There have been a number of times I've been tempted to blog lately - but it never had anything at all to do with chocolate. I did think about setting up another blog, but as I'm the only person who reads this that seemed a bit pointless. So I decided to rename this blog. Should you stray this way by accident, please just imagine the bits in brackets are in lower case, as achieving that myself has proved completely beyond me.
The problem with chocolate at the moment is that, very oddly, I seem to have gone off the stuff. Normally I would celebrate and lose the excess stone and a bit which I tend to carry around on my hips and thighs - but I have generally been feeling unwell. I have therefore not been doing much so I'm both not losing weight that fast, and finding it hard to be overly joyous about it all. The only chocolate I've eaten in the past few weeks has been either white chocolate (which, let's face it, doesn't count unless you are about three years old), and the little cube After Eights which you get in 'tube' packets - and even then, I've eaten it in abnormally small quantities. Which means it's probably time to talk about something else...
31 August 2009
18 July 2009
Leibniz Liability
Tesco are selling plain chocolate Choco Leibniz at half price again. Under those circumstances, I do think that they should be held legally liable for the fact that I eat too many of them... and because I eat too many of them, I get fat and grumpy. I'm not sure if I should get damages for being grumpy, but I'm pretty sure the husband should.
Anyway, my most and least favourite quotes of the day:
Favourite: 'my socks keep slipping down and my shoes are chewing my feet' (Johanna)
Least Favourite: 'the associative discourses forming the foci of the hygienic self antithetically unravel around him' (Robert Miles: Gothic Writing 1750-1820 - A Genealogy, p163. He really does write a complete load of bollocks, and I'm pretty convinced it doesn't actually mean anything.)
Anyway, my most and least favourite quotes of the day:
Favourite: 'my socks keep slipping down and my shoes are chewing my feet' (Johanna)
Least Favourite: 'the associative discourses forming the foci of the hygienic self antithetically unravel around him' (Robert Miles: Gothic Writing 1750-1820 - A Genealogy, p163. He really does write a complete load of bollocks, and I'm pretty convinced it doesn't actually mean anything.)
7 July 2009
Paving hell before 9am
I just had a piece of cheesecake and two (admittedly really quite small) brownies for breakfast. I really didn't mean to. I got the cheesecake out of the fridge to cut it into bits and freeze it, but when I had cut the first piece I realised that because it has quite a high proportion of fresh strawberries in it (and I mean in it, not scattered on top) that probably wouldn't work very well. So I was left standing in the kitchen, staring at a piece of cheesecake, at a time when I hadn't already decided what I was going to eat for breakfast. My instincts were therefore at least partly laudable, involving tidiness and avoiding waste. The brownies are harder to explain.
After a month and a bit of really not doing very much at all, I'm meant to be hitting reality again today. Reality for these purposes means trying to write a dissertation about some novels I don't really like very much, which might possibly explain the brownies. Yesterday evening, in a vague attempt at staving off both the dissertation and the ironing, I even read this week's Guardian review section. In theory it's what I buy the Saturday Guardian for, but in reality they accumulate around the flat for months, unread, until I get cross and throw several dozen out at once. It even had some ideas buried in it that I would like time to play with: a quote from Auden, that '' poetry makes nothing happen"; the idea that the structure of Possession was influenced by the reader response to The Name of the Rose; the suggestion that the black death was anthrax or haemorrhagic fever rather than plague; and a quote from a new novel by Michael Thomas called Man Gone Down, that "No true idealist has a back-up plan". However, they will all have to wait until I have re-read a load of stuff I read several months ago, and written about 5,000 words.
Oh, and one day I would like to read David Nicholls' 'One Day' - but given the state of my finances at the moment, that will have to wait until I can get a cheap, second-hand paperback. In the meantime, I'll eat more brownies. And possibly more cheesecake.
After a month and a bit of really not doing very much at all, I'm meant to be hitting reality again today. Reality for these purposes means trying to write a dissertation about some novels I don't really like very much, which might possibly explain the brownies. Yesterday evening, in a vague attempt at staving off both the dissertation and the ironing, I even read this week's Guardian review section. In theory it's what I buy the Saturday Guardian for, but in reality they accumulate around the flat for months, unread, until I get cross and throw several dozen out at once. It even had some ideas buried in it that I would like time to play with: a quote from Auden, that '' poetry makes nothing happen"; the idea that the structure of Possession was influenced by the reader response to The Name of the Rose; the suggestion that the black death was anthrax or haemorrhagic fever rather than plague; and a quote from a new novel by Michael Thomas called Man Gone Down, that "No true idealist has a back-up plan". However, they will all have to wait until I have re-read a load of stuff I read several months ago, and written about 5,000 words.
Oh, and one day I would like to read David Nicholls' 'One Day' - but given the state of my finances at the moment, that will have to wait until I can get a cheap, second-hand paperback. In the meantime, I'll eat more brownies. And possibly more cheesecake.
4 July 2009
Can stand the heat, but cut down on the chocolate?
Yesterday, I had chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. It was the first time I'd done that in a while (well, four weeks anyway) - and I really couldn't eat nearly as many of them as I usually would. I was wondering if it was the heat was cutting down my sugar/ cocoa tolerance; although if it was the effect is clearly only marginal as I managed to eat more of them later, and a German friend bought me a box of Merci chocolates a couple of days ago and the husband and I were happily munching our way through them in front of the TV last night as well.
However, it is true that eating chocolate even in 'normal' quantities (I'm thinking standard-sized bar, here) can actually make me feel a bit odd. If I go super-size, I often feel really quite odd. At one level, you could argue that's part of the point - but I wonder if that might be how I, eventually, kick the habit. I used to binge-drink, but gradually came to the realisation that it made me feel bad enough that it was a risk that just wasn't worth taking. That took about 18 years, so if I start now, I guess I might have my chocolate consumption under control shortly before my fifty-sixth birthday.
It's cooler now, anyway. There's no tennis on that I actually want to watch, and the evenings are beginning to draw in. I'm thinking of declaring autumn, sometime around the middle of next week.
However, it is true that eating chocolate even in 'normal' quantities (I'm thinking standard-sized bar, here) can actually make me feel a bit odd. If I go super-size, I often feel really quite odd. At one level, you could argue that's part of the point - but I wonder if that might be how I, eventually, kick the habit. I used to binge-drink, but gradually came to the realisation that it made me feel bad enough that it was a risk that just wasn't worth taking. That took about 18 years, so if I start now, I guess I might have my chocolate consumption under control shortly before my fifty-sixth birthday.
It's cooler now, anyway. There's no tennis on that I actually want to watch, and the evenings are beginning to draw in. I'm thinking of declaring autumn, sometime around the middle of next week.
3 July 2009
Gary Go? (Chocolate free...)
This isn't about chocolate, it's about Gary Go.
You see, I'm still not quite sure what to think of him. I've only seen him live once - supporting Take That in Sunderland - and I thought he was competent and professional, although he did a really odd, pumping hand/arm gesture a couple of times which looked as if he was trying to milk a mechanical cow. Admittedly, I also wanted to rip his clothes off, but that was because they looked nice and warm and dry ... and I was so cold I wasn't sure if my toes had fallen off.
One of my issues with him is that he looks like a young conservative from about 1984, who has found himself stuck in the wrong decade and is trying not to get found out. I can imagine him being a bit like a (hairier, less northern) version of William Hague, or a (taller, less confused) version of John Bercow.
The other issue is the songs. For about half an hour, a couple of weeks ago, I thought that they were wonderful (no pun intended) - but I was on a bus at the time, and I generally hate buses, so it may just have been the fact that they were taking the edge off the whole bus scenario. Or just the fact that they make good background music if you are in (relatively slow) motion. In general, I like songs which have complicated lyrics - so by rights I should like his stuff. But they sound like they have been lifted out of some kind of executive coaching manual. I used to work at a firm which had a sales process called 'Refuse to lose' - and a lot of the rest of the songs sound as if they were written to become the soundtrack if anyone ever tried to turn 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' into a film. There is a tinge of vaguely psychologically-based sub-clinical self-affirmation about all of them which I find slightly disturbing.
I have half a suspicion that he probably doesn't even like chocolate. There was some footage in one of his video blogs where he was getting unnecessarily excited about a banana cake.
The result is that in ten years time, I kind of find it easier to imagine him as a shrink, a management consultant or a show-man hypnotist than as a chart-topping musician. Which presumably means that he is going to be the biggest thing that the music industry has ever seen...
You see, I'm still not quite sure what to think of him. I've only seen him live once - supporting Take That in Sunderland - and I thought he was competent and professional, although he did a really odd, pumping hand/arm gesture a couple of times which looked as if he was trying to milk a mechanical cow. Admittedly, I also wanted to rip his clothes off, but that was because they looked nice and warm and dry ... and I was so cold I wasn't sure if my toes had fallen off.
One of my issues with him is that he looks like a young conservative from about 1984, who has found himself stuck in the wrong decade and is trying not to get found out. I can imagine him being a bit like a (hairier, less northern) version of William Hague, or a (taller, less confused) version of John Bercow.
The other issue is the songs. For about half an hour, a couple of weeks ago, I thought that they were wonderful (no pun intended) - but I was on a bus at the time, and I generally hate buses, so it may just have been the fact that they were taking the edge off the whole bus scenario. Or just the fact that they make good background music if you are in (relatively slow) motion. In general, I like songs which have complicated lyrics - so by rights I should like his stuff. But they sound like they have been lifted out of some kind of executive coaching manual. I used to work at a firm which had a sales process called 'Refuse to lose' - and a lot of the rest of the songs sound as if they were written to become the soundtrack if anyone ever tried to turn 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' into a film. There is a tinge of vaguely psychologically-based sub-clinical self-affirmation about all of them which I find slightly disturbing.
I have half a suspicion that he probably doesn't even like chocolate. There was some footage in one of his video blogs where he was getting unnecessarily excited about a banana cake.
The result is that in ten years time, I kind of find it easier to imagine him as a shrink, a management consultant or a show-man hypnotist than as a chart-topping musician. Which presumably means that he is going to be the biggest thing that the music industry has ever seen...
Things on Sticks
Earlier in the week, I had a Haagen Dazs stick bar - simply because I was at Wimbledon and they have some kind of exclusive supplier deal. I don't generally get the point of choc ices on sticks which come in plastic wrappers inside cardboard boxes. The box is too clearly there to persuade me to pay more than the contents are actually worth. In this case, the contents - a cookies and cream thing - were actually not too bad; and if I am at Wimbledon I expect to pay through the nose anyway. Clearly, if Haagen Dazs hadn't completely inexplicably failed to realise that the short-term feature flavour, midnight cookies and cream, was actually a much better experience all round, it could have been even better, but it still wasn't bad.
However, something about the bits which they had stuck in the chocolate coating meant that it somehow ended up tasting more like a biscuit than either a chocolate or an ice cream. And I have now had several Magnums, and the excessive ice cream to chocolate ratio is becoming increasingly irksome. So my favourite chocolate thing on a stick is officially the Thorntons Chocolate Trio - where even the white chocolate ice cream tastes dreamy and chocolatey. Sadly, they are about as easy to find in this part of London as a snow leopard, or a post office, or somewhere that makes a decent pizza...
However, something about the bits which they had stuck in the chocolate coating meant that it somehow ended up tasting more like a biscuit than either a chocolate or an ice cream. And I have now had several Magnums, and the excessive ice cream to chocolate ratio is becoming increasingly irksome. So my favourite chocolate thing on a stick is officially the Thorntons Chocolate Trio - where even the white chocolate ice cream tastes dreamy and chocolatey. Sadly, they are about as easy to find in this part of London as a snow leopard, or a post office, or somewhere that makes a decent pizza...
30 May 2009
Signs of Summer
I had my first Mint Magnum of the summer today. I don't actually like 'normal' Magnums very much, as the ice cream is too creamy and there is too much of it - but the mint ones are much better. They taste of mint rather than cream, although they would be better a bit smaller, too - either that, or with more chocolate and less middle.
The other signs of summer wandering round the streets today were less appealing. Admittedly, I'm no oil painting, but why do perfectly sane, attractive people suddenly completely lose it the moment the sun comes out? I saw two very attractive women with pinko-orange legs and white arms; and at least half a dozen who seemed to be wearing things out of a dressing up box - gold sandals which were a size or two too big, or a beaded kaftan the colour of one of Margaret Thatcher's old suits. And there was one very pretty girl wearing very tight jeans which showed just how completely bandy-legged she is.
I gather Summer is meant to end on Tuesday, anyway. It's a shame, because I've actually done reasonably well on the chocolate front over the past couple of days, but I'm sure the rain clouds will bring a relapse. And at least it will mean I don't have to figure out how to make my chunky, neon-white legs fit to face the world...
The other signs of summer wandering round the streets today were less appealing. Admittedly, I'm no oil painting, but why do perfectly sane, attractive people suddenly completely lose it the moment the sun comes out? I saw two very attractive women with pinko-orange legs and white arms; and at least half a dozen who seemed to be wearing things out of a dressing up box - gold sandals which were a size or two too big, or a beaded kaftan the colour of one of Margaret Thatcher's old suits. And there was one very pretty girl wearing very tight jeans which showed just how completely bandy-legged she is.
I gather Summer is meant to end on Tuesday, anyway. It's a shame, because I've actually done reasonably well on the chocolate front over the past couple of days, but I'm sure the rain clouds will bring a relapse. And at least it will mean I don't have to figure out how to make my chunky, neon-white legs fit to face the world...
28 May 2009
Bits and Bobs
I reminded myself today that I don't actually like Toblerones. I was in Waitrose and couldn't figure out what kind of chocolate I actually wanted, so I ended up getting a Toblerone because they were half price. It was a relatively small one, so I didn't gouge chunks out of the roof of my mouth trying to eat it (which I remember as a general Toblerone problem, from the last one I had about ten years ago). It just didn't taste very nice.
I still ate it, though.
This recipe, incidentally, does taste very nice indeed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/whitechocolateandmin_87593.shtml
It's like soft, creamy polo mints: although if you are using posh mint flavouring from Waitrose you need a half teaspoon rather than a quarter. And you need to avoid white chocolate with vanilla seeds in it, as otherwise it looks grubby. It makes more than the recipe says it does, too: I reckon it would have done about 9 70ml shot glasses. If you are really and truly only feeding 6 (or fewer) it would probably be better to use a medium sized egg, and cut the quantities to 200g chocolate/ 200 ml cream. That way you don't have a spare 150g of chocolate to somehow get rid of, either.
I'm actually thinking about trying to give up chocolate again. Part of the problem with Lent is that it doesn't mean anything to me, apart from the fact that the husband tends to behave a bit oddly. The Take That tour, however, is definitely a religious experience... and it starts next week.
I still ate it, though.
This recipe, incidentally, does taste very nice indeed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/whitechocolateandmin_87593.shtml
It's like soft, creamy polo mints: although if you are using posh mint flavouring from Waitrose you need a half teaspoon rather than a quarter. And you need to avoid white chocolate with vanilla seeds in it, as otherwise it looks grubby. It makes more than the recipe says it does, too: I reckon it would have done about 9 70ml shot glasses. If you are really and truly only feeding 6 (or fewer) it would probably be better to use a medium sized egg, and cut the quantities to 200g chocolate/ 200 ml cream. That way you don't have a spare 150g of chocolate to somehow get rid of, either.
I'm actually thinking about trying to give up chocolate again. Part of the problem with Lent is that it doesn't mean anything to me, apart from the fact that the husband tends to behave a bit oddly. The Take That tour, however, is definitely a religious experience... and it starts next week.
27 May 2009
Composite Obsessions
Now, I love chocolate. And I also love Take That. And I can think of a number of ways in which I would really, really love to combine them.
This, however, isn't one of them:
http://www.m-ms.com.au/
Don't get me wrong: the dance moves are great, but the voice makes my ears hurt. And why the hell is the yellow one the lead singer? I hate yellow ones.
This, however, isn't one of them:
http://www.m-ms.com.au/
Don't get me wrong: the dance moves are great, but the voice makes my ears hurt. And why the hell is the yellow one the lead singer? I hate yellow ones.
23 May 2009
Aftermath
As I am sure will have become apparent, I failed. My chocolate-free Lent lasted two weeks, and ended ignominiously with a bar of Lindt Excellence Milk bought in a convenience store near Baron's Court Tube station. I'm not particularly good at dealing with failure, so I decided to just disappear and pretend that it had never happened.
But the reality is that the fight goes on. Even if I didn't manage to give up chocolate, I did manage to give up chocolate chip cookies - I didn't even make a batch of those until the weekend before last (and I used Cote d'Or chocolate, which was on special offer somewhere or other, but was still a mistake. Because of the way that they emboss the elephants on it, it splits when you try to chop it so that you end up with thin flakey bits rather than chunks). I resisted the 1/3 off Galaxies in Waitrose this morning, and am now planning on attempting the Nigella white chocolate mint shots for supper tomorrow night. With some extra white chocolate which I bought this morning, having already eaten the batch which I bought on Thursday...
But the reality is that the fight goes on. Even if I didn't manage to give up chocolate, I did manage to give up chocolate chip cookies - I didn't even make a batch of those until the weekend before last (and I used Cote d'Or chocolate, which was on special offer somewhere or other, but was still a mistake. Because of the way that they emboss the elephants on it, it splits when you try to chop it so that you end up with thin flakey bits rather than chunks). I resisted the 1/3 off Galaxies in Waitrose this morning, and am now planning on attempting the Nigella white chocolate mint shots for supper tomorrow night. With some extra white chocolate which I bought this morning, having already eaten the batch which I bought on Thursday...
8 March 2009
Day 13
If I had been doing this more frequently (the blogging, I mean), it wouldn't have been any more interesting. Since recovering from the flu bug/ migraine nightmare, I've been feeling generally under the weather and rather grumpy. I had assumed that this would wear off, but it isn't. I actually seem to be getting rather more grumpy with every day that passes. I'm now at the point where nothing seems to be worth doing, but I then get to the end of the day having done nothing and feel guilty about going to sleep. So often I don't. Then I feel even more crap and grumpy the following day because I've spent half the night either listening to the husband snoring, or wandering around doing sudokus or the ironing.
There are a number of possible explanations for this. Lack of chocolate is admittedly one of them. Depression is another - although I do believe that even that might be tracked back to the lack of chocolate. The fact that it's been winter for a long time, that I no longer have a job, and have no idea what I'm going to do with the next week, let alone the rest of my life, might also have something to do with it.
Yesterday I started thinking about who I wished I was; coming back to the comment from a couple of weeks ago about chocolate possibly not being the real problem. I didn't come to any firm conclusions - it was more that I couldn't come up with anything which seemed even vaguely appealing rather than struggling to choose between competing impossibilities - apart from the fact that I would be thinner, and I would eat chocolate. Not huge, angry quantities of it, but small, elegant amounts, maybe a couple of times a day at the end of meals. Sometimes a truffle, sometimes a mint. Never a frantic scramble to the end of the packet. And absolutely no guilt about it all.
Then I decided to do some sudokus instead, working on the assumption that one would soon go wrong (I've been very slapdash in my sudokuing of late). Except they didn't. I did something in the region of 20 Times fiendish sudokus yesterday afternoon/ evening, and none of them went wrong. Which then became another reason for not having achieved anything.
I'm wondering if I should try eating chocolate again to see if it improves my state of health and mind. Sugar as a substitute just doesn't work. I know this because I have repeatedly tried that experiment - not just the fudge last week, but there was a bag of Percy Pigs yesterday, and a packet of Jammy Dodgers this afternoon, neither of which seem to have helped to lift the fog. But I'm not sure if I'm just making excuses.
There are a number of possible explanations for this. Lack of chocolate is admittedly one of them. Depression is another - although I do believe that even that might be tracked back to the lack of chocolate. The fact that it's been winter for a long time, that I no longer have a job, and have no idea what I'm going to do with the next week, let alone the rest of my life, might also have something to do with it.
Yesterday I started thinking about who I wished I was; coming back to the comment from a couple of weeks ago about chocolate possibly not being the real problem. I didn't come to any firm conclusions - it was more that I couldn't come up with anything which seemed even vaguely appealing rather than struggling to choose between competing impossibilities - apart from the fact that I would be thinner, and I would eat chocolate. Not huge, angry quantities of it, but small, elegant amounts, maybe a couple of times a day at the end of meals. Sometimes a truffle, sometimes a mint. Never a frantic scramble to the end of the packet. And absolutely no guilt about it all.
Then I decided to do some sudokus instead, working on the assumption that one would soon go wrong (I've been very slapdash in my sudokuing of late). Except they didn't. I did something in the region of 20 Times fiendish sudokus yesterday afternoon/ evening, and none of them went wrong. Which then became another reason for not having achieved anything.
I'm wondering if I should try eating chocolate again to see if it improves my state of health and mind. Sugar as a substitute just doesn't work. I know this because I have repeatedly tried that experiment - not just the fudge last week, but there was a bag of Percy Pigs yesterday, and a packet of Jammy Dodgers this afternoon, neither of which seem to have helped to lift the fog. But I'm not sure if I'm just making excuses.
3 March 2009
Day 6 - Godlessness
I finally got around to googling Alcoholics Anonymous last night. I didn't exactly spend long on it, but 'not long' threw up an interesting range of accusations that it was a cult, and statistics which show that it only has about a 5% success rate. I also hit the official website, which sets out the 12 steps, and discovered that step 2 is a requirement to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.
So even if they did do chocolate, I would be one of the 95%.
It was the second time I had come up against God in the course of a single evening - which is kind of unusual. Our paths don't usually cross that often. I had spent an interesting, if slightly odd, couple of hours at a panel discussion at the Royal Society about science and religion. I hasten to add that I didn't do any of the discussing, and hid in the corner at the drinks afterwards as lots of terribly learned looking types kept greeting one another slightly awkwardly (hard to tell whether it was arthritis, autism or problems with bodily hygiene - but quite an interesting dynamic to watch). But it lead me to reflecting on the fact that, despite having done so in the past, I now can't quite summon the energy which I need to believe in a God.
Forster doesn't help. I tend to come back to a quote which I noted down as an undergraduate about 20 years ago. 'He believed in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind'. Conversion isn't religion, but it's close enough for me when I'm free-associating in a room full of professors and priests.
Free association also took me from half-baked minds to cookie dough (it's easily done: I also found myself thinking that the curtains in the lecture room would make an interesting ball gown). My usual cookie recipe is unfortunately specific to chocolate - the dough melts almost flat, and it needs the chocolate to melt with it in order to not produce something with sticky out bits. But I have been thinking that if I upped the flour content a bit and omitted the vanilla essence, it might work with crystallised ginger and dates.
I just haven't tried it today because I bought and ate a large bad of fudge instead. I intended to buy a small bag of kids fudge from Thorntons, but didn't end up anywhere near a Thorntons (which then cost me about 600 calories). So I guess this actually covers day 7 as well.
So even if they did do chocolate, I would be one of the 95%.
It was the second time I had come up against God in the course of a single evening - which is kind of unusual. Our paths don't usually cross that often. I had spent an interesting, if slightly odd, couple of hours at a panel discussion at the Royal Society about science and religion. I hasten to add that I didn't do any of the discussing, and hid in the corner at the drinks afterwards as lots of terribly learned looking types kept greeting one another slightly awkwardly (hard to tell whether it was arthritis, autism or problems with bodily hygiene - but quite an interesting dynamic to watch). But it lead me to reflecting on the fact that, despite having done so in the past, I now can't quite summon the energy which I need to believe in a God.
Forster doesn't help. I tend to come back to a quote which I noted down as an undergraduate about 20 years ago. 'He believed in sudden conversion, a belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly attractive to a half-baked mind'. Conversion isn't religion, but it's close enough for me when I'm free-associating in a room full of professors and priests.
Free association also took me from half-baked minds to cookie dough (it's easily done: I also found myself thinking that the curtains in the lecture room would make an interesting ball gown). My usual cookie recipe is unfortunately specific to chocolate - the dough melts almost flat, and it needs the chocolate to melt with it in order to not produce something with sticky out bits. But I have been thinking that if I upped the flour content a bit and omitted the vanilla essence, it might work with crystallised ginger and dates.
I just haven't tried it today because I bought and ate a large bad of fudge instead. I intended to buy a small bag of kids fudge from Thorntons, but didn't end up anywhere near a Thorntons (which then cost me about 600 calories). So I guess this actually covers day 7 as well.
2 March 2009
Days 4 and 5
I am happy to report that although I suspect that my ongoing codeine consumption is taking the edge off some of the withdrawal symptoms (I know that's not a good swap but the left hand side of my neck now keeps trying to go into spasm, and I'm not very good at pain), I have at least started displacing some of my typical chocolate-related behaviours onto the (utterly dismal) substitutes with which I have been experimenting.
Yesterday, for example, I got up and made myself one of the two relatively healthy breakfasts in my repertoire (it was the fruit and yoghurt scenario again - the other one is porridge, although I suspect that ought to be marked down on account of the quantity of golden syrup I usually have with it). I sat and ate it slowly, and tried not to get to irate about the fact that the husband was about to disappear and leave me on my own all day, and even washed up the bowl and wiped down the kitchen work surfaces. I then wandered round the flat, in a circuit starting and ending in front of the kitchen sink, concluding that there was nothing that I wanted to do and that everything was pretty shit. And then I ate all of the rest of the Malted Milk biscuits. And although I started to feel slightly sick before I had finished them, the sense that natural order would be restored if I finished the packet (rather than leaving a couple in the bottom of the biscuit jar, which would also happen to stand as evidence to my general lack of self control...) kept me going until there were just a few largish crumbs left in the wrapper. I then shoved the wrapper in the bin, and hated myself for being fat.
So at one level I clearly don't need chocolate at all. But the chemical composition of Malted Milk biscuits (even slightly dodgy ones from Waitrose - I never quite got over the idea that there was somehow something wrong with them. It was as if the sugar in them was crunchy, which isn't how I remember them...) clearly isn't quite the same, as the sense of disgust wasn't followed by the mild euphoria that a chocolate binge usually brings. Which is possible why I did the same thing with a packet of rice cakes in the evening, to even less effect.
If I think about chocolate, milk Lindor is definitely what I am missing most, though. I don't even eat it that often - although I ate an awful lot of it in the couple of weeks before Christmas, when I tried tying the red truffles to the tree in lieu of 'proper' tree chocolates but then kept eating them all with indecent haste and leaving tell-tale tree needles all over the floor. Eventually I bought some of the humdrum Cadbury's purple tree chocolates instead, at least some of which survived until the tree came down. But I first met Lindor when I was a student in Paris, which is an association which does nothing to diminish its charms. Towards the end of my time there, when I had fallen out with both my boyfriends (the English one and the French one) and decided that I wasn't going to achieve anything anyway, I took to going to Monoprix late most afternoons to buy Lindor and orange juice. I'm guessing it probably counted as supper. Good, rose-tinted, times.
Yesterday, for example, I got up and made myself one of the two relatively healthy breakfasts in my repertoire (it was the fruit and yoghurt scenario again - the other one is porridge, although I suspect that ought to be marked down on account of the quantity of golden syrup I usually have with it). I sat and ate it slowly, and tried not to get to irate about the fact that the husband was about to disappear and leave me on my own all day, and even washed up the bowl and wiped down the kitchen work surfaces. I then wandered round the flat, in a circuit starting and ending in front of the kitchen sink, concluding that there was nothing that I wanted to do and that everything was pretty shit. And then I ate all of the rest of the Malted Milk biscuits. And although I started to feel slightly sick before I had finished them, the sense that natural order would be restored if I finished the packet (rather than leaving a couple in the bottom of the biscuit jar, which would also happen to stand as evidence to my general lack of self control...) kept me going until there were just a few largish crumbs left in the wrapper. I then shoved the wrapper in the bin, and hated myself for being fat.
So at one level I clearly don't need chocolate at all. But the chemical composition of Malted Milk biscuits (even slightly dodgy ones from Waitrose - I never quite got over the idea that there was somehow something wrong with them. It was as if the sugar in them was crunchy, which isn't how I remember them...) clearly isn't quite the same, as the sense of disgust wasn't followed by the mild euphoria that a chocolate binge usually brings. Which is possible why I did the same thing with a packet of rice cakes in the evening, to even less effect.
If I think about chocolate, milk Lindor is definitely what I am missing most, though. I don't even eat it that often - although I ate an awful lot of it in the couple of weeks before Christmas, when I tried tying the red truffles to the tree in lieu of 'proper' tree chocolates but then kept eating them all with indecent haste and leaving tell-tale tree needles all over the floor. Eventually I bought some of the humdrum Cadbury's purple tree chocolates instead, at least some of which survived until the tree came down. But I first met Lindor when I was a student in Paris, which is an association which does nothing to diminish its charms. Towards the end of my time there, when I had fallen out with both my boyfriends (the English one and the French one) and decided that I wasn't going to achieve anything anyway, I took to going to Monoprix late most afternoons to buy Lindor and orange juice. I'm guessing it probably counted as supper. Good, rose-tinted, times.
27 February 2009
The Chocolate-Free Blog, Days 1-3
The best-laid plans of a failed chartered accountant never run smooth. I had expected this to rapidly become one long whinge about all of the chocolate I hadn't eaten, and all of the surprisingly embarassing things that I had actually eaten instead. Yet nearly three days into Lent I've written nothing at all.
This isn't because I've deliberately given up blogging. It isn't because I ate three Mars bars for breakfast on Ash Wednesday and am hiding in shame until I can think of something funny to say about it; I actually had a pear, a yogurt and a handful of sultanas. It isn't even because I've fallen out with the charming BT call centre somewhere in India which always cuts me off after failing to understand anything I've said, which is what usually happens when my broadband connection dies.
No. My body responded to the lack of chocolate by shutting down. Admittedly, I hadn't been feeling 100% for the past week or so - so I even made sure that I kept my sugar intake up by eating some rather odd Skittles Sours in the University of London Library on Wednesday morning (there was someone else sitting there eating something out of a lunchbox with a fork, so I'm thinking the 'no eating and drinking' thing is largely symbolic), and having two Appletizers in the pub on Wednesday evening. However, while still in the pub, my head started to hurt. Taking paracetamol seemed to do nothing for it, and when we left the pub (in theory to go and get some food) my eye-sockets started to hurt with every step I took. So I skipped dinner, and went home, figuring that an early night would undoubtedly 'fix' whatever it was that seemed to be holding my head in a vice and doing strange things to my eyeballs.
After a night during which I didn't sleep because it hurt too much - even though I couldn't even open my eyes without it hurting more - and during which I kept trying to move my head into a position which hurt less, only to find myself shaking uncontrollably every time I moved, I was a bit less sanguine about the whole thing. In fact, I was about 50% convinced I was dying, and panicking because my husband and I hadn't sorted out our wills. I even got the husband to Google symptoms of meningitis before I sent him out on a drug hunt yesterday morning (I was mostly reassured by the conclusion, and have since resisted the temptation to Google it myself to see if he actually got the right answer).
I managed about two hours out of bed yesterday, with the assistance of the type of neurofen which has codeine in it (it took about an hour and half to kick in, and only worked for about an hour or so - but at least it did sort of take the edge off things). By the end of the day I was no better than I had been at the beginning of it, and I was becoming even more convinced that I was dying - to the extent that I was even contemplating an interaction with the medical profession.
Thankfully, I fell asleep sometime around midnight, and when I woke up at about half past five this morning my temperature had gone back to normal. I still had to keep my eyes shut when it got light - although that has gradually got better in the course of the day, and I even made it as far as Waitrose in Fulham this afternoon (and got some Malted Milk biscuits, which tasted weird and sugary - but that might just be because they are). So chocolate hasn't really been a big issue yet. Hopefully I have that battle still to come.
This isn't because I've deliberately given up blogging. It isn't because I ate three Mars bars for breakfast on Ash Wednesday and am hiding in shame until I can think of something funny to say about it; I actually had a pear, a yogurt and a handful of sultanas. It isn't even because I've fallen out with the charming BT call centre somewhere in India which always cuts me off after failing to understand anything I've said, which is what usually happens when my broadband connection dies.
No. My body responded to the lack of chocolate by shutting down. Admittedly, I hadn't been feeling 100% for the past week or so - so I even made sure that I kept my sugar intake up by eating some rather odd Skittles Sours in the University of London Library on Wednesday morning (there was someone else sitting there eating something out of a lunchbox with a fork, so I'm thinking the 'no eating and drinking' thing is largely symbolic), and having two Appletizers in the pub on Wednesday evening. However, while still in the pub, my head started to hurt. Taking paracetamol seemed to do nothing for it, and when we left the pub (in theory to go and get some food) my eye-sockets started to hurt with every step I took. So I skipped dinner, and went home, figuring that an early night would undoubtedly 'fix' whatever it was that seemed to be holding my head in a vice and doing strange things to my eyeballs.
After a night during which I didn't sleep because it hurt too much - even though I couldn't even open my eyes without it hurting more - and during which I kept trying to move my head into a position which hurt less, only to find myself shaking uncontrollably every time I moved, I was a bit less sanguine about the whole thing. In fact, I was about 50% convinced I was dying, and panicking because my husband and I hadn't sorted out our wills. I even got the husband to Google symptoms of meningitis before I sent him out on a drug hunt yesterday morning (I was mostly reassured by the conclusion, and have since resisted the temptation to Google it myself to see if he actually got the right answer).
I managed about two hours out of bed yesterday, with the assistance of the type of neurofen which has codeine in it (it took about an hour and half to kick in, and only worked for about an hour or so - but at least it did sort of take the edge off things). By the end of the day I was no better than I had been at the beginning of it, and I was becoming even more convinced that I was dying - to the extent that I was even contemplating an interaction with the medical profession.
Thankfully, I fell asleep sometime around midnight, and when I woke up at about half past five this morning my temperature had gone back to normal. I still had to keep my eyes shut when it got light - although that has gradually got better in the course of the day, and I even made it as far as Waitrose in Fulham this afternoon (and got some Malted Milk biscuits, which tasted weird and sugary - but that might just be because they are). So chocolate hasn't really been a big issue yet. Hopefully I have that battle still to come.
24 February 2009
The Rules
It has occurred to me, rather belatedly, that I ought to work out what giving up chocolate means, given that I'm guessing that I've already done it. The husband made pancakes with chocolate sauce for pudding this evening: the sauce was a bit odd, so I actually passed and just had lemon and ice cream with the second pancake. There is (to my knowledge) no more chocolate in the flat, and I've known him long enough to know that the husband won't have thought to buy something for me to eat just before midnight, so I've given up chocolate several hours before I meant to.
Giving up chocolate has to mean not actually eating chocolate, or anything with chocolate in it. In order to avoid silly distinctions, I'm guessing that it has to mean nothing chocolate-flavoured either.
My husband's family tend to regard 'giving up chocolate' as shorthand for giving up all sweets, biscuits, cakes and desserts, and also not eating between meals. This is clearly silly, and would almost certainly result in multiple fatalities one way or another - which I think the husband accepts, as he was trying to persuade me not to give up anything at all a couple of nights ago. So I think I'm just going to give up anything containing or tasting of chocolate, and review the position in a week or two to see whether I've actually managed to improve my eating habits or just swapped a chocolate habit for wine gums or soft mints.
The husband actually believes that you get Sundays off during Lent - but then he does church stuff, and I don't. So this is it, until Easter.
I guess the problem is that chocolate isn't really the problem. I want giving the stuff up suddenly to make me into the kind of person who has a shiny, tidy, fabulous life. I'm not sure if accepting that it won't before I have even started is realism or defeatist.
Giving up chocolate has to mean not actually eating chocolate, or anything with chocolate in it. In order to avoid silly distinctions, I'm guessing that it has to mean nothing chocolate-flavoured either.
My husband's family tend to regard 'giving up chocolate' as shorthand for giving up all sweets, biscuits, cakes and desserts, and also not eating between meals. This is clearly silly, and would almost certainly result in multiple fatalities one way or another - which I think the husband accepts, as he was trying to persuade me not to give up anything at all a couple of nights ago. So I think I'm just going to give up anything containing or tasting of chocolate, and review the position in a week or two to see whether I've actually managed to improve my eating habits or just swapped a chocolate habit for wine gums or soft mints.
The husband actually believes that you get Sundays off during Lent - but then he does church stuff, and I don't. So this is it, until Easter.
I guess the problem is that chocolate isn't really the problem. I want giving the stuff up suddenly to make me into the kind of person who has a shiny, tidy, fabulous life. I'm not sure if accepting that it won't before I have even started is realism or defeatist.
21 February 2009
Upping the Calorie Count
I've just eaten my last batch of pre-Lenten cookies: every time I eat something involving chocolate at the moment it's as if I'm self-administering the last rites by instalments. Has to be said that it neither makes it taste any better, nor makes me feel any better about it - and it doesn't seem to make me less inclined to eat it either.
Cookies have been one of my great comforts of the past year or so. It's partly Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's fault, as it's one of his recipes that I have been using. I have to say that he's not generally my kind of cook - if you find yourself being subjected to the consequences of weird butchery in the wilds of Chiswick, he's almost always to blame - but his cookie recipe is spot on. It makes the kind of cookies which are chewy without being more than a little bit crisp or ever so slightly spongey. I've tried it enough times to know that it works better with 'proper' dark chocolate than it does with anything more anaemic. I've even tried it enough times to know that I prefer it with Green & Black 70% to most other brands (although the Tesco finest 72ish% works OK if I'm feeling poor), and that it chops into about the right size chunks if you chop the little squares into 4, and that it chops most easily in winter weather if it has been in the cupboard near (but not next to) the hot water pipe for a day or two. If I'm using a medium rather than a large egg, I reduce the rest of the ingredients by about 10%. And it doesn't seem to matter much what kind of sugar you use.
I didn't grow up with cookies, although there was plenty of home baking around. Cookies have the attraction of being exotic. I remember very clearly the first time I ate proper home-made chocolate chip cookies: the fact that they remind me of a particular boy at a particular time certainly does nothing to put me off them.
But they also have the advantage of making up into relatively small batches. I have the same problem with cakes and biscuits as I have with chocolate: if they are there, I eat them. The cookie recipe makes about a dozen. Eating a dozen cookies is bad, but nowhere near as catastrophic as eating an entire tray of brownies or a whole, large carrot cake. I just concentrate on not thinking about the fact that making a bar of chocolate into cookies miraculously converts about 550 calories into something more like 4,000.
If I actually manage to do this (the giving up), I intend to spend Easter Sunday morning making cookies.
Cookies have been one of my great comforts of the past year or so. It's partly Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's fault, as it's one of his recipes that I have been using. I have to say that he's not generally my kind of cook - if you find yourself being subjected to the consequences of weird butchery in the wilds of Chiswick, he's almost always to blame - but his cookie recipe is spot on. It makes the kind of cookies which are chewy without being more than a little bit crisp or ever so slightly spongey. I've tried it enough times to know that it works better with 'proper' dark chocolate than it does with anything more anaemic. I've even tried it enough times to know that I prefer it with Green & Black 70% to most other brands (although the Tesco finest 72ish% works OK if I'm feeling poor), and that it chops into about the right size chunks if you chop the little squares into 4, and that it chops most easily in winter weather if it has been in the cupboard near (but not next to) the hot water pipe for a day or two. If I'm using a medium rather than a large egg, I reduce the rest of the ingredients by about 10%. And it doesn't seem to matter much what kind of sugar you use.
I didn't grow up with cookies, although there was plenty of home baking around. Cookies have the attraction of being exotic. I remember very clearly the first time I ate proper home-made chocolate chip cookies: the fact that they remind me of a particular boy at a particular time certainly does nothing to put me off them.
But they also have the advantage of making up into relatively small batches. I have the same problem with cakes and biscuits as I have with chocolate: if they are there, I eat them. The cookie recipe makes about a dozen. Eating a dozen cookies is bad, but nowhere near as catastrophic as eating an entire tray of brownies or a whole, large carrot cake. I just concentrate on not thinking about the fact that making a bar of chocolate into cookies miraculously converts about 550 calories into something more like 4,000.
If I actually manage to do this (the giving up), I intend to spend Easter Sunday morning making cookies.
17 February 2009
He loves me?
The thought of Lent is currently a bit of a challenge. There is enough chocolate sloshing around in the flat that it's possible I will be found one morning suffocated by a tidal wave of annoyingly dark chocolate (I prefer milk). But I have absolutely no idea how I would manage to get through a day - deliberately - without it.
Admittedly, not all of the current excess is the result of Valentine's day. I had agreed with the husband that we would only exchange token presents - and that for his side of the deal he would give me a small amount of chocolate. I've learnt that it works best if I make my expectations clear (I once got an academic treatise on Medieval Heresy as a birthday present, apparently because I had enjoyed reading The Name of the Rose); although it turns out that this was actually nowhere near clear enough. I had somewhere between hoped for and expected a box of red Lindor. It turns out that was actually what the husband had intended to get, but he had planned to buy it in the supermarket on the morning of Valentine's day when he went there to get the newspapers. When they didn't have any, he panicked (it seems that he was only aware of a single shop in Fulham. I have no idea what he thought he drove past to get there). In his distressed state he saw a box of After Eight Mints - which he knows I like - but he then realised that they actually don't cost very much. Then he noticed that Green & Blacks were 3 for the price of 2, and I ended up with a box of After Eights and 3 bars of Green & Blacks as a Valentines present.
We have since had the 'small means size, not price, if we are talking about chocolate' discussion. And I've eaten most of it anyway, only for a German friend of mine to present me with four bars of orange chocolate as a very kindly meant semi-joke at lunchtime today.
The best Valentine's present I've ever had was a semi-obscene amount of chocolate. It was a big plush, red box of Godiva praline hearts; and it felt like I had finally arrived in the land of adult romance. I think I even vaguely assumed that every following Valentines day would be equally appropriately marked. The contents didn't last long, but I kept the box for several years and kept sewing thread in it. And I suspect that there is no way on earth to explain to my husband why that was OK, but 600g of Green & Blacks and After Eights really isn't.
Admittedly, not all of the current excess is the result of Valentine's day. I had agreed with the husband that we would only exchange token presents - and that for his side of the deal he would give me a small amount of chocolate. I've learnt that it works best if I make my expectations clear (I once got an academic treatise on Medieval Heresy as a birthday present, apparently because I had enjoyed reading The Name of the Rose); although it turns out that this was actually nowhere near clear enough. I had somewhere between hoped for and expected a box of red Lindor. It turns out that was actually what the husband had intended to get, but he had planned to buy it in the supermarket on the morning of Valentine's day when he went there to get the newspapers. When they didn't have any, he panicked (it seems that he was only aware of a single shop in Fulham. I have no idea what he thought he drove past to get there). In his distressed state he saw a box of After Eight Mints - which he knows I like - but he then realised that they actually don't cost very much. Then he noticed that Green & Blacks were 3 for the price of 2, and I ended up with a box of After Eights and 3 bars of Green & Blacks as a Valentines present.
We have since had the 'small means size, not price, if we are talking about chocolate' discussion. And I've eaten most of it anyway, only for a German friend of mine to present me with four bars of orange chocolate as a very kindly meant semi-joke at lunchtime today.
The best Valentine's present I've ever had was a semi-obscene amount of chocolate. It was a big plush, red box of Godiva praline hearts; and it felt like I had finally arrived in the land of adult romance. I think I even vaguely assumed that every following Valentines day would be equally appropriately marked. The contents didn't last long, but I kept the box for several years and kept sewing thread in it. And I suspect that there is no way on earth to explain to my husband why that was OK, but 600g of Green & Blacks and After Eights really isn't.
14 February 2009
Don't Try This at Home
I had intended to follow up on the last post by going and finding out what Alcoholics Anonymous actually did (beyond telling people never to touch alcohol ever again - other than presumably in the format of nail polish remover, and then only for external use - and also encouraging them to spend time on a regular basis with other former alcoholics, which has always seemed a bit odd), but life rather got in the way.
In fact, life very kindly got me drunk. I very rarely get drunk these days, but several of my former bosses had kindly organised a leaving dinner for me -presumably in order to make their consciences glow more easily at having allowed someone else in the pointlessly labyrinthine management structure to fire me in the first place - and by the time it ended I was having to concentrate quite hard to work out which way was vertical, and how to stop words running into one another. It is arguable that I wasn't quite drunk enough, as when a fabulously polymath American, who is nearing retirement age, tried to teach me how to do the proper Wizard of Oz skip (on the Strand, near Charing Cross, at about 10.30 on Monday evening) I actually managed to decline. But I was still a very long way from anything even remotely resembling sober.
The following day, I didn't feel great. I actually hadn't been feeling great the day before either, but had put that down to nerves. The following day I put it down to the amount I had drunk, and forced myself to carry on and have another (non-alcoholic) blow-out meal with a friend in the evening. The day after that I felt queasy at the thought of anything other than water, and ended up spending the afternoon in bed after coming out in a weird rash on the way back from having my hair cut.
I also ate no chocolate, at all, all day.
Sadly, this was a one-off. On Thursday I began my Valentine's day preparations by eating the Bourneville which I didn't need for the millionaire's shortbread which the husband had asked for (it sounds worse once you know that the excess was 75g - a bar and a half and a bit in non-fatty terms). But I did it. I went a whole day without chocolate. I just have no idea what exact combination of circumstance I need to reproduce in order to make sure it happens again - and would rather not feel sick or come out in spots in the process.
In fact, life very kindly got me drunk. I very rarely get drunk these days, but several of my former bosses had kindly organised a leaving dinner for me -presumably in order to make their consciences glow more easily at having allowed someone else in the pointlessly labyrinthine management structure to fire me in the first place - and by the time it ended I was having to concentrate quite hard to work out which way was vertical, and how to stop words running into one another. It is arguable that I wasn't quite drunk enough, as when a fabulously polymath American, who is nearing retirement age, tried to teach me how to do the proper Wizard of Oz skip (on the Strand, near Charing Cross, at about 10.30 on Monday evening) I actually managed to decline. But I was still a very long way from anything even remotely resembling sober.
The following day, I didn't feel great. I actually hadn't been feeling great the day before either, but had put that down to nerves. The following day I put it down to the amount I had drunk, and forced myself to carry on and have another (non-alcoholic) blow-out meal with a friend in the evening. The day after that I felt queasy at the thought of anything other than water, and ended up spending the afternoon in bed after coming out in a weird rash on the way back from having my hair cut.
I also ate no chocolate, at all, all day.
Sadly, this was a one-off. On Thursday I began my Valentine's day preparations by eating the Bourneville which I didn't need for the millionaire's shortbread which the husband had asked for (it sounds worse once you know that the excess was 75g - a bar and a half and a bit in non-fatty terms). But I did it. I went a whole day without chocolate. I just have no idea what exact combination of circumstance I need to reproduce in order to make sure it happens again - and would rather not feel sick or come out in spots in the process.
8 February 2009
Resisting Temptation
I spent yesterday evening trying not to eat a KitKat.
I'm actually not a great fan of KitKats, or of Rolos come to that, but they are the current temptation just because they were both £1 for a pack of 5 in our local Tesco last Friday (20p for a packet of Rolos actually feels about right to me, although that probably just proves that my sense of proportion was fixed in around about 1983). In an ideal world, I would be resisting Godiva praline hearts, Lindor truffles and Montezuma's milk chocolate with mint and vanilla; but they were not sitting in the Disney sweet jar in the kitchen which one of my brothers gave me for my birthday about fifteen years ago. The KitKat was, along with a couple of packets of Rolos and three more KitKats.
I'd already had a KitKat early yesterday afternoon. I'd also had a packet of Rolos on my way to the tube station shortly after nine in the morning (I'll scoot quickly over the taboo nature of chocolate for breakfast for the moment, although I may return to it when I can't think of anything else to write about). Normally I would regard three chocolate 'items' in a day as bad but not unacceptable, but yesterday I decided I would limit myself to two. The result was a very miserable, listless evening, where I didn't settle to anything at all, drank alcohol (dessert wine, as that way I got a sugar fix), ate toast, and eventually gave up and went to bed.
I eventually ate the KitKat at about eleven this morning, followed by another packet of Rolos after lunch. I'm now back to battling myself over another packet of Rolos. At one level I regard chocolate addiction as a bit of a joke, but I'm not finding even cutting down very funny.
Do Alcoholics Anonymous do chocolate?
I'm actually not a great fan of KitKats, or of Rolos come to that, but they are the current temptation just because they were both £1 for a pack of 5 in our local Tesco last Friday (20p for a packet of Rolos actually feels about right to me, although that probably just proves that my sense of proportion was fixed in around about 1983). In an ideal world, I would be resisting Godiva praline hearts, Lindor truffles and Montezuma's milk chocolate with mint and vanilla; but they were not sitting in the Disney sweet jar in the kitchen which one of my brothers gave me for my birthday about fifteen years ago. The KitKat was, along with a couple of packets of Rolos and three more KitKats.
I'd already had a KitKat early yesterday afternoon. I'd also had a packet of Rolos on my way to the tube station shortly after nine in the morning (I'll scoot quickly over the taboo nature of chocolate for breakfast for the moment, although I may return to it when I can't think of anything else to write about). Normally I would regard three chocolate 'items' in a day as bad but not unacceptable, but yesterday I decided I would limit myself to two. The result was a very miserable, listless evening, where I didn't settle to anything at all, drank alcohol (dessert wine, as that way I got a sugar fix), ate toast, and eventually gave up and went to bed.
I eventually ate the KitKat at about eleven this morning, followed by another packet of Rolos after lunch. I'm now back to battling myself over another packet of Rolos. At one level I regard chocolate addiction as a bit of a joke, but I'm not finding even cutting down very funny.
Do Alcoholics Anonymous do chocolate?
6 February 2009
The Chocolate Blog
My name is Fiona* and I am a chocolate addict.
Yesterday I ate 3 bars of Galaxy. They were only normal-sized bars, so it’s not the worst day I’ve ever had, but my lack of self-control is gnawing away at my conscience – especially as I had another one for breakfast this morning. Normally I would aim for more variety in my diet, but I’m missing the chocolate machine which used to prop me up in the days when I used to have a job. For reasons I can’t quite explain, a bag of peanut M&M’s, a bar of Dairy Milk and a Galaxy Caramel never felt quite as bad as three of the same thing. Now it’s a question of what’s on special offer at the supermarket. That means buying several days supply at the same time – which means multi-pack monotony, and doesn’t work at all because I tend to eat it all almost immediately.
It is also doing very bad things for my waistline. I actually don’t really have a waistline any more, just a wobbly bit which my jeans cut into.
So I decided to do something about it. Not actually stop eating it, you understand: if I did that, I’d probably just eat something else instead. I’m toying with the idea of trying to give chocolate up for Lent, but Lent is probably too soon (anybody know where January went?), and too long. So I decided to try writing about it for a bit, to see if that would help shame me into action. Admittedly, in order for that to work I need to find ways of actually getting people to read this, but that can be tomorrow’s problem.
*Actually, it isn’t; but I might want to be rude about my husband.
Yesterday I ate 3 bars of Galaxy. They were only normal-sized bars, so it’s not the worst day I’ve ever had, but my lack of self-control is gnawing away at my conscience – especially as I had another one for breakfast this morning. Normally I would aim for more variety in my diet, but I’m missing the chocolate machine which used to prop me up in the days when I used to have a job. For reasons I can’t quite explain, a bag of peanut M&M’s, a bar of Dairy Milk and a Galaxy Caramel never felt quite as bad as three of the same thing. Now it’s a question of what’s on special offer at the supermarket. That means buying several days supply at the same time – which means multi-pack monotony, and doesn’t work at all because I tend to eat it all almost immediately.
It is also doing very bad things for my waistline. I actually don’t really have a waistline any more, just a wobbly bit which my jeans cut into.
So I decided to do something about it. Not actually stop eating it, you understand: if I did that, I’d probably just eat something else instead. I’m toying with the idea of trying to give chocolate up for Lent, but Lent is probably too soon (anybody know where January went?), and too long. So I decided to try writing about it for a bit, to see if that would help shame me into action. Admittedly, in order for that to work I need to find ways of actually getting people to read this, but that can be tomorrow’s problem.
*Actually, it isn’t; but I might want to be rude about my husband.
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