Every now and again we have a, reasonably, serious post I am afraid that this is one of them. I am not sure what purpose these posts serve or really why I write them but sometimes an alarm goes off in my head and it says ‘post this’ so here we are again.
I have written before that I have an unusual relationship with food despite this being a sentence that I would never have written when I was younger. Living with and being married to people with eating disorders coupled with working away from home took away any real pleasure in food many years ago.
Don’t get me wrong I can enjoy a good meal as much as the next person but where you may see the inspiration for a dish I see washing up, waste and effort for the same calorific value as a round of toast. Perhaps it is the engineer in me that looks for the most efficient means to fuel the machine, I am not sure. I have lived alone for many years and worked away for more years than that so I lean towards one simple meal choice and repeat it until tired then chose another. I have never managed to understand the concept of ‘big batch’ and my freezer never sees the results of my culinary efforts.
So me and food fell out a couple of weeks ago, I have no idea who is in the wrong but we are not talking. For Gav this means that I will go to the shop knowing that I need food and then throw a mental tantrum over something trivial and leave empty-handed. As an example I decided the other day that chicken wraps would be good so selected wraps, lettuce, peppers and some hard cheese (I already have cooked chicken in the freezer*). I had a look for some ranch dressing and they didn’t have the one I would normally buy (despite having no real preference) so that was it, all bets are off and no purchases made. I returned home and had a slice of toast on that day.
The same can be repeated on any day of the last couple of weeks. I walk to the bakers for a touch of brunch and turn tail at the door because there is a queue, he wants a coffee and that takes ages or they think I am a sad lonely old man so I come home and have a slice of toast.
I walk to the deli for one of their delicious rolls and half way there I can see the butter (or is that horrid chemical margarine) running out of the bread and its making the paper translucent because it just liquid fat. I realise that the filling is a normal meal ‘but its just a roll’ I do a lap around the block and come home for a slice of toast.
During the day I will plan a takeaway, what a great idea. By the evening a delicious chicken curry has become so soaked in oil that you could run a car on it. Suddenly the ‘rich sauce’ is a block of fat melted over the ingredients, even the rice is carb heavy and too much for this time of night. The menu returns to the shelf and I settle down to a slice of toast.
You see that’s where we are right now, me and food are just not talking. We will make up at some point, although we are never lovers more like acquaintances, and life will return to Gav normal. In the meantime I will growl every time we meet and maintain operational status on minimum reserves. I will still make some daft effort to shop on a daily basis but both me and food both know I won’t actually achieve anything instead I will return empty-handed and grumble as I put a couple of slices of fuel in the toaster.
I am not sure what the purpose of this post is or what I hope you get from it. Maybe you recognise something in it (if you do then you are weird), maybe you see that I look tired because I am running on empty or perhaps you are just grateful that you are normal. Who knows but, I guess, thanks for reading.
*No I didn’t cook it