Call Me Gravy

One day my husband flippantly made the statement that I hate gravy.  Where did he get such an idea, I wondered.

"I don't hate gravy," I said, genuinely surprised.

"You never eat it, so I just assumed..." he replied, reasonably.  Perhaps I could see his confusion.

"Well, it's never my first choice," I allowed.

"Or your second choice or your third choice," he countered.

Although that's all true, I don't hate gravy. "Hate"  is such a strong word.  I like gravy well enough, and if it coincidentally shows up on my food, it doesn't ruin my day, or even my meal.  It can, however, royally screw up my diet and calorie count, and since there are other condiments I like as well or better (like ketchup on meatloaf, for instance) I rarely eat gravy.

You see, my food choices are not all about how something tastes.  It's not that simple.   I can't just go around all willy nilly randomly eating whatever I want.  That's how I got into this mess to begin with.  Whether my goal is to lose or just maintain my weight, I only have a limited number of calories to "spend" each day, so some unnecessary extraneous things - like gravy - just don't make the cut.

Take french fries, for instance. I almost never order them.  I always enjoy them when I have them, except when they're thrown on top of my salad, which is just wrong.  Let's face it, when it's the burger OR the fries, I am going to order the burger AND a fruit cup.  Unless I'm at Kennywood, where I will forego all other food for some Potato Patch fries and a good juicy sno-cone.

So I will use mustard instead of mayo, and eat baked chicken instead of fried chicken, all for the greater good of the diet.

But sometimes I really want a piece of cake.  If I am going to splurge on some unnecessary foods, it is going to be something sweet.  That's where it really gets complicated.  I never buy quantities of candy or cookies for the house, because that would be akin to an alcoholic bringing home a case of wine.

However, say my boss decides to buy donuts for the office in honor of Shrove Tuesday when I've already eaten breakfast.  The prudent thing to do would be to just abstain, of course.  However, what I did was to carefully choose one of the cinnamon sugar cake donuts instead of the superior chocolate-covered cream-filled crullers from the box, and then make sure to go to the gym that day to "run off" that donut so I could still eat dinner.  On one recent trip to T-Bones, I chose a small garden salad with low calorie Italian salad dressing for dinner and a glorious large piece of red velvet cake with cream cheese icing for dessert. Yes, I know it sounds decadent, but it may have been the best piece of red velvet cake I've ever eaten.  Some things you just can't give up.

Honestly, I can't imagine going through all that trouble for a little gravy.