I make my living as a health writer and I mostly eat healthy food. I even gave up eating my beloved Frosted Cinnamon Pop Tarts years ago. But like a salmon driven by instincts so primitive and fundamental that it risks its life and being eaten by grizzly bears and eagles to swim upstream, I am hard-wired to find great comfort in certain foods. Some of them are less healthy than others. Some of them I have given up. Some of them I have not.
For example:
Mexican Coke. There is no other. All other sodas, go home. Mexican Coke has real cane sugar, none of that high-fructose corn syrup or stevia. It tastes just like Coke used to until the mid 1970s, when they sold their souls and went to the dark side of high fructose corn syrup to save money and contribute to worldwide obesity. New Coke was a total disaster. Everyone hated it. Then they tried to fool people with Coke Classic, but you can’t fool a diehard!
When I was in junior high, I actually wrote Coke a heartfelt letter, saying that Coke Classic was not the same, and they sensitively responded with a form letter that included coupons for… Coke Classic! Way to fail, Coke PR people! Once in the 1980s, Mark and my friend, Marion, tried to fool me with a blind taste test of Coke Classic, Pepsi, RC Cola, and some knockoff store brand cola. Of course I nailed it. They even put New Coke in there twice, but they couldn’t fool me!
Anyway, it was a pretty depressing next couple of decades, soda-wise, until we discovered Mexican Coke. During Covid, when there were shortages, I paid scalper prices and ordered Mexican Coke on Amazon and from Walmart.com. I’m not ashamed of this! Yes, people charged too much, and yes, I paid it. We did what we had to do. It was a dark time. Now Mexican Coke is back in its proper place – sold by the case in Costco, and individually at most grocery stores – and Mark goes with me to Costco to get it. We buy two or three cases at a time, and when it gets down below one case, we restock.
Canned asparagus. I have eaten at a lot of fancy restaurants, and had delicious, fresh asparagus that they claim is tender. Yes, it’s good, and you can put your salt and pepper and olive oil on there and roast it, and squeeze a lemon on it, and that is also good (and I do this, although sometimes it comes off the sheet pan tough as a boot and stringy, so it’s better to steam it first and then just finish it in the oven). But hey, it’s fresh asparagus! Fresh asparagus is classy!
And yet… all the while, I’m just so ready for canned asparagus. I grew up eating it. It is my friend. I have some in the pantry and it’s calling my name. It is mushy! It is perfection! It’s mushylicious! No teeth needed! It just slides right down! Stick a fork in me, I’m done!
Side note: I also like boiled okra. I know, that’s really weird. But I grew up in the South, and we had okra a lot. When we lived in Oxford, Mississippi, I had my tonsils out and my mom boiled okra for me. It was not only very tender (although not canned asparagus-level); it was also slimy! It gently slid past the swollen and painful site of my former tonsils. I also love okra cooked with tomatoes, corn, and lima beans. And I love it fried! I love it fried so much.
Cheese Whiz. I know, I know. The words “spray cheese” are not mouth-watering. But when I was growing up, every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas we had a crystal dish (I believe it is actually called a celery dish!) with cut-up celery, each piece artistically filled with Cheese Whiz. Similarly:
Velveeta. I know people who have caught fish with Velveeta balls. Even the name is perfection. Velveeta! Why didn’t I name my daughter that? I don’t really like it at room temperature, but: Melt that Velveeta, add some cooked ground beef and salsa, and you have the culinary delight known as meat dip! Carole, my sister-in-law, introduced me to this delicacy when my brother was at Camp Lejeune. We were all young and could eat anything and not gain weight — and, in fact, after playing Spades and other card games late into the night, we would pile into the car and go to Krispy Kreme when the “Hot Now!” neon sign was on, get a box of chocolate glazed and eat most of it in the car — and still not gain weight! But I digress. Velveeta goes extremely well with:
Corn chips. Fritos, Tostitos, Bugles. Fritos add class and distinction to any casserole, by the way.
But I also just love corn. And cornbread! Cornbread with butter and honey. Cornbread with jalapeño in it. Corn on the cob, cooked in foil on the grill, with olive oil or butter and a little jalapeño. (Side note: Get some of that jalapeño in the jar that they put on movie theater nachos, and add it to mac and cheese. You won’t regret it!) Or, try this: Get your piece of bread (again, from my childhood — notice a theme here? Maybe it’s “Froodan,” as Barney Fife would say!). Ideally, it’s one of those bags of French bread that comes in a foil package. My mom cooked these in the oven and we had bread every single night of my life with dinner. She’d slice it and put butter between every piece. (Actually, she used margarine, based on the fear-mongering and flat-out misinformation about fats the 80s. Mistakes were made. But I digress.) Anyway, you get a piece of that bread, load it up with more butter, and then slide the hot corn cob back and forth (holding it with your corn holders that look like actual ears of corn and have very sharp pointy ends that you impale the corn with). The hot corn melts the butter, and then you are doubly blessed: buttered corn on the cob and buttered bread that tastes like corn!
Kettle corn. Specifically, Blue Ridge Kettle Corn, made right here in central Virginia. I loved it when we lived here before. I love it now that we have moved back, at a time in my life when I just look at a calorie and gain weight. Thus, I hardly ever eat it, because self control, but when I do, hoo boy! Don’t come between the Nazgûl and its prey! I can eat half a bag at a time. It’s not just the salty and sweet. It’s the actual cane sugar (see Mexican Coke) and, from the way they cook it, sometimes you get a golden nugget – one that’s got a hard shell of cooked sugar surrounding it. Those nuggets are like the prize in the cereal box!
Biscuits with a whole lot of dairy. My son, Andy, and I used to make biscuits, and they were good. They “just” had butter, which we froze first and then grated in there to make the dough flakey. But then, you know, life happened. Andy moved away and married a wonderful young woman named Holly. Josh was never really as hard-core pro-biscuit as we were, and like everyone in the family except me, has serious problems with gluten. If I made biscuits, I would feel guilt-compelled to eat them, and I would pork up faster than you can say, “melt that butter in the microwave and pass me the Bonne Maman jelly!” All that said, my biscuit buddy, my dear son-in-law Ted, took us to this place in Charleston, S.C., called Callie’s Hot Little Biscuits. Incredible biscuits. Life-changing biscuits! They sell them frozen here in our local Harris-Teeter, but I have never bought them because, again, I would eat them all. I did take a picture of the boxes in the freezer to send to Ted. The Callie’s Cheese & Chive biscuits have buttermilk, cheese, butter, and cream cheese! All the food groups! Andy and I had no idea how much dairy we could have put in our biscuits! I receive no money from Callie, whoever she is, but I have to say, if you ever have a hankering for a really good biscuit, that woman knows how to make them.
My grandmother’s chocolate cake. My dad’s mom gave this recipe to my mom, and my mom used to make it, at my request, every single year for my birthday. There’s cinnamon in the chocolate cake, which adds! The original recipe calls for buttermilk (but we have even made it with almond milk and gluten-free flour for the family food allergies, and it’s still good!). The real feature that makes it so incredible is the cocoa icing, which is poured hot over the cake and contains an entire box of confectioner’s sugar. My sweet sister-in-law, Carole, has made me this cake, and so has my daughter, who cooks everything with love. The appropriate follow-up action to eating this cake is to take a nap. Similarly, Nutella. When my niece, Elizabeth, lived with us during her last year of medical school, she and I each had our own individual jar of Nutella. It was better for everyone.
I now feel the need to get on the elliptical.
©Janet Farrar Worthington
I start with the “barbell bench press.” I do 40 pounds. Don’t laugh; it used to be 30. That’s okay. If 40 gets easy, I will move up to 50. Baby steps, people. Then I do the dumbbell shoulder press. I do 12 pounds each; again, you could laugh at the girly lack of weight, but it used to be 10 pounds. One-arm dumbbell row, 25 pounds; it used to be 15. Wide-grip lat pulldown: I do 55 pounds. It used to be 40. Seated cable rows: I do 40 pounds. That hasn’t changed, but I was doing it wrong at first, and now that I’m doing it right, that’s a good weight for me. Barbell curl: I don’t do it, but I do the dumbbell curls instead; 15 pounds, used to be 10. Triceps pushdown: I do 45 pounds. I used to do 40. Barbell full squat: The pole that holds the barbells weighs 45 pounds; I add 50 to that. Leg extensions: I do 50 pounds; used to do 30 when I started. Lying leg curls: I do 50 pounds. I don’t like them, so I often don’t do them. And that’s okay, because I’m doing the other stuff.
Another thing: I have changed what I eat. This has been difficult, because God help me, I love comfort food. I love macaroni and cheese, the kind you bake in the oven that gets the crust on it. I love meatloaf. I love mashed potatoes, and then I like to take green peas on my plate and bury them in there – a surprise in every bite! I love bread. I love cookies and cakes and pie and custard.
Drink only water or something with no calories, like unsweetened tea. Avoid soda like the plague. Alcohol has a lot of calories. You could start to lose weight right away if you just cut back on that. Watch out for juice; it has a lot more calories than you think. Eat a piece of fruit instead. If you go to Starbucks, get a Refresher, which only has about 35 calories, instead of a Frappucino. Don’t rely on diet drinks; that’s a whole ‘nother blog post, but they still make your body crave sweet things, and this does bad things to your insulin receptors.
When you start to exercise, don’t start with heavy weights. Work up to it. Don’t get on the treadmill, run fast and then poop out after two minutes. Start by walking slowly. In my opinion, it’s better to walk slowly for 20 minutes than speed-walk for five. If you don’t have access to a treadmill, set a timer and walk for 20 minutes, at any speed you choose. Anything you do is more than you would accomplish by just sitting still. Trying means a lot.