Meeting with the FPO (FPO Food Parole Officer)  Part 4

I meet with my Dietitian weekly. Over zoom. She’s lovely. Smart. Knows her science. Charming. But to protect her identity and to always remind myself it was my own behavior(s)/choices/whatever that got me in this mess, I refer to her as my Food Parole Officer. There is a confessional aspect to meeting with your dietitian weekly, and Food Parole Officer seemed better than Food Priest.

Anyway, I asked how she had been doing and she said, “doing well” and she had been doing some writing. I asked what kind of writing and she said they were working on doing a “Healthy Thanksgiving Cooking Class”. I guess I must have made a face, because she said, “What, doesn’t that sound good?”. “I don’t know, it kind of comes across as “Sex in a Public Library Class”. You can do it, but it doesn’t sound like fun.

Pleasantries can only go on for so long before she asks the “So how are you doing?”. She’s very consistent in tone, as I can’t parse out any of the variations, which all have different meaning, like “So, HOW are you doing?” vs “So how are YOU doing?” vs “So, how are you DOING?, which in all honesty is probably the meaning I’m wanting to escape. So it doesn’t always sound like a bad episode of that reality show, “Confessional Booth Superlatives”, I try to alternate between starting with “good news” and then “bad news”. Sometimes if the bad news is bad enough I’ll say, “Trigger Warning”. She’s learned to gird herself in the chair like when a flight attendant, 5 minutes after announcing severe turbulence, says “Brace in your seats”, milliseconds after the oxygen masks have popped out of the ceilings. ( I conjured this image the time I said “trigger warning” and then described my craving for my favorite mexican dip which is velveeta and salsa heated in the microwave till melted. You could definitely see the oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling on her face).

“I got a craving for my favorite cinnamon buns from my favorite bakers which I haven’t had in three months and the baker is next door to the greek place where I get my fresh ingredients lamb gyro so I popped in and got two and I ate the first one that day and it was amazing”. (somehow saying all that without breathing makes it seem easier. I’m relying on all the tricks my inner 8 year old remembers) But as she was looking up, which she now does anytime I tell her something that freaks her out (because I told her when I said something that freaked her out she would look left so now she only looks up), I said very quickly, “And I had the second one the next night and it gave me a horrible food hangover” hoping the pleasure that the second one made me ill would help with the whole freak out thing. Then, as she often does. She surprised me with, “That’s not so bad, next time you have a craving like that, you have to make the thing yourself. From Scratch.”

Is what my brain immediately did. Wait what? I can’t churn ice cream! Oh no, if I make a yellow cake with chocolate icing – I’ll eat the whole thing! OMG, this is going to eliminate 80% of my cravings. Crap. Apparently, as you will see below, she was still talking and as usual when my mind has this processing explosion, I heard nothing of what came after “make it yourself”.

Fast forward a few days later when sure enough, I get a craving for my fav cookie – oatmeal raisin. Gotta make it myself, I think. I’ve never made cookies in my life. Yes, I had a mother. Yes, I was married once. Yes, that’s another blog. Less funny though. Looked up a couple of oatmeal raisin cookie recipes. I thought, this is not so hard. Made my plan for Sunday. Here’s some things I learned. When they say “cream the butter” (which means mix the soft room temperature butter with the sugar until its “creamy”) and you don’t have a stand mixer, you DEFINITELY don’t’ want to use an immersion blender or a hand mixer. If you’ve ever been to the beach in a very skimpy bathing suit and gotten caught in a sudden hurricane where sand enters every pore and orifice in your body – that’s close to my experience. (My housecleaner is going to be really pissed tomorrow)

After putting the “balls of dough” (my thirteen year old brain loves the expression, “balls of dough” on a cookie sheet, I noticed the recipe said “refrigerate dough”. My not so quick thinking brain thought, “I can’t fit this cookie sheet in my fridge, so how important cant that step be” not realizing that I was supposed to put the MIXING BOWL of dough in the fridge. This is how important that step is…..

As I mentioned on my social media post, these cookies looked like a drunk driver took a car airborne into the living room of a home where the car burst on fire and burned. But they tasted good. Well,the first 12 I ate tasted great. I decided to send this pic to my food parole officer and mentioned we might need to discuss portion sizes when I found out that part I mentioned above where my head exploded and i missed what she had said after? Apparently it was, “make it yourself from scratch, EAT ONE AND THEN GIVE THE REST AWAY”. Wait. What? You mean like find a beautiful women, ask her out, hope she accepts, take her out to a lovely dinner, pray for chemistry, get invited back to her place where she gets naked and then say, “Hold on, I need to call a friend.”? We have some negotiating to do on Thursday. We have some very different ideas about “cookies”.