From Zen to Sin with Chik’n

My colorful array of vegalicious delights.

Oh woe is me.

All it took was one step away from Mr. Wu and away I slipped on a banana peel.

Which was  pretty apropos for the day. I also slid down Poplar this afternoon on a slushy river of snow and ice that turned the commute home into  a scary two hour expedition. Normally, it takes something like  twenty to thirty minutes to take me  from store to front door.

With a laundry list of “got-to-get-dones”  today that I had to get to  before the snow arrived, I ran out of the house without eating breakfast. Then worked through lunch in order to take care of several  projects that required the hand of our graphic designer.

By the time I completed the iditarod trip home and  stomped across my snowy alpine-like front yard and finally  shook the snow off of my sock feet  in the foyer (clogs in snow–a fashion don’t), I was, as one says, as  “hungry as a bear wolf.” A large and starving bear wolf. One that has just emerged from hibernation and that went into hibernation without first eating its customary bowl of oatmeal!

So downstairs, in sweatpants and wrapped in a fuzzy robe, feeling sublimely warm and cozy,  I opened the fridge to admire my colorful array of healthy organic and vegalicious foodstuffs. Hmmm. what could go wrong? I felt, dare I say it, empowered!

Well, how the mighty fall.

It wasn’t  WHAT I ate—it was how much. With no neat boxes  of Wu food to delineate the “enough” from the “too much”, I munched through a handful of pistachios, almonds, and cashews, an avocado–yes the WHOLE  yummy avocado with a lovely splash of tantalizing balsamic vinegar and sliced grape tomatoes, and then toasted not one–but TWO of the mini pitas and filled them with that pretend crunchy baked chicken and a melted  slice of pretend Swiss cheese and broccoli sprouts. Oh my–’twas loverly. Or as Jerry Clower would say, “Ooooooooweeeeee!”

But after I came up out of my ether of nobility, I began to count up how many calories I had just consumed. YIKES! I figure it was around 600-700!Maybe more.

Even though  that wound up being the “meal of the day”– that is just not good, because one thing I have learned from the Wu Food Project is that I am a lot better off eating meals throughout the day that are fairly evenly divided in terms of calories.

As I said, it wasn’t what I ate–it was how much I ate because I had let myself get too hungry. I was very put out with myself as I was driving home, because I would not have been nearly as tense if I had eaten the two missed meals.And I was very tense.

I’ll do better tomorrow, but I am still very disappointed in myself today.

The box containing the pretend chicken called it “chik’n”. What a difference a couple of letters can make when they are out of kilter. I was so proud of myself yesterday, and then in one lusty, zesty munch fest this afternoon, I went from zen to sin.

As it turned out,  it wasn’t the ice I was in danger of slipping on today.  It was  my silly pride that caused me to fall.

But tomorrow is another day. And it will begin the way Mr. Wu begins his day–with a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit.

Amen.