Sneaky Meals

So my roomie, T's, boyfriend has been up visiting for the past week. He is nice, doesn't really get in the way, doesn't say much, but will have a conversation with you if you get him talking. All in all, I like him. Anyway, T and her boy are insane foodies, and LOVE cooking. I have never met people my age who love cooking as much as these two do. It's crazy, and I can't wrap my head around it. It's like a thing they do together, going to the grocery store and then cooking together. It would be cute if I weren't so horrified over the thought of it, while being weirdly in awe at the same time.

Over the past seven days, they have made big shopping trips to the grocery store five times to get ingredients to make for dinner, or brunch, or dessert. I am guilty of going to grocery store more than once a week, but whereas I wander all the aisles for an hour and a half and leave with one apple, a can of soup, and a carton of low-fat soy milk, they come back with two bags loaded with food. They've consumed two home-made loaves of bread in one week and a double batch of chocolate chip cookies. They cook these huge dinners, eat a ton, and then at ten o'clock in the evening, have a little snack of something "light", like cookies and milk or some toast with butter and jam. Decidedly not light. They spend an hour and a half cooking dinner, tasting, putting in a little of this and a little of that, tasting some more, and then sit down to eat like adults, with cloth napkins and dinner plates.

When I eat, I want to get it over with that second. I want the instant... gratification? I don't even know what word to use, because it certainly isn't gratifying to me to have to lower myself to eating something. I just want the instant. That's it. Because if I am going to allow myself to eat, it has to be then, that instant. The longer I let myself think about it, the more I talk myself out of it, and the harder it gets for me to even think about making something. So for dinner, I usually settle for a half can of soup heated in the microwave, because even the stove is too slow, or a piece of toast with a tablespoon of peanut butter on top, or a cheese quesadilla made with small corn tortillas that are 110 calories for two with a small amount of cheddar in the middle, popped in the toaster oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese. You see my vein here. Something that doesn't take more than five minutes to make, and that doesn't take more than five minutes to eat. Because even once I make the food, I then have to eat it, and that is even harder. The faster I can get it over with, the better it is. I don't have to think about it, look at it, or taste it any longer than I need. I don't want to savor it. I want to be done with it and get on with my life. This applies to everything but my yogurt in the morning. If I take any shorter than 35 minutes eating my 6oz. container of yogurt, I really think my head would explode. Anyway. I use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, because the great expanse of space on a dinner plate overwhelms me, I use a dessert fork instead of a dinner fork, because the dinner fork feels too heavy in my hand, and I use a paper napkin because I like how ephemeral they are. They mean nothing. And to top it all off, I can never finish anything. I have developed this habit of always needing to leave something behind of my meal. Never clean the plate. Cleaning the plate is greedy and hungry and desperate. I want to be none of those things. So I always leave something behind.

Suffice to say, I eat to live, and T and her bf live to eat.

I tell you all this, because T and the boy were making dinner this evening. Some curry something with brown rice. T invited one of our mutual friends over to have dinner with them. The invitation was not extended to me, but that's not out of rudeness or anything. I just usually tell T no thanks when she asks if I want something of whatever she is making, so she has pretty much stopped asking. So our friend got here, and asked if I was having any. I said no, and she asked why not. I just kind of mumbled something, because I didn't really have a good answer, besides the fact that I wasn't asked, but that seemed rude. So she says to T " Sottile can have some, right? I mean, it doesn't have any gluten in it, it's Indian food." And T looks up and says "Oh yeah, definitely, please have some with us!" Great. I had already eaten my dinner for the evening, which was a few pieces of cheddar cut from my ginormous block of it in the fridge. I was perfectly satisfied to not eat, but I didn't want to be rude, and I also didn't want to be questioned about what I was having, if I wasn't eating with them. So I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll have a little". Cue panic. I was hyperventilating inside. What did they use in it? How many calories? How much fat? No control. I have no control.

I also don't know what a normal portion looks like anymore, I knew I couldn't base it off what the other three were having, because they all eat like truck drivers at their favorite rest stop. I took what I thought was a reasonable portion (with much less rice and a lot of liquid from the curry to hide that fact) but it still ended up being pitiful in comparison to what the other three had. I am just glad no one said anything. It still took me longer than everyone else to eat my portion, and by the time the others were done, I still had a quarter of my portion left. I couldn't eat any more at that point. I felt like they were all staring at me, watching me eat. So I said it was really good and that I was done. But it wasn't even all that good, considering the amount of time T and her boy spent on it. It was bland and uninteresting. Even though I would rather refrain from food, I can still tell when something needs more spice and could be a lot better.

Then T suggested ice cream. Oh good Lord. Luckily that idea fizzled out.

So here I am, a full belly, about to go to sleep. I should be feeling the grumblings of a hungry belly. The only good thing is that I hadn't eaten much else today. I had coffee in the morning with a small square of chocolate, and then some grapes and rice crackers with salsa around two o'clock this afternoon because I was walking down the stairs into our apartment with K after going to Kohl's, and literally felt like I was going to fall over from hypoglycemia. (P.S. - rice crackers are amazing! They are these Asian crackers that have only 120 calories for like 16 crackers or something! And they are gluten free. They come in a bunch of flavors, too. Check them out if you want a low-cal snack!) And then of course the cheese that was supposed to be my dinner. I know, from a logistics stand point, that all of that doesn't come anywhere close to how much I should be eating, but from an Ana stand point, the Indian dinner was FARRRR too much. I hate it when meals sneak up on me like that.

Sorry for the crazy long post, I just needed to vent!

Love you, Skinnies :)

~Sottile