Saturday, March 27, 2010




Plans for food and writing happen the same way for me. It starts with a repetitive internal monologue. I've been thinking about doing this blog for about a week. Once that thinking starts everything I see and hear seems like a blog post.
I had French Toast for breakfast yesterday. I have French Toast about ten times a year. It's hard to do it more often because I like to use a baguette and I can't eat a whole baguette in one day. So I make French Toast when I have guests, or if I have another use for a baguette. Acme makes a small baguette but they don't have them at Whole Foods. If I'm at the Ferry Building I'm likely to grab some triple cream. But I usually only go there if someone is visiting or it's a holiday. So French Toast is special but when I was shopping I saw some raspberries. Then I thought about French toast with raspberries. Then I thought about the blog.
Being a fat person and writing about food makes me anxious. I do wish people understood that not all fat people eat junk.
I don't think of myself of someone with an eating disorder. I have disordered days but generally I like the way I think about food. But I've grown up in a world that looks in my grocery basket and makes judgments. Or makes judgments without looking about what's in my grocery basket. I am fairly immune to all of that stuff but not completely. My original idea was to start the blog with a picture of the French Toast and I was stunned by the negative voices that rose up and yammered away in my head. The most eating disordered thing a person can do is think about their food and the meaning it makes about their body.
I think about what I need to eat to feel good every day. I know I need protein and I know if I eat too many carbs I get stomach ache. Back in the day I could eat a whole baguette no problem. That stopped being true in my forties and every year my capacity for carbs gets lower. There is a protein/carb relationship. If I've had enough protein I can eat carbs with no stomach issues. But it's a delicate balance. I'm not interested in taking pills so that I can eat more carbs and I never want to stop eating baguettes. So I dance along that protein/carb edge and do my best.
Andy Weil said something about eating across the color spectrum as a guideline and I've never forgotten that. Green food is important. At least one other color every day seems to work. More is better.
French Toast is white bread and I use a lot of butter when I make it. I don't like maple syrup that much so it's not about sugar but it is about rich. I like the baguette because it stays chewy after being soaked in the egg and milk. I like soaking it for a few minutes because it gets custardy. I use a little cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg in the eggs and milk. I make extremely good French Toast.

Given that I've lost most of my readers on Fatshadow and this is a brand new blog and that people reading are my friends I do not really need to worry about judgment. So I was surprised at all the internal hish.
I was cooking dinner while I wrote this. Applesauce was cooking and the smell filled the apartment. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's often sell really thin cut pork chops. I seared them quickly in a not quite hot enough pan, which meant that they didn't get very brown, threw in some asparagus and stuck it in the oven. I heated the leftover risotto. The plate was too beige.
Heh. See. Now I'm obsessing.
Pleasure. Pleasure is on the list I go through when I'm deciding what to eat. My too beige dinner was a pleasure to eat. Nuff said.

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