The Girl Who Ate Everything

That's my estimation of how much I've ingested today.

When I say having leftovers and food in my kitchen that is more than just an ingredient are dangerous, I mean it.

food production lab leftovers

However, on Thursday after my food production lab was over, for which we made 11 types of dishes (including the drinks), we were left with lots of leftovers. Basically, it was enough to cater another meal (and some of the food was saved for another event that night). Given guidelines to prepare food for 50 people, we prepared aboyut 50 servings of everything; naturally, 50 people's worth of food was far from consumed. Even if there were that many people at the buffet-style luncheon, given to the graduate students after they made their end-of-semester presentations (yes, we were like free labor except we actually paid for it in our tuitions), each person certainly wouldn't eat one serving of everything.

dig in time

Of course, we were excited to actually eat the food we prepared. After preparing foor during the three hour lab the night before and three hours Thursday morning preceding the lunch event, it was time to reap the benefits of preparing craploads of food in the form of mountainous piles of leftovers. While we all felt tired from making pies and frying chicken breasts (50 OF THEM), our eyes lit up when we were allowed to cut into the untouched pan of vegetable lasagna, dig into the platter of chicken (which we had actually been snacking on during the preparation...not that anyone else has to know that), hoard the golden, flaky biscuits, among a gazillion other foodstuffs that ultimately left us comatose and moaning, "Oh god, my stomach...ooh, there's more chicken!" (One of my group partners offered me the last bit of pumpkin pie and I refused, saying "Noo, I've eaten too much and I'm full." After a while of trying to push it on me, she suggested that I take a bite of it so she wouldn't have to eat the whole thing. I immediately complied and she thought it was hilarious. I did too...dammit, that's what people expect of me! I AM THE PIE EATER. GIVE ME YOUR PIE.)

damn you, delicious cornbread and biscuits

Sigh. It was actually a lot of fun, despite the labor that cut into my precious "Japanese snack essay" writing time. Cooking and sharing food with six of my classmates showed me how much fun it could be to have a potluck with friends, if I were ever to round up a group of friends that all knew each other and who loved to cook (it's not going to happen). However, those leftovers? Well.

I took seven biscuits, about eight pieces of cornbread, maybe eight chicken breast halves, some of the accompanying reduced orange-cranberry sauce, and some of the spinach with toasted almonds and dried cranberries salad. Yeeaah. Can you predict what happened?

Today I ate maybe four biscuits, not sure how much cornbread, four of the chicken breast halves, some sauce, and PLENTY OF DOOM. DOOM DOOM DOOM. In addition to that, I ate a 100 gram box of Pocky (over two "meals"), a good amount of this Julesjokolade bar and about 1/5th of the Tykk Lefse cake (the cake is ginormous), two persimmons, and...water.

It felt wrong to eat that much (and as you can see, no vegetables were harmed in today's diet, which is a bad thing) yet I kept doing it. Why? Do I have no sense of self-control? I obviously could feel my stomach filling up and it wasn't like I was expecially ravenous, nor did I have any reason to be since I DON'T MOVE (seriously, I've been in front of this computer for so long today that I'm feeling a little woozy), but I can't explain it besides that having food around means I'll eat it, whether I'm hungry or not. It's not like the food was especially snack-worthy either, besides the Pocky, which I absolutely cannot buy anymore of.

goodbye, tastiness

I don't have enough limits. Or I don't have enough sense. Basically, something's definitely wrong here and I hate feeling like my eating is out of control. Yes, you can chuckle at that (hell, I would!), but the real problem is when I'm alone, not with other people. It seems okay for me to pig out when connecting with another human being, as that is a reason to pig out, but alone? What's up with that? I spent most of my day inside besides that small sliver of time when I had to mail a package and get a treat for a friend's birthday gift, but otherwise the past 12 hours or so of my day were literally sucked up into a black hole by THE INTERNET. THE INTERNET OF DOOM. THE DOOM...NET. YEAH.

I started looking over my food blog essay and I'm wondering why the hell I'm writing this entry. I'm not telling you anything interesting about a restaurant, a recipe, a something-or-other, but just egotistically blabbing about my gluttony in a negative manner. If it were funnier then I think it'd be okay, but it's not even funny! Dammit. I know there are quite a few readers out there so many I'm hoping that someone will shout out and say, "Hell yeah Robyn, I too have eaten an entire box of Pocky and taken the lives of two chickens and padded my stomach with four biscuits in one day" but a part of me would hope that no one has had the same experience.

I remember freaking out last year when I had my "Introduction to Food Science" class (essentially a cooking class) since I couldn't help but bring home leftovers every now and then, which of course resulted in me overeating leftovers. I don't know how I lost the sense of self-control, as I certainly didn't pig out like this when I was little, but it's been with me as long as I've stayed in NYC. Actually, it was with me beforehand, but overeating raw food didn't seem as detrimental as eating ALL THAT CHICKEN AND BISCUITS AND POCKY.