See What You Can Find

In the Christmas song “Soul Cake”, one of the lyrics is: “Go down into your cellar/ and see what you can find.” I was thinking of that recently not just because of Christmas, but because of an exchange I had with my niece when she spent the night a couple of days ago.

After we finished dinner, I asked if she wanted anything else, and she answered, “Not now, but I’ll probably get hungry later.” Sure enough, around 9 o’clock, she said, “I’m hungry again.”

“What would you like?” I asked.

“I’ll just look around to see what you have.” My expression must have given me away, because she added, “If that’s okay.”

It actually wasn’t okay, although I didn’t say that outright. Instead, I said, “Well, do you know what you might want? I have tortilla chips, crackers, toast, fruit, popcorn, peanuts, carrots.”

“I’ll have some tortilla chips, I guess.”

So I got out a bowl and the chips and gave them to her, then headed upstairs to get ready for bed. But even then, I felt badly about the exchange. Why was I uncomfortable with the idea of her looking through my cupboards and fridge to see what she could find? Was it a control issue, or something else?

As I pondered, I realized that it was something else. It was a holdover from my earlier days, when I didn’t want people to see what I had to eat for fear of being judged for it. These days, I don’t feel like I need to be embarrassed because of having too many sweets or junk food or anything like that, but sometimes I actually feel the opposite. At times I haven’t had anything that would qualify as “snack food” for most people – no chips, crackers, pretzels, nuts, ice cream, etc – and I always felt a bit embarrassed by that.

Then I discovered that there was one other element beneath this. I had recently gotten some goodies from friends for Christmas, which included homemade truffles, cookies, Rice Krispie treats, and homemade banana bread, and I was feeling possessive of those. I didn’t have a lot, and while I don’t eat many sweets, I enjoy them when I do, and I wanted to save those for myself. I didn’t want to share. While the desire not to share is a small concern, I think the larger issue – that I wasn’t willing to even acknowledge it – was more significant.

Once I recognized that, I wished I could go back to the earlier conversation with my niece. This time, instead of censoring what food options were available, I would say to her, “Sure, go ahead and see what you’d like. I’d just ask that you leave the items in the little jar in the fridge for me, since those were a Christmas present.”

But since the good Doctor with his TARDIS isn’t around, I’ll have to content myself with remembering this, and if the situation arises again, know that I can respond in a more open way.

Food for Thought

I recently read an article in The New York Times about the idea of an “imaginary diet”. The article suggests that people can get the satisfaction of eating a certain food if they just imagine eating it for a while, bite – by – bite. The imaginary eating must be done slowly, but studies have shown that if people focus on the imagined eating for a while, when they actually eat that food, they will eat less of it. But it has to be done separately for each type of food (for instance, imagining eating chocolate won’t stop you from eating lots of potato chips), and I’m not sure if you would have to repeat this process each time you were going to eat something, or at least periodically.

When I read this, my first thought was, “What a lot of work.” Consider – for every food that might be a weakness for you, you need to imagine eating it a tiny bit at a time before you can actually eat it. I don’t know how long it would take to get to the “satiation” point for each one, but it seems like it might be a while. And then there’s still the time to eat the actual food, when eventually you get to it. If you have to repeat the process, that just seems like an enormous amount of mental energy.

What I like about the “Am I Hungry?” program (and my own method of weight loss) is that it doesn’t require that you spend all your time thinking about food. In fact, quite the opposite. I know for myself that if I’m comfortably full, I don’t think about food. I can go about the rest of my life and focus on those areas, not worry about how much of something I might eat or might have eaten. The times that I’m focused on food are when I’m preparing or eating it or actually physically hungry for it.

I will freely admit that it takes some effort to get to this point, too, to be in tune enough with your body and emotions to recognize why you’re eating when you are, and to use physical cues of hunger to know when to eat and when to stop. But the good news is, it becomes easier over time, and ultimately, I believe it’s a healthier approach than trying to trick your mind and/or body into thinking it’s already eaten something. For me, it’s all about being mindful and attentive to what’s going on in reality, not imagination. Plus, I’ve found that the sorts of foods I want to eat have naturally changed, so that a bag of potato chips, or a plate of brownies, might be appealing but not enough to eat to excess.

Not that I want to denigrate the power of imagination, because it can certainly be extremely powerful. When you mentally practice a skill, it often applies to the skill in reality, for instance. But for me, when it comes to food, I’ll take the real thing over imaginary any day.

Sugar Cookies

I don’t remember how old I was when we started making sugar cookies for Christmas, but it quickly became a tradition. As I described it in my (yet unpublished) book:

Dad would make multiple batches of dough before retreating to the bedroom, finding the making and decorating too chaotic and messy. Jeremiah sometimes helped, but often it was me and Mom, each with our own task.

Mom started by rolling out the dough, a bit at a time, before choosing from a vast array of cookie cutters. Not all of them were strictly for Christmas – we had a Kermit one, and a bunny, and a six-pointed star, among others – but we didn’t let that stop us from using them. Some of the simple ones were easy, but some of the plastic ones had intricate details wrought into the mould: ornaments on Christmas trees, harnesses on reindeer, smiling eyes and mouth for Santa. With those, Mom carefully dipped them in our five-gallon bucket of flour before pressing them into the dough. Pulling them up, she oh-so-gently separated the dough from the plastic, sometimes using a knife to get the stubborn bits. Mostly she did well, but occasionally a tree top or reindeer nose or tail didn't make it, and the remains were added back to the dough - or sometimes popped into an eager mouth.

Once the shapes were safely on sheets or plates, it was my job to decorate, I think because Mom always felt that I was more artistic. And it's true that I could get quite elaborate, drawing the process out. That was part of my enjoyment. Using a pastry brush, I gently spread a light coat of water over the raw dough. Then I carefully dusted colored sugar over the shapes, using sprinkles for accents like eyes or ornaments. I mostly tried to be elegant and realistic, though in some cases I had fun being a bit sillier, such as making a blue moon. It was one of the few real bonding times Mom and I shared, particularly since by then I was a somewhat typical adolescent and didn't necessarily want to spent time with my parents. But cookie-making remained an inviolate tradition.

And of course, once the cookies were baked and out of the oven, still warm and puffy and soft with the crunch from the glaze of sugar, everyone wanted a taste. We ate damaged ones first, those that didn't survive being lifted from the cookie sheets, or ones that were too thin and crispy (Dad's favorite), making sure we kept enough to package up for friends.

When my niece was 2, we started to include her. It was important enough to me that I continued it with her and the rest of the family after my mom’s death, finding in it a connection to my mom and all those past Christmases. It’s not quite the same – I’m the one who makes the dough and cuts it out now – but we all share in the decorating, which is the most fun.

The hard part was when I was heavy and often had conflicted feelings about the cookies. As I wrote:

By 1988, with my weight an unpleasant presence, this tradition had a different feel, at least for me. It was frustrating to pour so much time and energy into food that I knew I shouldn't eat. The colorful cookies were almost taunting, and while I didn't resent them, I did resent the people who could eat them with impunity. Why should they get to enjoy the cookies when I couldn't? If they were bad for me to eat, surely they must also be bad for others. It left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, despite the sweetness of the cookies and the supposed joy of the holiday season.

It makes me all the more glad that I have moved past that. As I plan to go to my brother’s today to continue the tradition, I do so without any feelings of shame or guilt, or the idea that if I have a sugar cookie (or a bit of dough), I’m being “bad”. Instead, I can now participate with joy and the warmth of memory, and for me, that’s what it should be all about.

Sugared Out

When I got back from my week in Paris, I was telling my neighbor a little about the experience. She asked, “And did you try all kinds of pastries?”

I paused for a moment, not because I had to think about it but because I was surprised by my answer. “No.”

What surprised me about this was that when we were in Paris, it didn’t even occur to me to go try a lot of pastries. It simply wasn’t something that was appealing to me at the time. Don’t get me wrong – the dessert that I had at our Thanksgiving lunch was amazing, and I definitely enjoyed the Taste of Paris tour we took, where I got to sample spicebread, various cheeses, chocolates, and hot chocolate. It was more that since we were walking a lot, I was craving more substantial foods that would hold me for longer.

In fact, my niece and I had the following conversation on our way back to the apartment Thanksgiving evening. As background, a friend of mine had recommended a particular chain that sold Italian gelato, and we all thought that might be fun to try at some point. We found one of the places on Monday, but at that point we were too chilled to think about something cold and instead had hot chocolate. (Side note – hot chocolate in France is the real thing, not the pale imitation we have here. It’s actual chocolate that’s heated to the point of being liquid, and oh so tasty.)

Since by Thursday our stay was coming to a close, I asked my niece and brother, “Do you want to stop for gelato?”

My brother was noncommittal, but my niece replied, “I’m not really in the mood for it. I feel like I’ve had enough sweet things right now.” (This was after our big lunch with the tasty desserts.)

I considered if I wanted some and realized that I had to agree with her. “Yeah, I’m fairly sugared out, too.” Instead, we stopped and got some salad with tuna and bread.

When I think about my younger self, I’m not sure I ever got to that point of being “sugared out”, except perhaps on Easter or Halloween after gorging on candy. Certainly not after just one sweet hours beforehand. It still surprises me to think that I’ve come to this point, where I don’t want something just because it’s there, or it may be the only chance I’ll have to try it. If I’m hungry for it, I’ll have it, but at that time and place I wasn’t, and I’m okay with that. Besides, having things yet untasted just gives me another excuse to go back to Paris someday.