I headed upon reaching the rim was the hot dog stand. Two hot dogs and a huge Coke.
Then it was off to the Thai place for dinner followed by Indian the next night.
And the best part is that I don’t even feel guilty about being such a pig!
After having my wisdom teeth out and eating next to nothing for three days, I had a slice of pepperoni pizza from Sally’s in New Haven. It’s the best pizza anywhere, but it was especially good that day.
Also, a big glass of cold milk after three weeks of being milk-deprived in China.
I’m not a writer and so it’s a little intimidating to even think about posting here. I stumbled across the website recently and, as a Baltimore expat, having been reading it for the memories, the free trips back to Baltimore. And, having so indulged I feel honor bound to share rather than just lurk. Which brings me to the topic at hand, I’m in the midst of, shall we say a wedding (not my wedding, thank God) “initiative” that involves a return to Baltimore and CRAB CAKES! But the decisions: fried or broiled? fluff or cake? Where, oh where, to go for my first Maryland crab cake in over a year??
Faidley’s, Lexington Market. Splurge and get the expensive one, which used to be served on a gold doiley.
After 10 days of backpacking and freeze-dried food, an otherwise mediocre iceberg-lettuce salad was …heavenly. This was on Isle Royale, which you do not visit for the food. Mmm, bleu cheese dressing, too. Just to feel something crunch under your teeth, and not have it be granola!
I’ve been very good lately. Eating well, avoiding the crap…and I’m down to 165lbs. But, God help me, I bought a 300g bag of salted liquorice (sp?) last week and ate the whole bag in two days. Ugh.