Time: 5:00pm
Weight: 150 lbs (same as yesterday, though somehow I managed to skip dinner)
Location: Kitchen
Recently I have had some pretty strange cravings. Everything from Thanksgiving dinner (that I craved for more than 3 weeks post Thanksgiving) to more recently homemade custard. Today, I finally gave in.
I rustled up my Joy of Cooking book, battered and torn from years of use, and looked up simple vanilla custard. As I remember it, my mom used to make it whenever my sister and I were sick and she was stuck in the house, nursing us back to health. There was something theraputic about the smell of the warm nutmeg and soft vanilla that would fill the house as it cooked in its 'bain marie' (a simple water bath) in the oven--and on a blustery cold day like today--it just sounded good.I, of course, made some changes due to the whole diet thing--and the new edition of The Joy of Cooking actually has a ton of variations you can make to recipes to make them healthier. I started out by mixing half heavy cream and half non-fat milk--all of it organic--for the milk portion of the recipe (a very similar one here courtesy of evilshenanigans.com--which for the record, I think is an AWESOME name for good food that's bad for you). I also used egg whites (and one egg) for the 'fat' portion rather than whole eggs.
Amazingly enough, custard is relatively simple to make and it doesn't take a lot of what I like to refer to as 'standing in the kitchen time.' Some really healthy recipes end up taking forever, and ultimately being more of a pain than their worth.
While I was waiting for the custard to cook, I did a little research on cravings and some of the 'scientific' reasons behind them. It turns out that there is a TON of research on food cravings, particularly those that deal with sweet or fattening goods. According to some scientists, the idea that cravings are our bodies way of telling us that we 'need' a certain chemical, nutrient or food, is bunk. In May of 2005, two scientists, Peter Pressman and Roger Clemens (hes an adjunct professor at my alma mater!) explained in an article in Scientific American, that most food cravings are in fact simply 'pleasure cravings,' triggered by 'emotion, memory and chemosensory stimuli of food craving,' in other words--we want to eat things that make us feel emotionally good--not necessarily, physically good.
I took this theory and applied to to myself today--and here's what I found--from an emotional standpoint, I have been feeling a bit isolated. I commute almost four hours daily and in those four hours, rarely speak to anyone. Recently my husband has been traveling extensively, so when I am home, its usually just me and the dogs hanging around the house into the wee hours of the morning. The memory of custard--of my mom making it when I was feeling sick--leads me to believe that this particular craving is mainly based in wanting to have company.
Looking back on my day--the most interaction I had was with a clerk at the UPS store while returning some Christmas gifts--and that says something. When we are feeling lonely, or down, or just plain bored, what is it that we're drawn to? Food? Sleep? Alcohol? What kinds of behavior are we replicating unknowingly, when we could be addressing our issues directly?
At the moment, its an interesting thought. I just put the four 6oz ramekins in the fridge to firm up. We'll see if I eat one of them later tonight as a treat, or, if my loneliness dissipates with some homemade Weight Watchers Cabbage Soup (so good!).
The question remains, what do you do with this knowledge once you have recognized it?
