People tell me today is Easter Sunday. Without going on a rant about it, the season has always seemed rather depressing to me. As an atheist, I don't buy the whole 'died for our sins' thing, and it's jussssst a little disconcerting to see so many people celebrating through violent iconography of the torture of a political dissident, and reverse-engineering reasons to rejoice about it. Each to their own of course, but to me - litttttle bit creepy.
Now Oestera, the pagan festival - that I can get behind. Conspicuous consumption, particularly of high-energy foods, and feeling the call of spring to repopulate, oh yes thankyouverymuch.
But high-energy foods, especially chocolate ones, are now verboten to me as I try to Disappear. Ahem, I make no comment about the call of Spring.
Annnnyway, got out of bed around 11ish, having gone back after the post-bike shower. Today we were having Sunday Lunch with my mother. Or 'A Proper Dinner' as it's known here in the valleys of South Wales.
'A Proper Dinner' will be familiar to almost everyone - carved meat, green things, boiled to a point where they retain no identifiable texture, potatoes in any number of guises, an array of sauces - mint, cranberry, horseradish, bread (yes really, that's a sauce, I'm not making this up) - stuffing, potentially, and, if you're extra-specially lucky, a peculiar kind of savoury batter pudding which clearly has no business being anywhere near any of the other ingredients. All of it drowned in a thick meat gravy that, around these parts at least, is intended to 'stick to your ribs.'
If you've been raised in its tradition, A Proper Dinner is or can be a magnificent thing. Certainly in my home town in industrial South Wales, the tradition has long been to see exactly how much of everything you can pile on a plate, like a kind of culinary version of Jenga, because after all, the town owes its existence mostly to mining, and the post-church Sunday meal was probably the most thought-about, most time-consuming, and most calorifically impressive meal most families would get in the course of any given seven-day period. The best image I could find to illustrate the principle is still a bit pitiful to be honest - in South Welsh circles, you can confidently expect the food to be piled to the tip of the man's napkin.
It's a serious prospect, and one which, given its place in the day, made breakfast seem a little superfluous.
That being said, I had a word with my mother - plenty of the green stuff, good chunk of protein, less of the carb, I begged. 'Righto, love,' she said and went back to stirring the gravy.
When it came, the plate was still suffering from gigantism. Though thankfully, either she or, more likely, d had taken my Disappearing on board, so there were just a couple of new potatoes, a mass of boiled green stuff, and an impressively chewable range of proteins - in a move towards advanced gastronomy or the tradition of the carvery, Ma had added a couple of chicken breasts to the otherwise pork-dominated protein palate. High protein, low carb - technically a win.
I ate it all, but when offered 'a fruit salad' for 'afters,' I regarded it in the manner of a waffer-thin mint, and declined. As I write this entry, it's about six hours after I started eating lunch, and I'm still full. I can only imagine what sort of state d's in - there was trifle and ice cream for dessert too.
In terms of Disappearing, possibly the first moderately disappointing day - Yes, I know it's Easter, but I still have a shedload of work to do, which rules out jumping back on the bike to pay penance to the sweat-gods. Today will simply have to be what it was - a one-meal day, with a bit of exercise early on, and a resolve to remain more firmly on track tomorrow, before the first official 'in-progress' weigh-in on Tuesday. What effect the day will have had on that result, I don't know. If it reads on Tuesday what it read this morning before the gargantuan feast, I'll be happy enough.
Here's hoping.
No comments:
Post a Comment