Waisting Time

Trick or treat, ate my meat, now where’s something sweet to eat?

I suspect I’m not alone on this one.  I eat a meal… am comfortably (or UNcomfortably) replete… but I want something more.  Specifically – something sweet.  Anything sweet.  Call it dessert.  Or call it a conditioned response.  Or call it “all in my head” and just one more voice to ignore.  But my mind starts thinking while my mouth is waiting for that little taste.

I’m not still hungry.  I’m just looking for that taste to finish the meal.  The sweet capstone.  The culmination.  The climax.  Closure for my meal?

It might be just an apple.  Or my almost nightly cup of sugar-free pudding.  Sometimes I satisfy the craving with a piece of dessert-flavored gum.  Or maybe I stave it off with a cup of chocolate cocoa flavored tea.  But whatever it is that I end up ingesting, or NOT ingesting, it drives me just a bit crazy that I always WANT something.  That sweet ending.  Almost like a palate cleanser but there’s nothing clean about it!

I suspect it comes from years of ending a meal with a true dessert.  Like cookies, cake, ice cream.  Store bought or homemade.  Immediately or after a bit of digestion.   “What’s for dessert?” seems a question that naturally follows the end of a meal.  No matter how healthy the meal.  Or how unhealthy.

As for the other “standard” question – “Did you save room for dessert?” – Well, who needs room!?  It’s not about room.  It’s about taste.  And sweetness.  And completion.  Or satisfaction.

Is this a habit I need to break?  Maybe.  Because even if I’m making healthy choices, I’m still eating when I’m not physically hungry.  (The crux of all food issues for me!)  Or I’m relying on some crutch (like gum or tea) to avoid eating when I WANT to be eating.  Maybe that’s okay?  Or maybe I need to recondition my mouth and my brain so that I eat my meal and that’s that.  Period.  Exclamation point.

One thing that helps, if I can find motivation to get up off my post-meal sweet-desiring butt, is to brush my teeth.  Breaks the taste sensation.  So why don’t I do it more often?  Laziness, I guess.  And the simple fact that I would rather eat the apple than scrub some mintiness around in my mouth!

So, my desire for sweet endings is just one more thing that I’m thinking about nowadays.  As I am often wont to do.  In my typical over-thinking fashion.  But then, what would I blog about if not my internal musings?!

What about you?  Do you crave something sweet after a meal?  What do you do to satisfy or abate that?  Is your happy ending a sweet one?

Three strikes and you’re out?  Or third time’s the charm?  Recently I’ve been sorely tested by pumpkin baked-goods temptation, not once, not twice, but, yes, you guessed it, three times.  How’d I hold up in the face of one of my favorite treats?  Read on…

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Pusher:  The doorbell rings.  I innocently answer, expecting to greet a relative who is coming over to join my husband and others for an afternoon of football watching.  What I wasn’t expecting is to have him hand me a container, saying, “Here, I got you pumpkin muffins.”  Aaargh.  Me?  Why me?  I’m not watching football.  I’m already struggling in my mind with the food temptation that my husband had planned – some delicious looking cracker crack (that he raves about but I’ve never tried) and pizza, with its wonderful aroma wafting through the house as it heats.  I don’t need baked goods to push me over the edge!  So, as had been my plan all along, I just steered clear of the testosterone zone.  But, hours later as the same thoughtful relative saw me on his way out of the house, muffins again in hand (for which I was ever so thankful that they were leaving my house and thoughts), he asked me TWICE if I was sure I didn’t want any.  “No.“  “Thank you.”  And out they walked.

Thoughtful Moms and Pumpkin Bombs:  This time it’s the phone ringing, that heralds the disturbance in my eating equilibrium.  My mom was on the other end.  “I have to bring by your pumpkin bread,” she tells me.  My pumpkin bread?  What pumpkin bread?  Ah, every quick on the uptake, it comes to me.  My mom had driven past a Dutch bakery that we haven’t visited in several years but which we used to pass on the way to and from her last lake house.  And we usually stopped.  And when we did, we always bought their pumpkin bread.  (And molasses cookies, and other assorted treats.  But I digress.)  So, thoughtful as she is, and she IS, she bought me a loaf.  Which she knew I’d enjoy.  And I knew I’d overeat.  So, again, thinking fast, I asked her to put it in her freezer for Thanksgiving.  The holiday that brings visions of pumpkins dancing in my head.  Because that day I intend to (almost) guiltlessly indulge and the other guests will happily partake, leaving less for little old overeating me.

No One To Blame But Myself:  And just when I thought the pumpkin onslaught was over, I brought more on myself.  My husband and I were bringing a meal to a neighbor’s house to feed them and their out-of-town guests after a sudden death.  We signed up for breakfast, because we thought that would be harder for other volunteers who actually have jobs to go to.  Breakfast for a crowd.  Timing unknown.  What does one do in a situation like this?  Bake.  What do I know I can bake well enough to serve to others?  Pumpkin bread.  The recipe makes two loaves and the good news is that delivering the loaves intact allows for nary a nibble.  So, along with fruit and bagels and juice and an egg dish, the pumpkin bread left my house, unsampled.  As for the pumpkin bread batter, that’s another story.  I licked the spoon and I liked it.  (Yes, I’m singing that to Katy Perry’s tune.)

So, there you have it.  Muffins and bread:  zero.  Karen:  three.

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