The taste of fear

This is a Maltese Dish called Froga-Tat-Tarja… Spaghetti Omelette. And you can find the recipe down below 👇🏻👇🏻

I’m writing this on my balcony and, for the first time in weeks, it’s quite pleasant. I’m not stifled under a blanket of humidity, and there is a slight breeze whispering “Three-ring binder paper is on sale at Staples.” Because no matter how old I get, September is the real New Year’s Eve. But instead of Champagne, it’s an apple juice box and instead of an evening gown, it’s an itchy school-uniform kilt. (And let’s face it, I’ve never been to an NYE event that served champaign and required a gown, so who’s kidding who?)

Heralding the new (school) year brings with it an irrational wave of anxiety (irrational as I am neither returning to school nor do I have children who are doing so) but also a very pleasant return of the foods I love to eat.

It means saying “byeeee” to garden fresh, summer produce, it was nice while it lasted. So long hydrating fruits and vegetables like cucumber and water melon… as of September, you’re all wet. Adios “It’s too hot to cook, so let’s just have a salad!”… You can go right to HELL! Because it’s September, baby! And all I want are SOUPS, and CASSEROLES, and sandwiches!

Big time Yum Yum - Click the link above for recipe!

Welcome, Carbtober! Welcome your ass off!

For many years, I was scared of carbs. Bread sent me into a spiral and pasta made me shake. You’d never find these things in my house and I would spend hours looking at restaurant menus days before a lunch date trying to calculate what I could order to minimize the dreaded carb intake. Cauliflower subbed in for rice… and pizza crust… and mashed potatoes… In those years, Cauliflower was doing a lot of heavy lifting and for that, I give her credit.

And then one day I thought: What if I just ate the sandwich?

I was afraid of food. I imagined food as some boogie man, lurking under my bed, waiting to make my butt bigger. But food is what my body needs in order to make it go. Like a car needs gas.

Then I think about school again. And the pyramid that hung in our classrooms - Lists of good foods and bad foods. How early my attitudes were formed! My relationship with this thing that was meant to keep me alive was doomed from the beginning, because, in my brain, if I ate “good foods” I was good, and if I ate “bad foods” I was bad.

Canada’s Food Guide 1982

I remember in university. Listing with my roommate all the things we had eaten that day. How we had stuffed ourselves and how we’d have to “do better” tomorrow… it dawned on me, we were describing a pretty basic breakfast, lunch, and dinner day. In that moment, I realized that a perfect day, for us, a day we wouldn’t have to beat ourselves up over, was a day where we ate nothing. And wouldn’t we have been virtuous?!

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson then.

Sadly, it is decades later, and I’m still learning it.

Are some foods going to give us more economical and better mileage? Sure. Of course. Are they the most delicious and emotionally satisfying foods? No, my friend, often, they are not.

But every food serves a purpose. And they are nothing to fear.

Like any good relationship, the one we have with food takes time and it takes work. I’m still working on mine… some days we are very happy together. Other days… not so much. But we have a rule. Never go to bed hungry.

Here’s the recipe. Just like I promised.

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