From Prague!

I'm writing this post from Prague, Czech Republic! Don't expect too many of these.

We started off on our eleven hour plane ride in LAX and I was coming off an all-nighter. No sleep + 11 hours of also no sleep = ABSOLUTE INSANITY AND HEAD TRAMA.

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean I vaguely recall having food placed in front of me. There was a square of chocolate and a cup of cheeseca-aaaahh. I remember thinking "I am not supposed to eat this" but everything after that is blank. I'm pretty sure I ate it.

While in Prague, I've stayed away from "American sugars" like cookies, candies, and brownies, but I have eated some of the "Native Deserts." Let's face it - I'll never be in Prague again, I might as well.

When we landed in Prague I thouht that it would only be fitting that the first thing I purchase in a European country would be a meal from McDonalds - the rest of the team was stopping there to chow down. I sat at a table and contemplated eating American food.

Then I fell asleep.

Cheeseca-aaaahh!

Cheesecake. It's stalking me. No seriously.

I have always loved cheesecake. But I only see it (let alone eat it) maybe once a year. Possibly twice if I'm extremely lucky. And yet, somehow, during the three-month period that I CANNOT EAT IT, it has suddenly appeared everywhere.

You may recall that I recently froze a piece of cheesecake for the fall. Not long after the execution of that more than brilliant idea I was invited to a party at the Cheesecake Factory. The first part of the evening was lovely (so were the waiters), but the second was grueling (so where the heels I was wearing.)

It may (or may not) be slightly obvious that the Cheesecake Factory only serves one thing for dessert . . . CHEESECAKE (or as we shall refer to it from now on: cheeseca-aaaahh!! in a very whiny and sort of unpleasant tone, because that's how I feel when I see cheesecake.) While everyone else ordered their deluxe cheeseca-aaaahhs, I was sitting in the corner (the corner farthest away from the outdoor heater, with the puddle of water run-off right below my feet) sipping my cappaccino and trying not to look grumpy.

Lucky for me, no one wanted the whip cream that came with their cheeseca-aaaahhs (which, you may recall, is my only exception), so my cappiccino quickly became a whipcreamo (which spellcheck is saying is a real word...).

About a week ago (new story here) I attended a homeschooling leadership conference with my mom up in Pasadena. I won't tell you how we got lost for two hours in the middle of the night and ended up in San Bernadino, or how we asked random, sketchy looking strangers for directions. I won't even tell you that our hotel had awesome vallets who couldn't speak english ... at all. But I will mention that, for dessert during their big brunch, they served cheeseca-aaaahh.

And what did I do with this cheeseca-aaaahh?

I'll tell you.

I mashed it up on the plate and swirled it into the raspberry sauce until it was a henious shade of chartruesse (which I spelled correctly on the first try!) and then heaped it back onto the gramcracker crust. When the waiter came to clear my plate he said slowly and with as much tact as possible, "...Are you done, Ma'am?" To which I replied slowly and with as much dignity as possible, "Yes."

Here's the truth guys,
I'm failing miserably. I ate a piece of Angel Food Cake. I had a pina colada (x3). And I've been snacking and seconding this whole month. It's discouraging.

But I'm still going. I've said "no" more than I've said "weeell...okay, if you insist."

Tomorrow I'm leaving for the Czech Republic where I'll be continuing my "no sugar" thing. When I come back, we just have TWO MORE WEEKS and then it's back to life as normal. And I'll finally get to eat that piece of frozen cheeseca-aaaahh.

Chocolate Nightmares

I'll be honest. I've been avoiding this blog. On purpose. No regrets. . . Actually, I do have regrets - I'm way behind.

Truthfully, I've been having chocolate-covered nightmares (believe it or not, they're real.)
On more than one night (three to be exact) in the past week and a half I have dreamt (which spellcheck is telling me isn't a real word -- ironically, it's also saying 'spellcheck' isn't a real word) I was eating some kind of chocolate. The first night it was a snickers bar and all my friends were mocking me for woosing out on my no sugar deal. The second and third times they were just huge slabs of chocolate that I DEVOURED. And the whole time I felt terrible because I was eating sugar when I shouldn't be!

And then I woke up.

I think the "troublesome" "inconvenient" and "painful" stages have past - we are now in "crazy as in 'INSANE' and you are going to become mentally unstable."

Over the next few days I will (hopefully) catch you up on some good stories. Then I will depart for the Czech Republic on a 3-week mission's trip. I will continue my no soda/no sugar thingy there (with discretion: if it's culturally related, I might bend the rule seeing as I'll probably never be in Czech again.)

When I return I will crank up the burners for the last two weeks! I will go HARDCORE! I will enforce my no snacks/no seconds portion (which I have not been enforcing ... AT ALL this month) and I will scratch the "conscience line" and just not eat anything with sugar in it at all. including cereal. and bread. . . maybe. I don't know about bread yet. We'll see.

ANYWAY. It's going to be big. Just wait.

Till then, sweet dreams.

Life's Lemons

I am currently hungry and riding a sugar low (which I've basically been in all summer in various degrees of intensity) so I decided to talk about life's lemons. Life has a lot of them. There are several lemons sitting on my counter, in fact (real lemons, not hypothetical ones.)

The following items are a result of the new July impositions:
1. I'm hungry.
2. I only had one bowl of spaghetti tonight (which I'm fairly disgruntled about).
3. I'm having trouble phrasing sentences because I can't picture words in my head without envisioning them all dribbled in chocolate sauce.
4. I suddenly have a craving for peanuts (a craving a didn't have in June when I could have eaten them.)
5. We are suddenly out milk... (that doesn't actually relate to the nutrition program but it's definitely affecting my mood.)
6. When I close my eyes, I imagine myself falling into piles and piles of potato chips and tapioca pudding FOREVER AND EVER.
7. I'm hungry.

My Mom decided to turn some of those lemons on our counter into lemonade this afternoon. What a great way to segue into my schpiel about making life sweet! . . . Oh wait. You can't make lemonade without SUGAR. This week better tumble over quickly...

also.

I REALLY WANT ICE-CREAM!

Cheesepuffs, Please

Tomorrow is the first day of July (for those of you so isolated in your Summer Enjoyment that you've lost track of the months) and with it comes the second part of my test of self-control: No Snacks/No Seconds. I'd like to focus on the former part of this.

No snacks, while not nearly as rough as 'no sugar', posses it's own problems - mostly because I foolishly used snacky foods (which I don't normally eat) as a crutch to replace my cookie crutch. Now I have no crutch at all and I'm concerned as to how that will effect the rest of my summer.

I drowned my misery at the prospect of no more French Onion Sun Chips for the summer in a bag of borrowed cheesepuffs and quickly inhaled all of them.

I feel like this may have been counter-productive (like going to a bar before attending your first AA meeting) but I also feel like I needed a proper "send-off" before plunging into a desert of carrot sticks and boiled celery.

Oh well.

Also, I should mention that today I wrapped a piece of cheesecake in tinfoil and stuck it in the back of the freezer in my garage. Call me pathetic; I just hope it's still there in September when I go back for it.

Too Much Corn

It's hard for me to find snacks that are not "sugary." In the past my fall-backs for stomach fillers have been things like toffee covered peanuts and those pink and white animal crackers with the sprinkles ... mMm. Anyway, the point is that I've had to make alterations to my snack foods and it hasn't been going so well.

While watching the World Cup with my brother and grandma (yes, she's the most awesome grandma ever for following international soccer) I decided to make popcorn.

I've never made popcorn before.

I was doing the legit kind - not the fake stuff you microwave - I was really going to put kernels in a pot and pop them. And it would be awesome. But then it wasn't.

The trouble with popcorn is that it's difficult to tell when you have enough kernels in the pot to produce a sufficient amount of fluffy stuff. I had a big pot so I figured if I just had enough to cover the bottom I'd be good. I poured the kernels into the hot oil and lidded the pot. And then I waited. I shook the pot a little bit. And waited.

Then, all at once, the whole thing EXPLODED. There was popcorn everywhere! It was all I could do to keep the lid on the pot. Then I tried to pour some of the popped corn into a bowl to make room for the rest of the kernels to puff. Unfortunately, my grandma's old-fashioned burner stove that uses real flames and the tasseled dish rag I was using to hold the pot handles didn't get along so well.

Next thing I knew my rag was in flames and the corn just kept coming. I threw the rag into the sink of dirty dish water and slammed the knob on the stove to turn off the burner.

The final tally was more than two full bowls worth of popcorn (of which I ate an entire one all by myself ... still slightly ashamed of that,) one dead rag, and nobody any the wiser of what had happened (they were all too busy watching the USA get cheated out of an other-wise great game.)

My only consolation is that in four years when we play at the World Cup again, I'll know how to properly pop corn.

Actually, scratch that. In four years I'll be back to candied peanuts and pink animal crackers with sprinkles.

Whipped-Cream

Every rule needs an exception. In Paramore's song (introduced to me by a friend on the four hour drive up to a Palm Nursery in Santa Barbara) "the only exception" - the exception is Love. In my sugarless summer, the exception is whipped cream.

You'll notice that I stated "every rule NEEDS an exception" - not has or should have. Every rule NEEDS an exception (are you beginning to see a pattern in my 'law-abiding' tendencies?)

Anyway, I spent the last week in Santa Barbara working at a Palm Nursery. In the evenings, the crew would go to a coffee shop in town called "Jitters." Jitters has a lot of appealing aspects - the native Santa Barbara art work on the walls; the 'up-and-coming' artists, hopefuls, and creative types that sat quietly at the tiny tables; the large, warm-yellow mugs they used for coffee; the free-internet...

The drink list was extensive and delicious looking. Espresso and chocolate were the two most used ingredients. I stuck to my guns and didn't have anything sugary. But as they handed me my sugar-free toffee latte, I realized that I needed an exception. So I asked for whipped cream. And I got it. It was delightful.

Is my conscience trouble? No. Is my sugarfree program ruined? Not at all. In fact, I discovered as I drove back down to San Diego, listening to Paramore on my friend's ipod and licking the whipped cream off my sugarfree starbucks vivanno, that exceptions are like whipped cream: they are good for the soul. And so is Santa Barbara. I want to go back there.