The Drive-thru Conundrum: A Pointless Post

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It's just so easy, isn't it? No cooking, no preparation, no dishes, no wait. I don't even have to worry about getting the Sprout out of the car. I say "Hey, I'm hungry!" and pull in somewhere. Five minutes later, away I go with no less than a soda and fries, and maybe a burger or some other cholesterol laden monstrosity. As I drive away, munching my fries and slurping my soda, I am filled with a perverse satisfaction from the grease, carbs, salt, and sugar. I don't even like french fries, and yet, I scarf them down, savoring the salty, greasy goodness. There's just nothing like fast food, and try as you might to find a "healthy replacement" - it ain't never gonna happen. 



Carrots? Celery? Are you mad? Source



First of all, part of the beauty of fast food is that someone is handing you a hot meal that you can eat with your fingers on the go. Healthy food comes in two varieties: Cold and Portable or Hot and Stationary. Hot food is always more satisfying that cold. There's no way you're going to be happy with an apple and some celery sticks when you could be eating a burger and fries on the go. Now, if you were so inclined to wait, in half an hour you could have a healthy soup, a fish filet and veggies, or even a casserole. We are the "now generation" though. That's waiting and work that we aren't interested in. So, the fries win. 



 I'll cook. You. Source



Secondly, even if you were so inclined to wait, go home, and *gasp* cook, you're not going to find a healthy alternative to all that grease and salt. Grease and salt are not healthy, and they've yet to develop a food tricky enough to make us forget about that kind of decadence. Who wants a boneless, skinless chicken breast with a green salad and steamed veggies knowing that there's a Zaxby's that just opened up down the street?

Bearing all of this in mind, I've got to at least try to find a solution. I'm going to die someday soon if I don't, and I'll be talked about like Mama Cass. Her ham sandwich will become my Coke and Fries. It will be embarrassing. 

At least I have a reasonable solution to the soda problem. La Croix sparkling water is like a gift from the gods. It provides me with my bubble fix. The caffeine is a different story . . . I always wanted to have an addiction, you know, for my street cred. Little did I know, I had one all along. Hmm.

As for the salt thing, the best I can think of right now is Pretzels. That's pretty uninspiring. Jerky comes to mind, but that tends to give me heartburn. Salted avacado would be good, but it's not really portable. All this is cold food anyway . . . so it's bound to be unsatisfying. Maybe some Edamame . . . I don't know.

This seems hopeless. I just need more self control. And more gum. Lots more gum. Soooo much gum.

Breaking Rituals: Iced Honey Vanilla Chamomile Almond Milk Tea

Delicious. Double Delicious.

Going with the lack of restraint theme, let’s talk about food rituals. I was reading the other day about Diet Coke addiction. I do love soda, but I find that what I love most is the bubbles. A healthy alternative for that is easy to come by – just drink sparkling water. La Croix makes a great sparkling water in several different flavors. No sugar, no sodium, no bad stuff at all. My favorites are the coconut and the grapefruit. The article said the way to break an addiction is to fill the two needs that an addiction creates: comfort and ritual. Ritual is where things get complicatedfor me . Reading this, I realized that a lot of my problem with overeating is that I’ve got a lot of rituals tied up with food. Any trip in the car has turned into an excuse to buy something pre-packaged. This is the worst when I am on road trips. For some reason, my monkey brain tells me that it’s anything goes. In everyday life, any trip in the car is a reason for at least a drink. I'm thirsty. the drinks, it’s mostly Starbucks, and of Starbucks, it’s mostly Green Tea Frappucinos. In each and every situation where I have a ritual justifying my consumption of garbage, I could just as easily plan ahead.

I’m not going to try tackling the fast food thing just yet. Right now, I am looking for something to fill the void in my life that will be left when I finally give up Starbucks Green Tea Frappucinos. It will be a sad day. I am thinking of hanging a wreath on the door. I am now in the beginning stages of experimenting with things that may take that delectable green drink’s place. Tonight I made and Iced Honey Vanilla Chamomile Almond Milk Latte. It was pretty good, no Green Tea Frap, but definitely worth an encore. It was made all the more tasty by virtue of my brown reusable Copco Stir & Sip Cup. I love these cups. They are nice looking, the perfect size, and their straws are the sturdiest I’ve encountered. Their design also allows me to pretend that I am drinking from a Starbucks cup. Now, if only they could get those great straws in green . . .

Iced Honey Vanilla Chamomile Tea Latte

• 8 Celestial Seasonings Honey Vanilla Chamomile Tea Bags
• 2 cups of water
• Almond Milk

Bring water to a boil. Place tea bags in boiling water. Turn off heat and allow tea to steep for 5 minutes. Squeeze water from each tea bag. Place in a container with a lid and allow to cool. Once cool, fill a large cup or glass 1/3 of the way with tea concentrate. Fill the rest of the way with ice. Top with Almond Milk and mix well. Enjoy!

* Amount of tea concentrate and Almond milk may be adjusted for taste.

Dance! Dance!

I've been listening to a lot of NKOTB since yesterday. I'm sure this momentary obsession started with Whitney Houston videos and as you know, one link leads to another. That, coupled with my efforts at house cleaning to the tunes of The Backstreet Boys inspired to me download the NKOTBSB album - The Deluxe Edition. 

What does that mean, dear friends? 

It came with videos! And I love music videos. I love music videos maybe more than I love music itself. They are the perfect combination of my two favorite things in the whole world: music and film making. If there's badass dancing thrown in the mix, I'm on cloud nine. 

I love to watch dancing in particular, as it's something I would love to be able to do myself. Sadly, I have ZERO hand eye coordination. My friend Josh, he tried to teach me how to dance in high school, but it was hopeless. This, more than anything else is why cheerleading didn't work out for me. My monkey brain cannot comprehend choreography. Like Salieri, I am imbued with a love and a lust for dance but am "rewarded only the ability to recognize the incarnation."

This? This is not good dancing. This is embarrassing.

But maybe not for long.

We've all heard that in order to make any exercise regimen last, we need to be doing something we actually like to do. Well, I don't like doing much by the way of physical activity. If I did, I wouldn't have the health problems that I do. Rollerblading requires equipment I can't afford right now, racquetball requires a court, and it's way too cold for swimming. I like to run, but I always mess that up after a few days of overdoing it. It also doesn't help that I don't like doing anything in public because I'm self conscious. 

I'm good at the Cupid Shuffle. Can I just Cupid Shuffle through life?

I was thinking about it though - dancing is basically an aerobic exercise. I want to learn to dance. You tube is free. This could be the answer to my problems. I am going to teach myself how to dance. I don't know what exactly, I was thinking Janet Jackson, but after watching Rhythm Nation, that's master class stuff. Maybe early Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera, you know, before they knew what they were doing. I do love the way that Lady Gaga dances . . . maybe that’s where I’ll start. Something about the way she moves reminds me of me. The crappy thing about videos is that the dance is always interrupted by cuts . . . We'll see what happens. I'm pretty excited about this, if I can make it happen. It really helps, knowing that I am able to get YouTube to play on the TV through the PS3.

Updates: the dog is doing better and strangely enough, I have not had much of an appetite as of late. I hope this trend continues, it's really helping not to binge. It's nice to feel like I am in control of what goes in my mouth for a change. I am looking forward to a long week of housecleaning . . . you know, in the same way one looks forward to a vasectomy. I hope to have things spic and span before I go to Florida for the weekend. You know, it's always nice to come home to a clean house, a feeling rarely get to enjoy.

Gloo-Ton

I would love a world where everything was a smorgasbord and I could just have a little bit of everything. I read once where this woman lost like 100 pounds through the “3 bite rule”. She could eat ANYTHING she wanted – providing that she stopped at 3 bites. This would be great for me. 3 bites of toast, 3 of hash browns, 3 of the strawberry waffle, 3 of the chocolate chip one, 3 of eggs, 3 of ham, 3 of biscuits and gravy and I’m done. But that’s not the way the world is manufactured. To accomplish the above, I would order a whole meal plus another waffle, plus a half order of biscuits and gravy and heaven forbid I should want some grits.

The situation is further complicated and plunges into Shakespearean levels of tragedy by virtue of the fact  that my husband is for all intents and purposes greedy and wholeheartedly refuses to share food for any reason, ever. See, if he were to order a whole meal and I were to order an extra waffle and a half order of biscuits and gravy and if I were really jonesing for them, a small side of grits then I could have a taste of everything while retaining the ability to walk away when the meal concluded instead of being rolled away like the blueberry girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Today I decided to escape housecleaning and dog nursing in order to go to Waffle House. I wanted all of the above, but was keenly aware that I could not eat all that by myself. Maybe if j^C were here to help, but that’s a moot point. I decided what I wanted most was a strawberry waffle. I should have stopped there, but I looked at the menu and realized that they also had chocolate chip waffles. “OK,” I said to myself. “People eat 2 waffles for breakfast – otherwise they wouldn’t have double listed on the menu. I’ll get a strawberry and a chocolate one!”

Cus that’s a good idea.

There were many ways to have avoided ordering 2 waffles. Choose one or the other. Have one with half strawberry and half chocolate. Have them make a hybrid strawberry/chocolate chip one. But no. I was a gloo-ton. I ordered 2 whole waffles. Waffles that were as big as the plates they were served on. Two, piping hot, sugar laden, carb disks. I didn’t even finish one of the sugary manhole covers and they misunderstood my request so they wound up both strawberry/chocolate chip hybrids anyway.

You know what the saddest part of this little escapade was. I don’t really like restaurant waffles. The first time I got a waffle at a Huddle House when I was a kid, they brought it to me and I was all like “What the hell is this? Take this soggy, limp thing back and bring me a waffle.” See, I had nothing but Eggo waffles for the first 10 or so years of my life, so crispy and small is good. By the by, why there isn’t a uniform Eggo waffle size isn’t a law I will never know. They don’t need to be a foot across.

Eggos are also not as sweet as restaurant waffles which is good since I really don’t even like sweet foods. I like fruit. Melon in particular. It’s my primitive monkey brain that thinks I do. It tells me “You are a female! Females like sweet and sugary and chocolaty! GO EAT THAT!!! MWAHAHAHAH!” Then, I eat some sweet and sugary and chocolatly thing and feel like crap. At this moment, a big bowl of various sundry melon reveals itself as the better choice, but now, of course, it’s too late. This is what is referred to as a FAIL. Moments like these are why I am going to someday lose a limb to diabetes.   I think Eggos are pretty much perfect. I could have saved myself a lot of time, money, carbs, sugar, calories, fat, gas, and energy by just buying a box at the Food Lion and being done with it.

I kind of just want to cry, but I might throw up since I am teetering dangerously close to both being overfull and slipping into a sugar coma. I guess the copious amounts of nearly black coffee I’m drinking will either snap me out of it or cause my heart to stop. At least I didn’t use any syrup. Here’s to small victories.