Thanks to science and possibly Eve (depending on your religious affiliation and your interpretation of religious texts), for about two days a month I crave the worst foods in the world. I’m a relatively healthy eater most of the time. My diet consists of raw fruits and veggies, nuts and beans for protein, cheese and whole wheat breads and pasta, fruit juices and coffee. I typically don’t like to eat foods that my great-grandmother couldn’t have found on the planet when she was around and eating. But there is a two or three day span of time when my body starts to turn on itself and this little voice, that sounds a lot like David Sedaris, starts bossing me around.
“You want a frosted blue-berry Pop Tart. You know you want that Pop Tart. And you’re not going to put it in the toaster-oven, oh no. Because then it will be all dry. Put that pop-tart in the microwave so it’s moist and then show it whose boss. Do it.”
A pop-tart is one of those foods that I broke up with a few years ago. One reason is because I legit almost burned my apartment down when I neglected a Pop Tart in my toaster oven for about ten minutes. Pop Tarts are apparently attention whores because this one was just a few spiteful seconds away from ignition. (See exhibit A below). But it’s also because I could buy a pop-tart today, and then not eat it until my 60th birthday and it would look, taste, and smell exactly the same, 33 years later.
Exhibit A:
Earlier this week, David Sedaris told me that if I didn’t go get some Bagel Bites, then someone somewhere in the world would die. (I saw the preview for The Box earlier this week, and one of my students was talking about The Butterfly Effect in class a couple days ago, so I guess it makes sense why my subconscious would hormonally threaten me this way). Since David Sedaris is much smarter and sassier than I am, I had to listen, so I went and bought myself some Bagel Bites.
There are some foods I am just not willing to wait more than 2 minutes for, and a Bagel Bite is one of those foods. If you look at the instructions on how to prepare Bagel Bites, you have two options.
1. Microwave: Place Bagel Bites on plate. Microwave on high for 1 ½ to 2 minutes.
2. Conventional Oven: Preheat oven to 450. Place Bagel Bites on baking sheet. Bake until the next primary election.
So I put my Bagel Bites that were partially covered in freezer burn crystals (does this lock the freshness in or out?) in the microwave because some things are just not good enough to wait for. Life is too short to heat up Bagel Bites in the oven.
When I sat down to eat, I knew it was going to be one of those “meals” where I felt like I had to wash my face, brush my teeth, and maybe even take a shower afterwards and I already hated myself for what I was about to do. But David Sedaris was threatening me so I went for it. I tried to nibble on one of my steaming Bagel Bites before remembering that if you microwave Bagel Bites, they suddenly take on the chemical properties of shoe rubber and obtain the tenacity of packaging tape. Instead of getting a small taste, every bit of cheese and sauce slid off the miniature bleached and enriched bagel flowing like lava onto my tongue. Once there, this nuclear cheese seemed to mushroom cloud up to the roof of my mouth and stick there, burning tiny holes into my gums, my soul, and possibly the Ozone layer. In my hand was a naked, innocuous Bagel Bite, lightly stained from where the pizza sauce used to be, mocking me with its petite size and room temperature. I sat there sucking in shallow breaths of air until the cheese/sauce lava flow was just hot enough to burn the back of my throat on its way down to my stomach where it was churned into regret and indigestion.
My Bagel Bite debacle made me think about something that people seem to do all of the time. Why do we tend to crave the things that we know are so bad for us? Fast food or junk food is just one example. Jim Gaffigan talked about this on the David Letterman show, about how fast food is kind of like someone that we used to date. We’ll drive by a restaurant and you’ll say to the other person in your car, “I remember when I used to eat there all the time. What was I thinking?” But then later that night, when you’re real lonely, you’ll give that person a call…it’s a culinary booty call via the discreet drive through.
But this seems to be true in so many other areas of our lives. I buy shoes that hurt my feet because they are cute. I wear eyeshadow even though I’m allergic to it. I drink red wine even though it gives me migraines.
And a lot of times we crave relationships that are bad for us. It’s similar to eating junk food. They both make us feel like crap. They both make us question our intelligence and decision making skills. They both cost us a lot of money for something that turns out to be pretty empty and cheap. And afterwards, we’ll say, “This is it. I’ve had it. It’s the last time he/she is going to treat me like this.”
But then there we go, like a moth to a flame…or like a premenstrual psychopath to the freezer aisle...
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