I love food. It is that four-letter word which excites me, gets my digestive system to do the Rumba and the senses to somersault.
Live to eat and eat to live. Whosoever said that deserves a Nobel Prize for Service to Humanity.
The topic Food is always on top of my mind, be it at the crack of dawn or the onset of dusk. Such topics as what to have for breakfast, lunch or dinner pre-occupies the grey cells every single day.
It is never easy to decide. Should I have the egg sunny side up or just opt for a simple cheese omelette stuffed with capsicum? Then there is the pressing question of whether to go for a chicken dish with a dash of pepper or dollops of butter?
These things are very stressful, I assure you. Just when you agree on one dish, you get nostalgic about the fish and chips devoured like a hungry tiger just the other day.
The mind boggles at the choices. I am in the horns of a dilemma happens day in and day out. Even Plato would have found this to be too much on his plate.
But as time presses the accelerator pedal and a well-toned body turns full of flab, there are even more difficult choices to make.
I am afraid that at the present moment, I have turned vegetarian. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be too bad. With exercises restricted to only reaching out for the TV remote and flicking channels, I thought a vegan diet would be a workable option.
The delights of the flesh have now been tucked away in the memory, surfacing only during pensive moods or dark moments. Now going vegan was never going to be easy. With the arrival of Lady Diabetes, more restrictions were the order of the day.
Go for boiled vegetables man, the doctor said in a forceful manner. Come on doc that is like asking a foodie to survive on mud.
Imagine having a boiled brinjal on your plate – a sort of squishy, shapeless pulp, dull to look at with a taste which insults the stomach.
Worse are carrots. They look alright but their crunchy taste was more to the liking of Bugs Bunny than a human being who needed food to satisfy the soul. Then there is thing called bitter gourd or karela, colloquially. Now this is supposed to be good for all diabetics.
But have you really studied this so-called vegetable? Firstly, it looks like a dead rat when it appears on the plate. It tastes is so bitter that the great Bard Shakespeare must have consumed a few while writing the depressing Hamlet.
If he had indulged in just the first half of that character’s name, we would have had a sunny Hamlet singing ballads and jesting instead of restoring to soliloquy.
Just the other day, my maid, God bless her, said, “Sir, I have packed drumsticks in your dabba.”
Come lunchtime, and lo and behold. There were 40 of them, nestling against each other for attention in the tiny box. Not a moderate four or so but 40 I mean!
Offering it to colleagues at the office was of no use. It was promptly rejected. The one foodie in the mix had one, more out of pity I guess. I must say that I managed to go through the lot with immense difficulty.
Later that night, I was invited for dinner at a friend’s house. The beer went down smoothly and the snacks munched with relish.
Then it came down to the business of dinner….
I crossed the 50 mark with the drumsticks. I had enough for a lifetime.
But did I hear somebody say that drumsticks are Nature’s favourite aphrodisiac? Oh well, what the hell…
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