The Internet Made Me Do It

The Internet caused me about 3000 calories this weekend. And by "caused," of course I mean "caused me to consume." Here I am, trying to lose weight, working out at the gym just about every day, and what do I do?

Well, I was all by myself Friday night, which was very typical, and I was craving fudge, which was not very typical. Unfortunately, I had, for the first time in my life, all the ingredients for fudge in my pantry. My parents unloaded all the extra Christmas groceries on me. I would love to blame them for over-spending and buying way too many groceries, but the sad fact is that I helped to make the grocery list and I helped to buy the groceries, adding impulse foods to the grocery cart. My parents had offered half the groceries to Brother 2 who politely declined, saying that if he needed anything he'd simply run over to my house and get it.

On about my tenth trip bringing groceries to the car, my father commented that I was blessed to have such a good brother. I only assumed that he was talking about the fact that Brother 2 was generous enough to let me have all the food. To me, my brother's motives were transparent: he didn't want to accept the leftover groceries because he didn't want any of the work required in accepting them (loading and unloading the car, rearranging the entire kitchen to fit in massive amounts of new, fatty foods) and he didn't want any of the accompanying calories. ("Fifteen pounds of mixed nuts? No thanks---send them over to Cicada's.") He also didn't want the responsibility of consuming all the spoilable food before it spoiled, so the family-sized bag of carrot sticks was unloaded on me (and I don't even like carrot sticks!). With it came heads of lettuce, bags of celery, cartons of eggs, bags of sauerkraut (I find that those who like sauerkraut really like it, but those who don't just stay away from it), bags of lunch meats, loaves of bread, two dozen oranges, three grapefruits, and a single $25 truffle.

I was about to expose my brother for the fraud that he was but before contesting my father's statement that I have such a good brother, I remembered that as far as brothers go, you can't ask for anything better than Brother 2 (or any of my other brothers). So I acknowledged the truth of my father's statement and went on packing up the car. An hour later, I tried to remember how good to me Brother 2 is again, as I unloaded the car at my house, all alone. Three hours after that, when all the new food finally found its place in my kitchen cupboards and pantry, I still was trying to focus on how good a brother Brother 2 is to me.

At home, it was my obligation to use the food before it rotted. Of course, things like chocolate chips (several bags), sugar (ten pounds), flour (five pounds), shortening (three pounds), butter (three pounds), pecans (two bags), Jell-O mixes (four boxes), maraschino cherries (one jar), jam (two jars), salad dressings (three bottles), and nuclear-fall-out-sized bags of potato chips (one and a half) didn't need to be attended to immediately. I needed to concentrate on the perishables. So it was that I used the internet to help me find a low-calorie solution for the carrots. I was able to find a recipe that needed exactly three pounds of carrots. I made a carrot-dill soup and now, three days later, our house still smells of dill and my fingers are turning orange.

Celery soup is next. And I'd better eat some sort of meal involving truffles later this week, too.

But going back to the second paragraph of this post, so it was that I was sitting by myself on a Friday night, all alone, and craving fudge. And for the first time in my life, I had all the ingredients for fudge in my house (I wisely do not buy ingredients for fatty foods so that I'm never able to cave to my cravings). Fortunately, this craving only kicked in at about 10:00 on Friday night, and although I had the ingredients for fudge, I didn't have the recipe. I couldn't call my mother because it was midnight on the East Coast. I congratulated myself on being unable to make and therefore eat fudge. Unfortunately, I realized about five minutes later that the recipe is a Kraft recipe and therefore was probably easily findable on the internet.

And so it was that I made the fudge and consumed almost half of it in two days. Now, ever thankful for a fast Sunday, I'm skipping calories this morning and I'm bringing the rest of the fudge to our ward break the fast in two hours. Maybe they'll have some use for mixed nuts?