Starting a Diet

Today, I shall start a diet, oops, I mean a lifestyle change. We mustn't call it a diet. The word diet has bad connotations connected with it. Why? Well, I for one remember when Weight Watchers first came on the scene. It was extremely limited in what you could eat. Most of the menus had hay and tree bark as a staple. Now I don't have anything against WW at all. I'd be on it if I could afford the extra money and will no doubt use some of the recipes. However, when my mother first started the meetings I recollect a few of the recipes she used. One particular memory was when she made hamburgers.. only instead of hers being nestled in the confines of a lovely toasted bun..she had it wrapped in lettuce leaves with a sliced tomato and a bit of mustard inside. She actually was ahead of her time because these day you pay MORE for lettuce wrapped food.
I don't know if you've ever tried this concoction but tomato pulp is kinda slippery, combined with the mustard, the meat patty kept slipping out of the lettuce "bun" and falling on the floor with every bite. Sorta like the patty knew this was a grievous error in hamburger etiquette and was making an escape attempt in a culinary equivalent of a child's slip-n-slide. My father, brother and me, being the supportive family that we were, laughed our heads off every time it happened. After a few more bites and picking the meat off the floor for the umpteenth time. She burst into tears and fled the room. I realize now that the Weight Watchers recipe was PLANNED that way and was really going for the exercise aspect people would get while bending over multiple times to pick up the patty and then running away. The tears were extra.

Another recipe she would force us to eat was cheese toast with low fat cheddar cheese. This had to be the most ungodly food creation ever invented next to powdered milk but if SHE was on the diet, WE would be too. She wasn't going to suffer alone by golly and I'm sure she was thinking that if we were eating the same meals, we couldn't make fun of her. She severely underestimated the cruelty quotient of young boys. You see, we were the kind of children who invented ways to irritate her. Like the time we declared medieval war on our father and made our spoons into tiny trebuchets to launch green peas on him while he was sleeping on the couch. Our true goal was not to exasperate our mother but to get our dog to jump up on top of our father in order to eat the tiny green treats. We figured we could be gone by the time he woke up, realized what was going on and that the evidence would already be disposed of by way the dogs digestive tract. The only problem was that the dog was a bit pickier than we anticipated and came to the conclusion that she could live without green peas... but not until after she made that first fateful leap onto his face. We spent the first 5 minutes trying to out run my fathers swinging belt and the next hour picking up our little projectiles.

But back to the cheese toast.. thank God it didn't last long. The final straw was when Weight Watchers apparently conspired with the Hemlock Society to enhance the toast recipe into individual pizzas made with tomato paste and more of that low fat cheddar cheese on white bread. Tomato paste is ok in its own right. Any number of recipes can be made into a delectable feast with it. Smeared on white bread by itself is like eating concentrated ketchup. It's evil. With every bite you could hear Satan chuckle for he knew the diet would soon be over and you'd die of a heart attack sooner. The joke is on him because if the future included cheese toast you'd welcome that death with open arms.

I shall leap into my new lifestyle change with glee... but there sure as heck ain't gonna be any cheese toast anywhere near me.