A Boring Week of Excitement

This was a week of lapses. It happened by accident. Monday was a carb day, because there were plans to go out as a group. Tuesday was not meant to be a carb day, but I went to an Indian buffet and the rice just called my name. One of my favorite dishes in the world is rice with dal (lentils) and raita (yogurt with cucumers and spices), and not only does the rice add something to the flavor, it’s damn near impossible to eat dal and raita without rice to hold it.

Wednesday was just flat out cravings. I Wanted French Fries. I Wanted Chocolate.

So I ate them. Sue me.

By Thursday I was over it, and feeling a little puffy, so I’m back on the low-and-slow plan, eating not many grams of carbs and making those all slow carbs. (White rice, really any grain, is not a slow carb.) I had the usual 5 lb swing from the carbs, but now the swings are starting from lows of 267 or so. And today I’m really over it, as I’ve got some kind of stomach flu; I haven’t eaten anything permanently (so to speak) since yesterday, so I’m kinda sticking to tea and, well, tea. Nothing else is of much interest.

I was talking with a good friend about my columns, though. She had looked at the meal pictures I’d run and commented that I didn’t seem to get much variety. This sort of surprised me, as I don’t think of it that way. Oh, I eat a very stereotypical breakfast, but doesn’t everyone? And I eat things that I can easily stick in the George Foreman Grill, because that’s easy and I like broiled or grilled meat. At lunch, I go to any one of a dozen restaurants, although I tend to get the same things every time at each restaurant — tandoori chicken at the Indian restaurant, buffalo wings and salad at Chili’s, big salads with tuna at Mad Greens.

The truth is, though, meals really are boring a lot of the time. I love good food, and I love to cook, but I really only like cooking when I have an audience to eat it. If I do cook, I often cook a big batch of something I can eat over several days, like gulyás or a roast. And a lot of times I find myself looking into the refrigerator and saying,”Okay, I’m hungry — why does none of that stuff appeal to me?”

It was fun eating french fries and rice this week, but thinking back about them, even though they were really good french fries, they weren’t exactly a monumental experience.

I’ve got no conclusions here; I’m going to blame the stomach bug, but the truth is this is a question column, not an answer column. According to Wolfram Alpha, I’m 21,164 days old today (my birthday is Saturday the 24th, whaddaya gonna get me?), which means I’ve eaten between 60,000 and 80,000 meals, along with god knows how many candy bars, salami sandwiches, and pastries in between. Maybe it makes sense I’d be a little bored with it.