Sugar Rush

 I have loved sweets my entire life - chocolate, cookies, brownies, candy, ice cream, I was always up for dessert. I'd eat anything, provided I wasn't allergic: chocolate lava cake, tiramisu, fruit tarts, cookie dough sundaes, peppermint lattes, salted caramel truffles, and so much more. I've enjoyed ice cream for breakfast, and no, not just when I was having an especially bad day. On top of that, I love to bake, so for most of my adult life, I've had a recipe at the ready and (all too often) the spoils somewhere in my house. Even when I baked for friends, or to take to work, or whatever, I always still kept a little bit for myself. As I type this, there's both banana bread and cookie cake in my freezer. 

My thoughts have always aligned with the infamous joke about sex and pizza: Even when dessert was bad, it's still pretty good. 

As if to spite me (lol, like the universe cares that much), a global pandemic set in a year ago, and suddenly I had no one to share my baked goods with - no office, let alone office-mates to feed and/or bribe with lemon raspberry cake, blondies, cranberry cinnamon cookies.   Did I let this stop my baking habit? Of course not, except that now Bishop and I were the primary audience.  As I'm sure you can guess, this quickly spiraled out of control into a delicious disaster. 

No chocolate in my house was safe. 

In general, I have been very fortunate in the pandemic: My job in IT allows me to work 100% from home as well as keeps me gainfully employed.  Most of my immediate family was either the same, like my brothers, or retired, like my in-laws and my mother. My dad had Covid, but it was thankfully mild. Now, as vaccines roll out, working in IT has somehow added me to the priority list and Bishop and I are already one dose in, with the second scheduled soon. On top of that, my job throughout the last year has been relatively low-stress, allowing me to exercise regularly, cook more often, and generally stay sane.  I haven't gained a pound over quarantine; in fact, I've developed more muscle mass and walked more steps in the last year than probably the previous two combined. 

This is all, of course, while I've been stuffing my face with sweets. 

pictured: me March 2020-Feb 2021

I did eventually recognize that while, sure, I hadn't gained weight and of course I was enjoying myself, I was not in a healthy place. No meal was truly good for me if I chased it with a piece of cookie cake the size of my fist, no matter how many veggies were originally involved. 

This is when Whole30 got involved.  

I'd encountered it before, one of many diets that friends have tried or that popped up on one of the endless cooking subreddits I browse. I'd considered it before too, but the insanely restrictive rules seemed truly impossible when faced with my former office's glorious, never-empty pantry of cereal, yogurt, and coffee -- all things I am powerless to resist but require sugar to be fun. 

The pandemic, however, solved that problem - no temptation to eat a bunch of junk if it's not nearby, no restaurant difficulties to navigate if I haven't been in a restaurant in a year, no happy hours, birthday parties, or anything else to feel awkward (or wish for cake) at if all of those things simply do. not. exist. That, coupled with an ice cream cake for Bishop's birthday that a) was the size of a large pizza, and b) did not last a week in our home, which is just the two of us, and something had to change. 

So for the past month, Whole30 has been my life - I 'm on Day 27, 3 days and 9 meals (but who's counting) to go. Some days have been like this: 

but overall, it's been survivable. Black coffee, more eggs and brussel sprouts than I can count, and by the second week, all I really wanted in life was a grilled cheese, but it's almost done. I want to review it, to explain the inanities about American food it revealed, to rant about how dumb I find some of the rules, to excuse my mistakes, and to truly reflect on the benefits - because there have been lots, more than I expected even if they are wildly different from what I thought they'd be. 

I can't yet, because I'm not done. 

But also because I can't stop thinking about ice cream and chocolate easter bunnies, white chocolate raspberry crepes and cinnamon rolls, a real cup of coffee with cream and the blueberry lemon loaf I definitely should have baked before this misadventure started. 

Black Coffee and Sadness

I am training myself to drink black coffee. Because, you know, there wasn't enough bitterness in my life what with the pandemic and all.

Really, this all started a few weeks ago, when my ancient coffeemaker died.  It had served me well, providing far too much caffeine for far too little effort since I bought it for about $8 from a Costco in 2011.  It's been tossed into pantries and abandoned, lived through a classroom full of students abusing it, survived a career change that required SO MUCH MORE coffee than I ever anticipated, even clogged a few times, but it's always survived. Suddenly, ten days into a pandemic, and nope, time for the Little Coffee Maker Than Could to eat it.

I went to Target and bought myself a new one - a better one! - for a whole $20.

This coffee maker and I got along great for a few weeks - fresh, delicious, piping hot coffee that made the world feel a little better when it was cold and dark and awful (and not just in my house).

Then it went bad. Every cup tasted overly bitter, oily, burnt. Something was wrong - something that couldn't just be solved by cleaning the carafe, though that certainly helped.

It took me a few days until I figured it out: the creamer. My normal creamer somehow didn't get along with this new coffee maker -- the coffee turned to bitter, gross sludge. Maybe I'd added powdered vanilla caramel one too many times and the flavor rebelled. Maybe I'd tried to go sugar-free too many times and the coffee itself gave up all hope of tasting even remotely palatable. Whatever it was, every single cup was ruined.

Which brings me to yesterday. 

Yesterday, after my first cup of disgusting coffee was poured down the drain, I realized I still had half a carafe that was hot and, more importantly at 8am, caffeinated.

I poured it in a mug and stared at it for a while.

I've never liked black coffee - it tastes too much like punishing myself first thing in the morning, and if I'm going to do that, I may as well work out instead.  Sure, I've been teased over the fact that really, I'd prefer my caffeine in the form of a candy bar in a cup (aka, a skinny white chocolate mocha, and no, the irony is not lost on me). Sure, I've struggled to find tolerable gas station coffee that I can stomach while on road trips or vacations in order to stave off the headache long enough to make it through the day.  But I've never given up on creamer and so much sugar that it makes other people cringe from across the room.

But yesterday... I knew. I had to make the effort. I was drinking too much coffee every day, and it was so bad, that there was no way black coffee could possibly be worse.

I took one sip and promptly realized how wrong I was.

That said - it was still better than whatever unholy concoction I'd made and thrown out the day before, so I decided to see what I could do.

After scrounging around my nearly-empty (read: only vegetables and fruit left, what a crisis) pantry and fridge, I located a container of half and half and a couple of sugar packets. Hm. Once the sniff-test deemed the half and half acceptable, it was go-time.

About a tablespoon poured into the mug, tendrils of creamer roiling through the hot coffee. I stirred and stared - could I do it?

Nope - needed more empty calories. I added a sugar packet, stirred again, and finally took a sip.

It was pretty good.

A feeling of immense pride swept over me: I was drinking my coffee black. Well, black for me - it wouldn't give me diabetes on impact nor would it cause me to spontaneously throw up, so that qualified as a win in my book.

This morning, I repeated the experiment -- perhaps my results yesterday had been skewed. Perhaps the quarantine was getting to me. It seemed almost reasonable that I'd hallucinated a nearly-plain cup of coffee and had instead driven myself to the only open Starbucks in my city.

So I tried again -- the same tablespoon of cream and a single sugar packet, and I was bopping along, happy as Zipper on Bunny Day on a deserted island while I tried to intelligently interrogate my new coworkers on our clients and their projects.

Even while typing this, I remain proud of myself - this is growth! I've never enjoyed black coffee in my life! Could this be it? Have I made a breakthrough?

Only time, and the continued sadness of being trapped in my house, and quite a bit more mostly-black coffee, will tell.