Eating out will be my demise. I just know it. When I hit the big Five-O, suddenly, all the carbs I had ever eaten seemed to magically attach themselves to my tummy, hips, and thighs. My once slender mid-section now has a distinct bulge. It is time to stop blaming my snug jeans on dryer shrinkage. I had previously thought of my hips as curvy, but curves are smooth and graceful. My hips are not smooth. They are riddled with strange lumps and bumps, so curvy can't be the word for them.
My bathroom scale and I are enemies. When I weigh myself, the number that appears in the little glass window is scarier than a man in a goalie mask. I've heard there are digital scales that talk to you. That's just what I need: my weight announced out loud. My ears don't deserve such abuse.
There is something I can blame, though. Since I no longer cook for a family, my husband and I often dine in restaurants or eat carry out food. It really is true in some cases that it is as cheap, if not cheaper, than cooking at home. I didn't say it was healthier. I said cheaper.
One famous fast food restaurant calls its frequent visitors "heavy food users." When they first came up with this term, they must have been able to see into the future, and into my mirror. While I don't believe in clairvoyants, I have to give them this one.
On the few occasions I do decide to cook, I find myself drawn to comfort foods. I make a mean chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. Yes, I've heard that frying is horrible. I know if you fry food you might as well call the ambulance before you start, because you will probably collapse with your first bite. But if you are frying in healthy oil, why is frying bad? Some oil is necessary for a shiny coat and bright eyes. Or perhaps I am confusing these facts with something I read on a dog food package. At any rate, if you use vegetable oil (and the key word is vegetable), how bad can frying be? Speaking of vegetables, potatoes are a vegetable. Vegetables are good for you. The milk and butter in the potatoes are dairy products. Dairy products are good for you. It's equally as puzzling to me why gravy is so evil. Gravy is mostly flour. Flour is a grain. Grain is good for you. Please do not ever tell me that I don't know how to cook healthy.
Desserts are no strangers to my cuisine. I can whip up a more than passable apple crisp and coconut cream pie. If my oven wasn't always full of rolls of paper towels, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil, I would probably bake more desserts. Since I don't cook more often, the oven makes a great storage place for paper products. I just have to remember to remove them before I turn the oven on. I only forgot once. The fire department thought it was a hoot and no doubt had great stories to tell about the senile woman who put her paper towels in the oven.
Although I do know my way around a kitchen, I just don't see the point in cooking much when there is a such a wide variety of tasty, if fattening, foods available. Many restaurants offer items they call "skinny", or "guiltless", or some other clever moniker that is supposed to let you know they are low-cal without actually saying so. Alternately, many restaurants print the calories right on the menu. Why don't they just stop listing menu items altogether, and list them by calorie count instead? We could all be ordering the "2,900 Calorie Butt Bonanza", and have no idea what it actually is until it arrives. It would certainly be much tastier than the "1,000 Calorie Skinny Scoop", though.
I have decided that if I am going to keel over from eating out, I might as well do it right. Nobody lives forever anyway. Let the health nuts eat lettuce leaves and sweat on the treadmills. I'll watch them while I eat my double chocolate fudge ice cream cone.