Where to start…….last week was a pretty significant week in a couple of different ways. First, I was supposed to get married last Thursday and have our reception Saturday night. I was dreading last week for a couple of months, actually before I even got surgery. Other than the usual Mars/Venus conundrum, and my male inability to understand all of the unspoken rules that dominate a relationship (and act on them without arguing my point), all of the changes over the last few months obviously lead me to wonder how the insanity over food added to the breakup. We had many arguments that were embedded on two major fronts…the first was how the weight contributed to being sedentary and kept me fearful of trying a lot of new things, and the second was the general dreadful crackhead attitude towards food. The whole addiction thing is something I can’t totally explain because I don’t fully understand it……I don’t want to sound cliche, but if you’ve experienced the insane compulsion you know what I’m talking about, if you haven’t……chances are on some level you are one of those people who say “why can’t you just stop eating?”. There are a million things that drive the fear of keeping too much food in the house, starving one week and binging the next, and all of those things are detrimental to a relationship. I’m not saying the weight was the sole contributor to its demise, far from it, but it did play a part and it has been something I’ve had to deal with my entire life. I know that bariatric surgery is a big commercial craze right now, but there are some of us who need it in the exact same way a heroin addict could use someone to lock them in a room before they kill themselves. So I became single again over the summer, and the timing of my new bariatric adventure couldn’t have come at a better or worse time, depending on how you look at it. Could it have saved the relationship if I did it sooner, or was the relationship even something that should have been saved….who knows. I do regret not trying harder to understand how “normal” people can actually keep tasty food in the house without eating all of it, not realizing that most people have to be “in the mood” for something in order to eat it, and how sometimes food can sit in the refrigerator long enough to go bad (THAT is a really, really new and bizarre concept that I’ve experienced for the first time since surgery). My reality has been so ingrained for so long that I disregarded any alternatives, and while it may have only been part of the overall problem, it has to be recognized no matter how frustrating or embarrassing it may be. So there you go…..a wedding day with no bride or groom. I pride myself on my vast and eclectic life experiences, but this was a new one for me, and one that does not get rave reviews.
Anyway, lucky for me I’m one hell of a planner and I have good friends….so the plan was to get a few people together for dinner last Saturday night. Up to this point I had not been to a restaurant, nor had I consumed any alcohol. While it was no huge reception with ten cases of wine and a whole roasted pig, it was great to finally get out for a normal Saturday evening with friends. We decided that Stix, the newish Japanese steakhouse out at The Legends, would be worth a shot. That is generally not my go-to style of food, but when you have enough people to fill a whole table it is really an excellent time. Plus, the chefs are much more animated than, say, the legendary Gojo’s…..where they all look like they could blow their brains out at any moment (and with that goddamn birthday gong going off every three minutes, who wouldn’t?). One thing I did like about Stix was that the gratuitous shrimp-toss wasn’t optional…..unless you have a serious shellfish allergy, that shrimp is flying at the heads of everyone sitting at the table. The food was really good, and I ended up eating even less than I anticipated. I knew I’d have a lot to take home with me, but the amount I ate didn’t even really make a dent in the plate. You hear people say that a lot….”there was so much food I didn’t even make a dent in it”. Well, that shit has never happened to me….until the dinner at Stix. I could proudly proclaim, like any old woman after an early bird dinner in Boca, “there was so much food I didn’t even make a dent in it!”. In fact, I ended up throwing much of it out two days later because, #1- there was so much of it, and #2- I wasn’t “in the mood” to eat all of it before it went bad. Throwing restaurant leftovers away….THAT shit has never happened before either. Seriously, never in my life. It was rare enough to actually HAVE food to take home, so throwing it out two days later??? I could literally FEEL the glares of thousands of mothers in Darfur whose starving children, their hands freshly hacked away by brutal insurgents, would have loved a goddamn scallop. But I went and threw them all away. And I can’t leave out the booze. I literally hadn’t had a drink since surgery, and in reality I hadn’t planned on having one so soon, but the occasion demanded it. I had two hot sakes over the course of the evening, and while I didn’t get drunk from them I did actually feel the alcohol. Normally, two sakes would affect me about as much as two glasses of water. I also had about half a glass of wine when we all got back to my house to party a little and watch Wonder Showzen on DVD. So I guess within the course of a few days I had experienced three major post-surgery events…….not even “making a dent” in my plate of food, really adding to the suffering of the African children by throwing leftovers away, and getting a good buzz off of a miniscule amount of alcohol. So it was a pretty great weekend. The dreaded failed nuptial dates have passed, and I’m continuing to figure out some “normal” boundaries with food.
I think that is about it, other than the fact that I’m really getting crazier and crazier about tofu and seitan. Some proteins upset still upset my stomach, but those two never do, even when I make them pretty spicey. I’ve got a great tofu cookbook, but could use one for seitan….they just aren’t as easy to find, or I’m just not a very good semi-vegetarian yet. Speaking of proteins, I was going really going wild reading about cheeses and sampling many different kinds. Then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, I just “wasn’t in the mood” for cheese one day and that feeling stuck…and I’ve still got a hunk o’ Brillat Savarin sitting in the crisper!. I’m sure I’ll get back into it, I do love cheese, but it was ironic to experience the whole “have to be in the mood” phenomenon that I’ve heard so much about my entire life…….
Unsaved Loved Ones 