The slip

I hate myself.  More accurately I hate what I’ve allowed myself to eat this week. Eating healthy is supposed to be the most important thing in my life, and I’ve failed miserably.  All that’s left to love are the runner-up priorities that don’t matter.  So there isn’t much to love, excepting almost 300 pounds of blubber, which no could love.

It’s been a horrible week, filled with Dr. Pepper, cheese crackers, chocolate, Whataburger, Long John Silver’s, McDonald’s and Fazoli’s. I should have been eating the six servings of vegetarian subscription box meals in my fridge, but NOOOOO.  Instead, I ate crap.  And to make the situation even worse, tomorrow six more subscription box servings arrive.

The meals I have on hand are probably going bad, so I’ll have to toss them.  Not only can I not make good choices, I also keep wasting money.  Those six servings cost me $72.00.

So yeah, I’m not happy with myself.

Next steps?

The Internet’s best advice says self-loathing isn’t productive.  It’s likely to make me feel worse, which in my case usually equals more poor food choices.  I need to know what triggered this, and then take steps so I can interrupt the cycle in the future.  If I have a plan, I’m more likely to let the self-loathing abate.  If my plan works, then I will hopefully use the plan in response to the triggers, instead of using the drive-thru lanes.

So what went wrong?

My triggers are Dr. Pepper-related, professional and podiatric.

All the Dr. Pepper I’ve been consuming makes it difficult to sleep at night, so I’ve been averaging four hours a night for over a week now.  It’s hard to make good decisions when fatigued.  I’m going through cycles of AWAKE AWAKE and asleep asleep.  I keep saying NO MORE DR. PEPPER, but then remember I’m out of ice at home, so when I hit the drive-thru I buy one.

HigherEdJobs had a posting I’m very interested in, which meant I had to update my vita, references, and salary history.   Worse yet, I had to update my professional portfolio, which hasn’t received any love since 2008.  It needed to have social sharing, a new theme, and new content. It also needed to be mobile, and (of course) Section 508 compliant.  I spent most of last week working furiously to make all of that happen.

This week is also the last week of class, so I’m dealing with my students and final exams.  And since my faculty Subject Matter Experts are about to scatter for the summer they’ve been working furiously, trying to give me enough content to keep me busy with development until they return in the fall.

And my feet . . . OMG, my feet.  I’ve injured one foot somehow, and it’s super-sore, especially when I’m trying to (fitfully) sleep.  This week has also involved a lot of standing on the job.  It’s hard to force myself to cook when standing upright in the kitchen is painful.

Lessons learned

I need better food options in place for times when my life gets out of control.  The lesson isn’t anything new.  This knowledge has plagued me for years, but I’ve never had a satisfactory resolution, except maybe to drive through Panera Bread instead of Whataburger.

The new plan

I think my salvation might be in those meals I haven’t cooked.  Those meals need to become the foundation for an enormous batch of freezer meals.  Cooking all this food won’t be easy.  I don’t know if I have enough stamina to prepare all the meals before they go bad.  The alternatives, however — wasting food and money, and gaining more weight from fast food — isn’t acceptable.

I also need to QUIT DRINKING DR. PEPPER.  I need to buy ice trays and use them.  Dealing with the trays is a pain, but I need a solution I can control with minimal effort.  It takes less effort to fill a tray than make a grocery store run.

Other needs

Waking up in time to cook breakfast is an issue, too, but I’ll deal with that later.  I’m problemed out.

In the Hated Vegetable series, I’ll focus on preparing meals that contain foods I hate.  Or, foods I think I hate.

Tonight I ate more presumably gross food.  Plated sent me Salsify, Pea, and Sweet Onion Gruyere Paninis with Frisee Salad.  Did you read that?  Peas.  On a sandwich.  WTF? Wouldn’t they roll off the sandwich?  Isn’t that weird?

And who ever thought of eating peas, anyway?  Who said “Hey, let’s take these little green things that look like congealed snot and and put them in our mouth.  Bet they’re delicious!”  Who is the freak who first ate peas?

Then Plated tries to make the meal even more gross by adding cooked spinach. Please remember a few weeks ago just the thought of eating spinach forced me spit out a mouth full of food. Spinach wins the title of Second Grossest-Looking Everyday Food EVER, barely beaten out by Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats that have set in milk so long they unravel.  (I swear my sisters would leave theirs in the milk on purpose.)

The meal also included a tree-branch-looking thing called a “salsify.”  It sounds like salsa, but is no relation.  I’m disappointed, but chop it up per the recipe instructions.

On the plus side the meal did involve bread, cheese and caramelized onion.  On the strength of these three ingredients I decided I could choke down the panini, so put my fingers in my ears, ignored the Pizza Hut commercials playing incessantly on TV and cooked.  (It’s very hard to cook with fingers in your ears, and probably unsanitary, but I managed.)

Did you know salsify is sticky?  Maybe it’s salsify sap? I had to use Goo Gone to get it off my hands.  Once again Plated leaves out information I would have liked to have known in advance, so I could avoid digging through a cabinet with sticky hands, stick-ifying everything I touched.

Plated didn’t send enough cheese.  No way I could get through this experience without LOTS of cheese to disguise the vegetables.  I used half the cheese belonging to the uncooked serving, but hey — it’s not like I’d be cooking this hot mess again, right?

Except finished sandwich unexpectedly looked . . . delicious.  The peas weren’t rolling sickly around the plate, and the spinach wasn’t all gross and protruding out from under the bread.  On the contrary, it toasted beautifully and smelt really amazing. But hey, smell is overrated.  I’m not going to be fooled by a little aroma.  This sandwich had too many gross-me-out-things on it to ever be a success.

I ate the first bite standing by the trash can. My phone was on the counter beside me, with the Pizza Hut app at the ready.  I closed my eyes, brought the sandwich up to my face, screwed up my nose and took a bite.  I know the green grossness would hit at any second.  I was ready for the veggie slime to spoil the meal.  I chewed.  And chewed.  And swallowed in amazement.

Plated triumphs again.  Another weird-assed meal with gross vegetables, and I enjoyed every bite.  I’m still in shock.  Tomorrow morning I’m buying more cheese so I can cook the other sandwich for lunch.

But in the long term?  It’s good.  I enjoyed it.  But this isn’t going into my recipe collection, mainly because it uses bread.  Since I’m single I rarely buy bread.  The loaf always goes bad before I can finish it, even the so-called small loaves.  Molded bread makes me feel lonely, so I won’t be cooking this again.  Thank you, Plated, but ultimately no thanks.